Micro changes equal macro results

I heard this phrase a couple years ago when doing research on my growing photography business, but have found that it can be applied to almost anything, especially marriage. Drs. John and Julie Gottman has the same idea when they added the guide “Small Things Often” to their Relationship Guides packet and they broke it down in an easy to digest format. The “Relationship Guides” are a six-pamphlet package that I’ll be breaking down by each book and reviewing for you. If you’d like to refresh or see what you missed, click here to see my thoughts in “How to be a Great Listener.”

Reading the ten page guide took me a matter of 7 minutes (2 of those minutes were spent quieting my children) and displayed six ways you can be intentional with your small acts of kindness toward your partner. My all time FAVORITE part of the guide was that with each examples they had an estimate of how much time a task would take to accomplish. If you’re anything like me, sometimes you can avoid or procrastinate on certain tasks because they seem daunting. So, the fact that the examples were displayed in duration was so much easier for me to digest and be more motivated to do. The examples that I’m most excited to try are “partings and the 6-second kiss.”

Do you kiss your spouse or partner goodbye when you leave for the day? Are you in too big of a hurry? Or is your brain still groggy from waking up for the day (assuming you leave for work in the AM)? Drs. John and Julie Gottman recommend that couples spend at least TWO MINUTES (who doesn’t have time for that?) chatting about one interesting thing that’ll happen that day and kissing goodbye for 6 seconds. Why 6 seconds? Because a six second kiss is a kiss with potential, and kissing releasing oxytocin and dopamine (according to this study), allowing you to feel more comforted and secure, as well as reduce cortisol (a stress hormone), resulting in lower blood pressure and prevent future heart attacks. Talk about an amazing ROI (return on interest).

So, over all, I think this is a GREAT read that you can acquire here and would love to here what you guys think! Comment below. :)