Us In Mind: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Marriage: Ted Lowe

The only common denominator with couples that reported the highest level of marital satisfaction, they were basically given a spousal report card and said rank your spouse in categories like generosity, kindness, loyalty. And the ones that were happiest were the ones who ranked their spouse highest in every category than their spouse had ranked themselves.

So I think it's made up of, you know, if you could only see you like I see you. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

You can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. All right, I'm going to ask you a question.

You better know the answer. My greatest moment on a golf course. When you shot under par by a lot. I've never done that. I shot par once or twice, never under.

Last week I had a birdie and almost an eagle. But no, here's the thing you remember, and I won't go into it because our listeners have heard this, but playing at a charity celebrity golf thing and a woman finds out. She walks up to me and says, so you're a marriage expert.

That's what I hear. I'm like, no, I'm not. But she says, I'm in my second marriage.

What's the problem with marriage? And I have 10 seconds. And I go, I can answer that in one word. She goes, really? I go, selfishness. Classic response. This is why I never forget.

She goes, you are so right. My first husband was so selfish. It is like, oh my goodness, that's how we all think. We can't see it in ourselves. We see it in somebody else. And that all begins in the mind. And we've got Ted Lowe.

You can hear him over there laughing in the studio. Welcome back, Ted. Thanks for having me. And you're laughing partly because it's funny, but you wrote a book called Us and Mind, which is all about how our thinking, our mind determines how it impacts our marriage.

So bring us into this world. We started a conversation yesterday a little bit. And if you didn't hear, go back and listen to that one.

It's so good. We went somewhere I wasn't expecting us to go on, empathy. And if you hear that word and go, oh, that's not that important. You better listen to yesterday. You'll discover how critical it is. But one of the things we just started to talk about yesterday was a little bit about how what we think about our spouse greatly impacts our marriage. Take us there.

I think I mentioned you guys yesterday. I did a lot of research on what are happy couples doing? And they do.

They think differently. It was a fascinating study. It was a brain scan study on couples who had been married an average of 21 years who reported being madly in love.

I'm going, where did you? How do we find these madly in love? They are just going for the top notch tier here. But they did a brain scan study and there were three areas of the brain that had higher activity than the rest of us, I guess. But one of them was an area of the brain that's responsible for a thing called positive illusion.

And it's the ability to focus on what you do like about your spouse and not focus on what you don't. Now, I know red flags go up. This is not about ignoring anything abusive.

Let me just say that right off the top. This is not about being delusional or putting yourself in harm's way. But we think for most of us, that cannot be our tendency to remember all the things that we do love about our spouse and stop focusing so much on the things that we don't. And that's where our brain can be playing a game called confirmation bias.

In other words, you find what you're looking for. And the roughest point in our marriage was a time that my brain was playing confirmation bias and I didn't know it. We spent our first five years of marriage on the West Coast, had an incredible church we're working with, great buddies, we're close to the beach.

I mean, I loved it there. But when we started talking about having our family, we talked about moving back closer to our folks. And we decided that, you need to hear me on this point, we decided that together. I was all in. I had made that decision with her.

But when we moved back, we moved to Atlanta area, I didn't know what was going on at the time, but I was just struggling. And I thought it was just where we were. I don't like this.

I don't like this. And Nancy loved it. She's close to her mom and her friends and she can make friends in two seconds.

And so she was doing great. And I just remember one day I was outside mowing the lawn and it's 5,000 degrees and our lawn in California took me four seconds. And it's a dry heat. Oh, that's not even heat. It's like heaven.

It's like a postage stamp. I pull the cord and go five feet up. I'm done. Let's go to the beach. And I'm like, do we need to own the park or do we need access to one? This is ridiculous.

What is this? Why am I in charge of this big space? So I'm out there mowing and it's hot. She's inside in the air conditioning, so I'm not better at all. And I have this thought, you know, I wonder, did I really want to move here or did she talk me into moving it here? And then I thought, you know what, I think she always gets what she wants.

And then I had this thought and I'd say it was zero humor, zero humor. I thought, I think she's manipulative. And when you hang that banner over your spouse or you put that badge on them, you start treating them like they're manipulative. So you can imagine what my attitude was going back into the house. And quite frankly, for a season where I'm thinking, here I am in a place I don't like and it's because of her. It's her fault.

It's her fault. And so imagine anytime she got excited about something, how do you think I responded? Do you think I was like, oh, I love seeing you happy?

No. Or just anything she would say, I would view through the lens. You know, call me for dinner. And that's manipulative. So it's one of those times and it's just so important. Like, what filter are we putting on our spouse? Like, what are you telling yourself about your spouse? Because you're going to live like it's true.

I've done the same thing. Mowing the grass, actually. Remember this damn mowing? Hey, by the way, Ted, I mow the grass, too. It isn't just the end. But this is back in the day when you were gone so much.

And I remember Dave was in the house. I actually like mowing the grass. But in my head, I'm mowing the grass and here's my thought. I do everything around here. What does he do? And then I start logging in my head. What does he actually do around here?

And I'm thinking, I do this and this and this. I'm not sure he does anything. Then when I'm treating him like, well, you're selfish.

That's what I say in my head. You know why? Because he's self-centered.

He never sees me and he's all about himself. And I really did treat you like that. Do you want me to comment? I will say that the one time when I said that, I felt like God was saying, here's what I felt.

He impressed on me. Do you like mowing the grass? And I said, I actually do.

Yes, I like it. And I felt like he's saying, why do you keep complaining? And I was in my head constantly complaining about Dave.

And then actually it gradually started coming out and I would complain to him incessantly. And you're saying it all starts with our minds. It does. Again, your thoughts are not your actions or your attitudes, but they lead to both.

It postures you. Scripture is so clear about being careful with your thoughts. So one of the things I point couples to, you know, if you're thinking like this, if you go, my spouse is manipulative or my spouse is selfish or self-centered or whatever that label that you've put, negative label that you've put on to them is you take Philippians 4.8. He's very clear. Here's what you think about. He says, finally, brothers and sisters. In other words, here's the last thing I want to tell you. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true. And the reason I love it being true is this for every time I talk about, you know, seeing your spouse in a positive light, there's always the pushback of, well, this is denial.

Does this mean I can't talk about things? It's just just rose colored glasses. And it starts with truth. So again, if someone's being abused or hurt, the truth is that's got to stop. There's nothing more true than that. Get safe.

Yeah. And so if somebody's listening and that's their case, get safe immediately. But for most of us, it's not so extreme. It's like, OK, what's true is he's working a ton right now. What's true is, OK, he really does X, Y, Z. What's true is I like to mow. So for us in that situation, what was true is we both decided to move. What's also true is I'm having a harder time with it than she is. It says whatever's true, whatever's noble.

Let me tell you what's noble. We got married when I was 25 and she's 23. She lives her whole life. She moves 2500 miles to join my life, my friends. She had to drive 45 minutes one way to work. She left a master's degree program, had to start it there, lost a couple of classes, credits. So she's going to she joined my life for five years.

We get back, you know, and I'm having a hard time adjusting and all of a sudden she's manipulative. Come on. What's noble is that 23-year-old lady that did that for me.

Right. I say, OK, what is noble? Whatever's pure, whatever's right, whatever's lovely, if there's anything worthy of praise. So if someone's having a really hard time with their spouse, I mean, I'm talking about, oh, they're driving me crazy. And some of it is so valid. Some of it is absolutely so valid that they're not doing some things that they need to be doing or they're just driving you crazy. It says if anything is excellent and praise worthy, if they're wiping something or somebody, start there. If they're fleshing, start there. You have to bring the bar down so low for a little bit and then you start looking in that way.

What it does is it postures us to love them in a way we can't love them on our own. You know, when you're talking about you felt like the Lord said, why are you complaining? Don't you like to mow? I was not listening to him. I was not listening for him to re-posture me at that time. It took me too long. It didn't happen in the same day of mowing. Right.

It took forever. I didn't even know what was going on. And so what it does is it calms the brain. It calms the mind. It helps you to focus and see them like you hope they're seeing you. Yeah.

Or you feel like they even should see you. Right? And it just changes things.

Yeah. The question would be how do you get your mind to change if it's tending to go negative? Because when you said what is true, it'd be easy to say, well, it's true that she is selfish rather than it's true that I'm selfish.

You know, even when I said to that woman, yeah, this is easy to answer, selfishness, she couldn't see it in herself. And we all do that. So we have to sometimes change. I loved your stats in your book where the average person 12 to 60,000 thoughts a day and 80 percent of them are negative.

That was crazy. That's crazy because we do it on ourselves, but we do it on our spouse. So how do you change that? Our brains are wired to protect ourselves. Our brains are wired to look out for trouble. Our brain's not naturally wired to look for the positive. It truly is a rewiring of the brain. It's new neural pathways. And we've seen this happen in other areas of our life. We've seen it happen when our life changes in terms of things like exercise or work. You know, that you can just use a few guiding thoughts, a few intentional thoughts. You go, you know what, if I would look at this situation through this lens, that it could really change things. And we see that.

And, you know, there's a great book by John Acuff called Soundtracks, and he talks about that from a career perspective. And he just has people to repeat 10 things in the morning out loud in the mirror and 10 things at night out loud and in the mirror. And the results of that have been staggering to people's productivity. And all it is is a rewiring and a rethought process. So because I'm a fixer, I'm more of a natural. I'm going to look for a problem and I'm going to try to fix it. That is not my natural wiring.

Like that's the thing with all of this is I've had to rewire my brain for because of the way I'm naturally wired. But again, it's look at their face. Because another study, and we talked about this in the last episode, was when you have eye contact with your spouse, it creates empathy in your brain for them.

Wow. Just by looking at them. Just by looking. And think about how the times when you're frustrated with your spouse, I know I'll look down at the kitchen counter, I'll look down at the floor, I'll look up at the skies, you know. And instead of, it's harder to say those things to their face.

Like if you're going to say that big boy, then look at her face. That explains Twitter. Right there. It totally explains. Proximity changes everything. Right? It totally explains Twitter. People get so brave and hateful, you know, and brave in the wrong way.

Just to look at their sweet face and say that. So when you came in off of the lawn mowing thing, was your mind able to be transformed yet? Or were you still stuck?

No! I was a jerk for a season. Yeah, tell us how you got out of the season. It sounds like you started rewiring your way. Is that a positive, what do you call it, illusion? Positive illusion.

You know what's funny about this season? I think when I started learning all this research, I think what it did is it helped me to look back on what was going on there. I didn't have as much of a big revelation then as more the research showed me. Oh, the reason that season was so tough is during that season you were having a hard time, and you were having a hard time not making it about her or blaming it on her.

And as the season got smoother and as you got more comfortable, you stopped doing that less. I wish I could sit and a pastor drove up on his lawn mower and said, Brother, come forth and let me show you some scripture. Instead, it was just, well, now I feel better. Now I'm nice again.

Who wants that guy? So I think it's more of an identification. And when we hear this type of thing, it can feel so condemning. But here's the thing. There's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

He'll convict us, but he won't condemn us. And I hope people that are listening, there's some aha moments. And what I don't want people to do is have an aha moment that turns into something they feel bad about themselves. It's shameful. It's shameful.

Or labeling themselves. And all of a sudden you're just turning it right back on yourself. Now you're going, oh, look what I did. Bad person. Instead of going, you know what I'm doing?

I'm listening to a podcast right now on how to be better at my marriage. So I get that. Check that off on my good boy and good girl list or whatever. But to say, I'm not going to use this to condemn myself. See, this is the Lord going, oh, here's a little thing that would really make a big difference. That's his way of loving me, not his way of hurting me or making me so ashamed that I'm not going to change. Like, oh, wow. You know, and it's never too late. I mean, for us, a lot of this in the last few years, it's just made our marriage so much stronger and so much more relaxed. That's the other word. It's just been easier, quite frankly.

I think this is so smart. I've talked to women and I've shared some of these same things because I've done it wrong for so many years. And at one conference, this woman came up to me at the end and she said, you said to find the positive about your husband and start thinking about those things. She said, there is nothing.

I can't think of one thing that is good about him. And I remember saying, but you married him because you saw something in him. So it might be that you have to go back to those things.

She goes, so you want me to lie? And but I like what you said. It's a positive illusion. No, it's what you used to think about him and start reminding yourself and reminding him of those things.

So they're little acts. And I told her and I tell women, you might not feel like saying it. Your emotions might not be there at first, but they might come later. Maybe not.

But it's that act of being obedient, of seeing the greatness and then saying those things is so helpful. I mean, here's my question to the wife. And it could be the husband of a spouse who's really hurt them. You know, how do I change my thoughts? Think positively about a man who had an affair, a woman who's broken her promises and is still continuing to make promises, but never live up to him. You know, he's not repentant. Yeah, there's just that it's a deep hurt and wound.

I love him. I still want to make this marriage work, but I'm having a hard time believing positive when all the evidence keeps coming back negative. I think the reality of when you start with whatever is true, whatever is true, maybe, hey, the thing I can see the best in is the two of us need to go talk to somebody. That's good. We need to invite a pastor.

We need to invite a counselor. What's true is I can't do this anymore. What's true is I can't let you hurt me like this anymore. What's true is if you do, I don't know where we're going to head. That's what's true.

I love you, but this can't be. And so I think that's when you invite wisdom into this. So many times the two of us, we've created pain for each other and frustration. And sometimes it's way more one sided than the other.

And I know somebody's listening. That's that's really hard. I think sometimes the strength or the truth of that situation is you need to bring in a third party and don't wait until you're all done. Don't wait till apathy comes because then you're in trouble or hopelessness, hopelessness. Oh, when I see a couple come in and I've got one of them's apathetic or hopeless and the other one's still fighting.

I'm like, oh, you've gotten into that. So many people won't go see a counselor until their spouse says I'm all done. Don't wait till then.

Don't wait till them. So I don't want anybody to put themselves in harm's way. And I don't think any of this is about somebody not speaking what's true of the situation because it starts with that.

But it's truth and grace. I love you. I want to make this work, but we've been trying and we're not doing a great job here.

And we need to talk to somebody. I was amazed at the statistics of saying the best marriages are couples who the spouse might think better of them. How would I say that? And they do it themselves. That was mind blowing to me.

Dave, I thought that's what you do. Wow, look at this. No, I feel like you've always had me higher than I thought of myself. I marvel at it like I'm way worse than you think I am, dude.

You know, but I think that that has always been so sweet to me. And statistically, you're saying that shows up. The research is so clear about this. And this study is actually 10 to 12 years old where there was a group of psychologists that said, hey, it feels like we do a lot of research on couples that are struggling. And then we basically say don't do that or do the opposite.

And they said, well, wait a minute. What if a great marriage is not the opposite of one that's struggling? What if it's different like everything else? You know, a great church is not the opposite of one that's struggling that's different. A great football coach is not the opposite of one that's struggling.

They're different. So they did an enormous study in the United States and United Kingdom. And they came back and they said, it turns out our hunch was correct because the ones that were struggling, the commonality was I don't feel understood. So everybody went, oh, well, communication, communication, communication. You've got to have a firm grasp of reality of strengths and weaknesses, which would make sense.

And they went, that's logical, but that's wrong. The only common denominator with the couples that reported the highest level of marital satisfaction, they were basically given a spousal report card and said, rank your spouse in categories like generosity, kindness, loyalty. And the ones that were happiest were the ones who ranked their spouse highest in every category than their spouse had ranked themselves.

So I think it's made up of, you know, if you could only see you like I see you. And we know those couples, right? We know them. And the great thing is we can be them, right? We really can start to go, whoa, let's pull back. Let's don't just talk about things when we're mad about things.

Let's pull back and let's think when our brains are wired to do that. And this is where you invite Jesus into this thing, help me to see them like you see them. Because I see them like I'm seeing them through my own selfishness and my frustrations and weaknesses. How do you see this person? How have you done that with Nancy?

What's that look like? You know, we've been teaching this Philippians 4-8 thing for so long. I think it's when I run through the lens of that. And also, sometimes the things that can drive us the craziest about our spouse, our lives are really benefiting a lot from that. My wife is very, very organized, very. Our drunk drawer has dividers, which I've tried to explain her makes it by its very essence no longer a junk drawer.

It takes away the hope. I mean, you need to pull that drawer open and believe anything is possible. I can put my wallet, my keys, my kids.

I mean, no. But everything's organized. And that ends up being very beneficial for a man who loses everything constantly. She's always organizing the finances.

It is amazing all the things that she keeps up. And it just makes our life run better. There's four kids at our house. There's a lot of people at our home.

And so it runs smoother because of that. And she would say, and she does when she speaks with me, she would say, hey, he's always wanting to go somewhere or do something. And she said, I'm thinking, are you kidding me?

We've got this and this and this and this. And she goes, but if I'll just go, I'm always glad that I do. But she said that the thing is like, aren't you aware of what's going down in our home right now? Like you're talking about going on date night and we have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, she said, OK, I'll go.

I'm so glad we went. I think it's those things of looking at even the things you struggle with. You go, OK, but how is my life radically impacted for the positive in this way? And then really look at those things you're just endeared toward. I mean, I look at her and she is still the cutest human, the prettiest girl I've ever seen in my life.

And I don't say that because I should. I don't. I still see her like as I did on our first date. She still blows me awake when she walked out. You hear all the appliances going on in the bathroom and stuff. And I'm thinking, oh, man, she walks out and like, this doesn't make you believe in Jesus. Her marrying me.

I don't know what does. But it's looking at them and seeing them going, wow, you're, you know, on the holidays and different things. Like there's Mother's Day when you focus and stop and start thinking about all that they do, even your quiet time.

I'm going to think about them and not just about me. We're going to hear more from Dave Wilson here in just a second, but first, pause and appreciate your spouse in those quiet moments. Look, really look at him or her and reflect on all that God has blessed you with in your spouse. I found that thankfulness is often the antidote to so many negative feelings in life. So I personally want to be thankful for my spouse.

I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Ted Lowe on Family Life Today. Ted has written a book called Us in Mind, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Marriage. You know, this book is going to help you discover simple ways of rethinking how you see your marriage by utilizing scripture, research and neuroscience.

You can find a copy at familylifetoday.com and scroll down and click on today's resources. So I have an honest question for you. How would you rate your marriage on a scale of one to 10?

Well, that number may genuinely scare you or make you excited. But regardless of where you are, I encourage you to check out Family Life's Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaway. Here's what a wife of 27 years said about her experience at the weekend to remember. She said this, I found my best friend again. Just getting away together and focusing on us is just what we needed. The sessions were timed perfectly, ordered intentionally, and I felt a new hope going home. That's beautiful. You know, we've been doing this for the last 40 years, and we've seen so many marriages impacted for the glory of God and the health of relationships.

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Visit weekend to remember dot com and find a date and location that works for you to save 50 percent. Your marriage is worth it. All right. Here's Dave Wilson on appreciating your spouse. I told Ann years ago that when I go outside and speak and minister and do things, I feel like I get cheered. When I come home, I feel like I get booed. And that story, which became this classic moment in our marriage, changed our marriage. Because I really did feel like that, like, wow, they think I'm good out there.

They tell him I'm good whether I am or not. I just feel like when I came home, I feel like she thinks I'm bad. He told this story in front of like 100 people. I never said it to her. I did not say it to her in the family room. This story is still in process.

No, no. It was a long time ago, but I'm just saying. But the reason I'm bringing it up is just to remind our listener, because what you said happened in our marriage over decades.

She, first of all, was shocked because she's like, I'm not booing you. I'm helping you. I'm pointing out things. But over time, what happened, and our son said it once in a sermon. He's up there preaching. And when your son says something, you're like, wow, that was profound. I'll never forget it. He said, when you see your spouse the way God sees your spouse, you will say the things to your spouse God says to your spouse. It was like one of those, I got to write that down. And it was like, God's looking at your spouse and saying, I created you in my image. You're a beautiful daughter, king.

And we often do the opposite. You're a loser. She started speaking life to me, Ted, like, you're a good man. You're a good husband. At first I was like, you're lying. You've never said that before. All I know is she never stopped. And 42 years in, this woman believes in me more than I believe myself. Everything you just said. And I think we're madly in love.

And it's because of what you just said. So all I want to say to our listener, your marriage can be transformed by God. And again, it starts in your mind when you start to see what God sees, you start to speak what God speaks. It'll change your marriage. It's us in mind.

It's exactly your title. Changing your thoughts can change your marriage. And I would just add, Dave, it is possible because Jesus does that. He transforms, as Romans 12, 2 says, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

And that's what he does. He renews our minds for our spouse. Now coming up tomorrow, Dave and Anne Wilson are back again with Ted Lowe. He's going to talk about negative self-talk and the impact it can have on your perception of yourself and other people. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.