Welcome to Season 3 of the Next Peak Podcast, where we help you redefine what success looks like for you and share strategies, tools, and stories to help you climb your next peak. 

In today’s episode, Clint and Dr. Parker discuss the importance of marriage and why it's worth investing in. There are plenty of stressors in marriage; financial stress, illness in a family member, aging parents, communication problems, and behavioral problems with your kids, those things in addition to day to day life in 2021 can quickly take a toll on your marriage which is why we need to invest in our marriage because an unhappy marriage can :

• Increase your chance of getting sick by 35%
• Take four to eight years off your life
• Elevate stress hormones levels in your kids
• Prevent financial success and freedom  

Dr. John Gottman, the country's foremost relationship expert, lays out 4 sure signs to help identify problems in a marriage:

1.  Criticism: accusations, attacking character, using the terms "always" and "never." 
2. Contempt: an extreme version of criticism contempt is the single greatest predictor of divorce.
3. Defensiveness: reacting quickly to protect yourself, shifting blame, or avoiding responsibility for your actions.
4. Stonewalling: shutting down and escaping.

Action steps:

1. Never stop getting to know each other. Friendship is the most important connection that a husband and wife can have. It's not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship, that causes marriages to fail.
2.  Invest very heavily in positive experiences with your partner. Build and nurture fondness and admiration.
3.  Habitually turned toward each other. Take 15 minutes during the day to check in with your partner.
4. Let your partner influence you. The strongest couples listen to each other's opinions for important decision-making and seek common ground.
5. Develop a habit of resolving conflict. Create a process for having hard conversations.
6. Clearly identify the big problems. If there's something that you cannot overlook, you've got to bring it to the surface.
7. Develop a shared vision. Most arguments stem from a conflict in dreams.

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by Dr. John Gottman 

If you got something out of today's episode, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on www.nextpeakpodcast.com. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at www.leadyoufirst.com. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.