Episode 037: Practice Makes Permanent

Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes Permanent.” - Eric Thomas We all remember the Allen Iverson’s infamous practice speech. He had a lot of personal things that he was dealing with in his life at the time and the speech was his response to a question from a reporter. Have you ever thought about how that can apply to our marriage? What does it look like to practice in your marriage? Too many times we can have an attitude about our marriage that mirrors Iverson’s attitude from the video. We may think that the everyday aspects aren’t important. As long as we try to do good during the “games” then we’ll be successful. The ‘games” being the special days that we tend to pay attention to; birthdays, anniversaries and the occasional holiday. At the beginning of this year me and my set out to do something special for each other each month. This was all an effort to practice our marriage. I’ll admit that we did good for the first couple of months. Then the spring/summer came and I missed a month. Thinking that I would try to make up for the next month and that never happened. Have I gotten back to it, no but I’m going to. This is the point of practice. We don’t start with excellence. You don’t have a great marriage right from the start. Any hall of farmer in any sport didn’t start out that way. There is a level of practice that is required to to be great. The same applies to our marriages. We don’t start out as great husbands and wives. We may be good but there is always another level to go to. We can strive to be better. 1. Practice is hard There’s no denying it. Practice is not easy and it can seem hard. When it comes to practicing in your marriage, means setting yourself up for success. Practice is all about building habits and routines that will make benefit you when times are hard. In our marriage this can play out in practicing including my wife when it comes to making decisions. It may not be a difficult decision but working on including my spouse so that it become a difficult situation, I won’t be tempted to hide anything from her. Find areas that you haven’t practiced in and begin. 2. Stop pursuing perfection What I’m not saying is that we shouldn’t pursue growth. What I am saying is that we need to look at our idea of perfection. We should lose that. Instead of pursuing perfection, aim for growth. Try to grow into the best person you can be. Through your growth you will become better, and your marriage will get better. 3. What should be permanent What are the aspects, characteristics, and qualities that you want to be permanent in yourself? What are the things that you want to be permanent in your marriage? The things that are permanent are the foundations to who we are. We want to make sure that we’re setting up a strong foundation for ourselves and our marriages. You can email me at leonardmcelveen.com