Extra-Ordinary Marriage; Ignite new life and energy in your relationship with Special Guest Connie Durham

welcome back no problem parents and happy valentine's day hey i have a fun guest for you today who's gonna give us some tips and tools about how to nurture and re-energize your relationship whether you're married or you've just been together for a long time meet my guest connie durham connie says you know how when you first get married you just love everything about each other but sooner or later you start to get on each other's nerves well that's where Connie comes in. She helps resolve those problems. Life is smooth when you meet and marry that perfect for you partner. But let's face it, when we're young, we have no idea what life has in store for us. While raising her three kiddos, Connie taught ballet in the evening. She had a crazy busy schedule and worked full time. After getting all three of her kids married in 18 months, three kids getting married in 18 months of each other, Connie realized that all families have different habits, traditions, and values.

In 2018, she became part of the John Maxwell team as a speaker and trainer and is now the CEO of Connie's Clever Concepts, where she ignites new life and energy in relationships using disc communication styles. So stay tuned, parents. Maybe you're on your way to dinner right now listening to the podcast. Let me tell you, this is better than flowers and candy.

Listen in to Connie's tips and tools so that you can really help rekindle and reignite your relationship. And I hope you have a special Valentine's Day. Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Turn behavior problems into no problem with Jackie Finneman.

Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Do you want to learn how to make parenting easier and more fulfilling? Whether you are at your wit's end or you wanna have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Fineman. Hey, welcome to the show, Connie. Hi, Jackie. Thank you for having me.

I really love your topic. I love your energy. I really love everything about you and your passion and mission for helping families, especially when we're, you know, really kind of going through the struggles, whether it's relationship with our spouse or it's disconnect from our teens. I mean, you just have, you just have a way of reaching families, almost like the family whisperer, right? Well, after being married for over 40 years, I think that experience helps a lot. You know, you raise your kids and you watch them raise their own kids. And you know, a lot more by the time you're a grandparent, you know, one of the things that you learned about was the disc communication styles, DISC. Can you just run through those really quick? Well, and I started on those back in 2004. I was so intrigued with them. I thought, wow, this just turns a light bulb on when it comes to people. So I was very intrigued with them. And I actually sat across the bed with my kids and we had all done our disc assessments. And I thought, this is so interesting. We laughed about our results. Literally, when you start to learn about personality styles, as parents, quite often we tend to expect our children to act the way we do.

And as you start to learn about that, you start to realize that your children have an individual personality style and they're not going to act just like you. So it helped me learn a lot of things. And then also when my kids got married, several of them, their spouses to be, had also taken this disc assessment because I was in the middle of my education and learning during that time and it helped me to learn. But I got some things I didn't quite expect. And that was one of the, one of my kids that was getting married, literally that spouse to be had taken that assessment. And so when there were later some challenges in their marriage, which is what I actually deal with now. And that's why I have heart and passion for that. It helped me to understand that this person was not who they were acting like, how they behaved, how they responded to things was very different than their DISC personality style. And I had done enough in that to know that that stuff is true. Like you take that, it's such a simple thing when you take that assessment. You think, how can it tell me all this stuff about myself? But it does. So in the DISC,

there are the four letters, the D, I, S, and C, and that's why we call it DISC. And it's communication styles. So the D is that very direct person. They're a leader. They're very leadership style.

A lot of times your PTO president, you know, is a D and they get it done. I like to say the I is that fun loving, enthusiastic person. They're very talkative. The S is the supporter. They're that person who is always there and supports you in everything without saying or asking questions.

They just, you know, take care and support you. And then the C personality is that analytical person. They analyze everything and decisions are long because they're gathering all the data before they do that. And so that's just a tidbit on that. But the four styles are really different.

Then some people are very high and only one style and others or most people are a combination of the styles. You might be two or three parts of those styles, but maybe one style is higher than another. And so it's kind of like a math equation. Literally, nobody's just alike.

Even when you meet a friend or a spouse or you have a kid that's like you, they're a lot like you, but they're not just like you. So there's a lot of variances in there. So it's really interesting and really useful. And honestly, after I learned it, I thought everyone really needs to understand this because you use it in business like places like Delta Airlines, Chick-fil-A.

Some of those big companies use it in order to pull in teams. If somebody is doing a customer service, you want to make sure they're a people person. You want to make sure they're patient with people. Right.

You don't want somebody who reacts very quickly or gets harsh or frustrated easily. You don't want that kind of person in your customer service. So it's very, very interesting. When we're raised as a child, certain things can make things harder on us.

Or if we have somebody who is an absolutely opposite personality style, sometimes it like just wears you down or you don't develop confidence. And then later in life, whenever maybe you make some bad choices and then you have to deal with those choices and maybe you're not so happy about those choices, pressures, frustrations. And what happens is you take it out on who? The people you're closest to.

Yeah, the people you're closest to. How does our past develop our perspective for today? Well, you know, we all have different outlooks on things. and we all grow up in different families and we assume that our family is just like other families but there's a lot of different things that go into family life like the personality styles and how people discipline their kids um what kind of emotions are in the household whether people somebody gets angry easily, if somebody has a lot of patience or no patience.

When you're growing up, sometimes everyone in the house discusses everything and everything's open. And then other times you live in a household where no one talks about anything. And maybe there's big problems in your house, but nobody talks about it. And you better not talk about it when you're in public.

And so our past, as we're coming up as kids and how our household is run, you know, just makes a lot of difference. And I like to say that, you know, as parents, we are practicing. We don't think about that when we're young and we're raising our kids. We're just doing it.

But then, you know, later on, as you go and you kind of look back at things, you realize that, you know, we're all practicing. Every day they're getting better. They're learning more. They're moving along.

And that's the important thing is we bring our past into our future. And what I've seen as I've studied more and more is that when people have trouble in their life, in their marriage, if you look back to their family, there was some trouble in that family. And if you look back to the next generation, there was trouble in that family. And sometimes we have to figure out how we can break the cycle.

Yeah. So let's get into that. That's the juicy, good subject, because I think whether you've been married just for a couple of years or you've been married for 35 years or 50 years, it's always good to be aware of where you're at in your marriage and making sure that you are rekindling, you know, just so that things can run smoother when your kids are at home and when they're grown. But let's get into some of those things that you specialize in.

You're the home of the extraordinary marriage. What does that mean? How are you doing that? As I started in my business, my main thing was to teach people DISC and the communication styles, because I knew that if they could learn those communication styles, they would not rub each other wrong so very much.

But as I continued the last few years in my business, I started realizing that people want to know what they can have. They want to know what they can have. And what do they want? They want an extraordinary marriage, an extraordinary marriage.

And so whenever I came up with that, I'm like, that's it. That's what we want. We want an extraordinary marriage. And I was very fortunate because I married a very easygoing, that easygoing, supportive personality. And I'm a fun loving personality. So, you know, we just really hadn't had any trouble.

so I didn't even know any trouble was out there how many of us you know if we haven't seen something we just don't even know it exists until suddenly different things through life come into play and then we know what exists because before we're aware of problems sometimes we do things and we don't even mean to hurt anybody's feelings we don't mean to hurt anybody at all but because we're unaware we don't realize and so there's a one particular personality that their top emotion is anger. And the reason that's so big, I would say that's one of the biggest problems in marriages is the people with that personality style. Well, they're really smart people. They're talented. They're purposeful. They're great at work. But when they're stressed or there's something else pressing, that anger comes out and it goes all over the people around them. How do you get past that? So learning how to get past some of those things is the way to have an extraordinary marriage. And sometimes it's step by step, little by little. You know,

many of us, we go to college to learn more. Whenever you are learning more in your business is exciting, you know, when you're using it. And the same goes when you are learning more or becoming more aware in your relationship, it enables you to get what you want, to get along better and to find that extraordinary marriage. I love it. And you can help people do that. You help them recognize and identify their marital challenges and learn new ways they can resolve conflict and how they can communicate Kate better and connect better. And you use the disc assessment while, while doing that with couples in their relationship. Yes. All right. So let's talk about boosting our marital mojo. And you know, it's really important that, I mean, all marriages go through some ups and downs and twists and turns and just kind of depends on our, like you said, our stressors and things, but there are things that we can be doing to nurture our relationship and to nurture our marriage,

but you have a really fun little handout, 25 secrets to boost your marital mojo. And you call it making deposits, like the right deposits into the marriage. Great relationships are built on trust and being able to count on one another and relaxing and being yourself. But it does take a little bit of effort, a little bit of work, and it takes two.

So I would love, I know you don't want to give them all away. People can go to your website and get all 25, but I'd love for you to just give us five of those. Talk a little bit about five of those secrets that will help us boost our marriage. All right. Well, you know, so often we're we're so busy raising our kids, going to work, taking care of our house, doing all our responsibilities that we literally stop paying attention to the most important relationship.

And that is our marriage, because our marriage is the foundation to everything else in our lives. It's the foundation of how you're raising your kids. It's the foundation of do you enjoy being at home, right? So one of the ones that I love that we just don't think about is listening.

And this is something that so many of us have trouble with. So as we're talking about personality styles before, I'm a high I, which means I am talkative, enthusiastic, and that kind of thing. So what happens is sometimes my personality style is thinking about the next thing they're going to say when their spouse is talking to them. And I'm not saying I do that, of course.

But, you know, sometimes we're thinking about that next thing we're going to say and our spouse is talking and we're not really hearing what they're saying. And the truth is, is that when you have eye contact with someone, they know that you're listening. So an important thing on listening is maybe repeating back what the person said to you. Just a few, a line or so you're thinking, da, da, da, da, da.

Or so you're saying this, da, da, da, da. Now they know that you're engaged and you're actually listening. Because when somebody is not listening to you, and I actually had this on one of my, I'm doing 14 days, the 14 day Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day challenge right now on my Facebook page and YouTube.

and people, you know, they roll their eyes at you whenever they're listening. Sometimes, you know, there's facial expressions that go on, but when they're not listening, they may be looking away. They may start talking to someone else or a real thing these days is looking at your phone. You know, they looked out of their phone or the phone buzzes or it rings or the TV's right there and they're not listening. So it's really important to listen.

to your spouse. And sometimes we might feel like they're not listening to us, but the only way we can get something started is to do it ourselves. You know, you can't control anything the other person does. You have to be the one that begins. You can't go, well, they don't do this for me and they don't do that for me. And next thing you know, you know, you're, you're both not listening. So listening is one of the most important things. And you know, that also goes to your kids sometimes for three minutes when they come in the door, stop and listen. But letting that person know that you're listening shows them how important they are to you. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Number two. All right. So another one is this simple thing called the golden rule due to the other person, the way you want them to do to you.

So in everything, when it comes to your spouse, in everything, like, you know, instead of throwing your clothes on the floor and then picking them up, then, you know, make sure that you're putting your clothes where they go. Or in everything, the golden rule, do unto others as you want them to do to you. You know, Jackie, that takes me into the next one, which would be to have a positive attitude. and sometimes just according as women whatever mood we're in it you know that's the kind of attitude that we have and sometimes we exhibit you know either we're frustrated when we're talking to the other person or we're impatient when we're talking to the other person because we don't have a great attitude and I know in business for me if I don't have a great attitude then I don't have that my passion is dampened. And it's the same kind of thing in your marriage. You know, if you don't have a good attitude, then they don't have a good attitude. Now there's no passion between you.

There's no love. And, you know, it's not going to go well. And then we go back to the golden rule, treat the other person the way you want to be treated, right? Attitude is a big thing.

And, you know, we're all really reactive, aren't we? And so if our spouse talks nicely to us, then, you know, a lot of times we talk nice to them, but you know, we, there again, we can't control what they do. So it's like, if we talk harshly or raise our voice or sound impatient or talk down to our spouse, then, you know, they're kind of irritated about that. So we're all a little reactive, right? Right. I always say resistance creates resistance, like a rubber band, right? Unless we're really paying attention to where, where, uh, and we choose not to join into the resistance. Number four. All right. So this one is simply give more than you take. And just like you labeled this deposits and withdrawals, literally whenever you are too reactive or you're impatient or you take advantage of the other person, or if you talk down to them, you are making withdrawals. Just like you're making withdrawals from a bank account, you're making withdrawals from your relationship. And if you don't make enough deposits, eventually you are,

your account is withdrawn. I mean, it's like it's in the red, right? So that's where people start really fussing and fighting and not getting along, you know. So it's important to make deposits, like compliments, listening. What can I do to help you today? Or, hey, how did your day go?

Sometimes it's simply just words. You know, doing things for one another, paying attention to one another. In some of my training, I do that. I talk about deposits. There's all these ways that we make deposits. And, you know, they're not usually anything about money. They're all about how we treat the other person. Right. Love that. Doesn't, doesn't have to cost money to feed your marriage and to nurture your marriage. It can be in, in just the simple, simple things with those little deposits. Okay. Number five, give us another, and you guys, there's 25 of these that she has on, on this, uh, on this, uh, PDF. So you're going to want to check that out, but what's number five.

All right. The fifth one I'm going to share today is, um, a lot of times when we have self-respect, we are able to respect the other person. And what I have found that when we don't have self-respect, we don't respect other people. I mean, that's a blanket statement across all of society.

When we have self-respect and we respect ourselves, then we respect others. And there's a thing called the crazy cycle. Women want to be loved and men want to be respected. I know, I know women want to be respected too, but basically women want to know that their husband loves them, but men need respect. So what happens is when she's, let's say, let's start with him.

So when he's not being loving, maybe he's a little, you know, stressed and short-tempered. And so he's not being loving. So then eventually she stops being respecting because she's like, well, if he didn't do this for me, and if he's talking to me like this, then, you know, well, I don't respect him so much anymore. Then you have kind of like a hamster wheel where literally it goes round and round and round. And unless somebody figures out where to get off, they just stay there. And when you stay there, you continue to rub each other wrong.

You like each other less and it just goes on and on and on. And, you know, that's how sometimes I see people who've been married like 30 years and they're still together. They don't like each other anymore. Isn't that true? Whenever you're feeling unloved and you're really bothered with your spouse, you don't feel like being loving. And so that's what happens in that cycle is you don't feel like being loving. And he didn't feel like being respecting because y'all are not liking each other. But respect is what I like to say. Sometimes respect is like having good manners with each other. You know, we get married, we stop using our manners. Respect is listening. We talked about that already, listening to your spouse and letting them know you're listening. Respect is not talking down to them and not talking down to them in public. Like, you know, it's that old thing,

it's even in business or anywhere that if your spouse is doing something you really don't approve of or like for them to do, you certainly don't say it in front of other people, right? you know yeah you like tell them in private you don't tell them in public around other people that's really disrespectful so there's a lot of ways you know that we can be respectful of one another and then hey you know uh february is valentine's month there's always great ways to show that you love somebody and the more you show love and the more you um as long as your spouse doesn't have a problem, right? Sometimes there's bigger problems, but the more usually that you show love, the more you get love back, you know, and you just enjoy each other's company. You enjoy doing things together. I was listening to something the other day and I was talking about new experiences and how important it is to have new experiences, whether it's to eat at a different restaurant or to go on a different little two or three day trip or, you know, we need like, especially at my age,

you're probably younger than me, but it's like, it's like you need new experiences. And some people like change and some people don't like change. So those of us who like change, it's like we need a little change, something new here and there. But absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you, Speaking of Valentine's Day in February, you have your challenge going on.

Yes, I have a 14-day Valentine's challenge. And it helps you to, they're really short, like three to four minutes. And each day it helps you to learn a little more probably about yourself or about your spouse or some of these things like even that we're discussing on how to get along better and to be more aware. Because guess what?

That changes our perspective. You know, it's how we see things and what we don't know we can't see. Right. Absolutely. So on your website, Connie's Clever Concepts dot com, you have a little box they can click on there and it'll it'll bring you to a quiz.

Yes. So actually, I have I actually have all my giveaways are on my page for the month of February. There's a quiz. You can find a little bit about your personality style, but it actually talks about, you know, your love expertise.

And that's fun. And that's something fun that two people could actually take. And then it causes a little conversation as you compare. And it's all fun.

Oh, that's super fun. And then we'll have the link in the show notes as well for the Facebook page. They can go on and they'll be able to go back because by the time they hear this episode, you'll already probably be most of the way through that 14 day challenge, but they can go back and look at the previous ones and can do this anytime. It doesn't just have to be for Valentine's, right?

That's right. So with just a few simple tweaks here and there to nurture your relationship, there is a happy marriage within your reach. You are just really kind of the go-to to help nurture, to help, help the husband and wife kind of discover what it is that maybe got them off track, how to get back on track. You're going to offer that disc assessment for them as part of that.

So they can really learn about their personality styles. And it also really helps the kids. Kids know their sponges. They know when mom and dad aren't doing really well, they often blame themselves. They try to change their behavior, you know, so that they behave better, you know, thinking that's going to help mom and dad out or they behave more. Yeah, because they're uncomfortable. They don't know what to do with it. And they're kind of stressed. And so they do act out because they don't know what to do with the feelings that they're having. So nurturing your relationship as a couple, no matter how old your kids are, is really, really an important thing to be able to do not only for yourselves, but for your kids. The importance of learning more,

the importance of reaching out. If you're having challenges in your marriage, sometimes it's as simple as figuring out where it's coming from, or people are opposite and they're literally not getting along just because they are rubbing each other wrong. And when you become aware, you can get rid of some of that, get rid of some of those problems. When things are going okay, and they, you know, they could be better, or you kind of feel like they could be better.

This is like the perfect program, perfect type of resource for you as a couple to nurturing your relationship before it gets too far off track. You know, my main program is called communication secrets for couples because people don't even, they don't even understand or realize how simple it is. And it is literally, like I said before, it's a light bulb that comes on when you start to learn those communication secrets. I love it. I love it. So rather than for Valentine's day, just, you know, picking up a dozen roses or a bouquet of flowers, or, you know, a heartfelt card, investing some time into your marriage like this, especially for the women out there, I think that would fill our cup way more than just receiving a card once a year that says,

we, you know, we love you. I've been a jerk all these months, but I do love you. You know, that kind of stuff, like this is more intentional. And I think it goes a lot farther for moms.

I'm just, I, you know, Connie, sometimes I just say it like it is. I like that. You're great. You're fun to talk to.

You have, you like literally have an abundance of stuff and a lot of free resources out there for parents. So thanks so much for being on the show, Connie. Thank you. Jackie for having me. Thank you for tuning into the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey? Like this podcast, subscribe, share, or leave a review of the show. Your support of the No Problem Parenting Podcast pays it forward and helps us help more families.

Thank you.