September, 2008

I want you to get so clear about the dream you have of your life together that when you write your own personal wedding or commitment vows you will be so inspired by the dream of your relationship that you will be willing to invest some attention on installing that dream as your life operating system.

Here’s what happens: When you put your attention on your ‘intention’ it is automatically amplified. It grows, is exposed, it becomes real. You can touch it, taste it, feel it, and experience it.

Put your attention on something that isn’t working and you get more of it. Because the laws of the Universe respond to the energy of your attention. It has shape and color and acts like a magnet.

If you are creating a magnet you want it to bring you what you really, really want!

The fact that 50% of marriages fail within 4 years proves to me that the couple . . .

1. Did not have a clear dream of their life together.

2. Did not take time to articulate or talk it out and write it down.

3. If they did have a dream they talked about, they did not take the steps necessary to keep it alive.

The major opinion is that marriage is hard work. I am telling you that if you keep the vision alive and well your marriage doesn’t have to be hard work.

I don’t want to tell you you won’t have some challenges. But your marriage does not have to be hard work. We are a generation that is so busy we do not have time to make things hard. It does take some attention, though.

You have to keep your ‘eyes on the prize,’ or on the dream you have for your life together.

The statistics show that 50% of 1st marriages end within 4 years. Something happened so that when those challenges showed up that was where the attention went and it grew bigger and bigger and bigger.

I want you to have such a clear intention that your troubles that you do encounter are so small they are overshadowed by the dream you have of your life together.

Here is what you must do. . .

Take a little time together to articulate the dream you have for your life and the life of your marriage. Talk about important aspects like sex and money, and children, and in-laws, and careers, and houses,and cars, and play time and philanthropy. This is the hardest part. Yet is essential.

Then write your vows and pledge or promise to do whatever it is you need to do to be living that dream.

Keep reading those vows over and over and over and over after the ceremony and like the energizer bunny, your marriage will keep going and going and going.

Because by reading those vows you will be putting your attention on your intention, which is to have a fabulous, intimate, amazing life together.

When you keep your dream alive and in feeling mode you begin to see with new eyes. You literally notice things, people, ideas, and experiences you would have never noticed before. They are all aspects of your imaginary dream in ‘living color.’

It’s not any different than buying something and then seeing it everywhere around you! It was there all along only your eyes were not opened to see it.

You open your life and your mind to ’see’ your dream by paying attention.

Attention, attention, attention.

Review, review, review.

Now, here’s another secret. When you are aware that you are ‘living the dream’ say “Thank you.”

What you are doing is anchoring in your experience and saying to the Universe that “You can bring me more of that!”

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it!

See the Ebook, THE SECRET LIFE OF WEDDING VOWS 

It’s not that often that I am impressed by someone’s web site or blog that has postings on writing wedding vows but I was blown away but what this couple did with writing not only their own personal vows but their own personal wedding ceremony as well.

Read this post by Justin and Kate and be inspired.

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it!

THE SECRET LIFE OF WEDDING VOWS Ebook

What if, when you write your own personal wedding vows, you are actually affecting your biochemistry? What if you can stay inspired and in passion–purposefully? What if your wedding, marriage or commitment vows can help you do that?

OK, here it is again: you write your own wedding vows to have what may well be the most important conversation you could ever have as a couple! You take the essence of that conversation and write it into your vows. You keep those vows active by reviewing them over and over and over and over and over again.

Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, one of the best-known experts in the field of biochemistry, believes that we’re at the mercy of our biochemistry.

Wow. That sounds like we don’t have any control over ourselves at all.

While I do believe that we have built-in reactions programmed by genetics. I also believe that as we take control of our lives we affect the way our mind/bodies think, work, play, love, and dream, etc. and then that same biochemistry, which can become an enemy, becomes our friend.

Helen says there are three stages in romantic relationships: lust, attraction, and attachment.

All of them have specific hormones, chemicals, and neurotransmitters involved. They control the way you feel exhilarated and think obsessively of one person; how fast your heart beats and how you sweat; how you bond and how you stay in long-term commitments.

Wow! All that because of tiny microscopic chains of something or other.

Scott Peck wrote in one of his books, ‘falling in love is the trick nature plays on us for the propagation of the species.’

This is a good thing and this is a bit of a bad thing.

Good for obvious reasons and bad because it takes us out of our rational mind into a reactive mind.

What I’m asking you to do is to write your wedding or commitment vows out of your rational mind. Lying in each others arms promising to love, cherish and honor each other for ever and ever and ever is not from the rational mind.

Don’t misunderstand me. This is a good thing. But in order for you to take control over your biochemistry, your hormones, etc. you have to be in a conscious and rational mind, not a reactive mind.

That’s what I’m asking you to do when you write your vows.

Consciously talk about your life together. Talk it BIG. Talk about money, talk about, family, talk about careers, talk about sex. Talk about how you are going to keep sex alive.

Because, there are two hormones released by each partner during orgasm that helps them bond, oxytocin and vasopressin. This helps support behavior that leads to long-term commitment. When you think and talk about the life you want to lead and get it down on paper and then continue to review those words, you enter into the emotion that created those words.

You are activating hormones, chemicals and neurotransmitters that keep your life, your love, your passion, your attachment and commitment alive and thriving.

By reviewing those vows you reinvigorate the emotion and affect your chemistry.

All that just from writing your own personal wedding vows and continuing to review them.

Amazing isn’t it?

Go right now and follow this link to pick up the Ebook, THE SECRET LIFE OF WEDDING VOWS-How to Write Vows that Create Powerful Marriages. Maybe I should rename it-’How to Write Vows that Affect Your Biochemistry!’

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it!

Did you know that when you craft a vivid vision for your marriage and then infuse that vision into your vows, you are actually installing a visualization into them? It’s one of the tools successful individuals use to bring their goals and dreams into reality.

I want you to have passion in your life; sustained passion and purpose that doesn’t get watered down with your daily lives.

Your vows are an amazing and powerful tool for you and if you use them correctly they will help you grow and sustain your dreams.

You not only create or craft a vivid vision and dream by writing your vows together in shared and inspired conversation, but by reviewing those vows over and over and over again you begin to ‘visualize’ the outcome of your life even before you are actually living it.

And you hardly know you are doing it.

Then you take everything one step further and consciously practice visualizing the two of you actually living, breathing, touching, tasting, and experiencing your life.

The sequence is this: You write your vows, you pledge them at your ceremony, you read your vows over and over and then you synergize them by actually visualizing your outcome.

Repetition and visualizing is your key to success for two reasons.

1. Your mind thinks in pictures and images.

2. Your subconscious mind drives your behavior.

Science has discovered that your mind doesn’t know the difference betweens something that is real and something that is vividly imagined. Whatever you keep picturing and confirming will reproduce itself in your life.

Your subconscious mind will move you into the actions that align with the mental image you keep affirming.

Your mind will do this almost effortlessly if you take some time and effort to program it with your dream.

It’s a natural sequence to read your vows before you go to sleep, then when you put your head on the pillow to drift of with the visualization of what you read, your subconscious will go to work as you sleep!

I can help you get it all started. THE SECRET LIFE OF WEDDING VOWS-How to Write Vows that Create Powerful Marriages and Partnership, will help you to create the picture you need to use the visualization tool.

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it!

My philosophy about writing personal wedding vows and creating a strong and beautiful relationship is mainly about sitting down together and consciously and deliberately crafting a vision for your life and the life of your marriage and then infusing that dream into your vows.

James Ray, one of the guys in the movie, The Secret, sent me an Email newsletter today with the following. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Keep in mind your wedding vows and the dream you have for a fabulous, and fantastic future.

“A vision is your mental picture of the life you want to lead. Clarity is power. To achieve the highest levels of success, create the highest vision you can dream and deposit it in the treasury of your subconscious mind.

“A vision is not a goal. A vision is much broader and more compelling than a goal. It’s a complete, overall picture of your life that includes both personal and professional endeavors.

” Only you can create your vision. Others in your life, your spouse, parents, siblings, employer and colleagues, may offer suggestions, but you must make the final choices.”

I want you to stay in love with yourself, each other and life. Create a big vision. Your goals will support that vision.

See link to James’s site on the right.

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it!

www.WeddingVowsandCeremonies.com 

I want to see you living the most amazing life possible. That won’t happen if you don’t have a BHAG–A Big Hairy Audacious Goal!  (I heard a famous and successful person use that term. I love it!)

You are going to base writing your wedding or commitment vows on this dream or goal. What you want to do is to infuse this BHAG into every letter, word and phrase.

You might want to use the idea I present in this post as a way to begin to consciously craft that dream for your life together. It’s an exercise in thinking BIG that becomes a powerful intention.

Most personal motivators have used this and continue to use it on a regular basis because it forces them to keep expanding their expectations.

This simple exercise is going to give you an opportunity to let your imagination fly free. Don’t be afraid to dream big. Imagine things that you can’t possibly think will ever come about. In the imagining of a thing is the potential for it’s success.

You could begin to fill in the blanks some evening over dinner and make it an ongoing monthly event. Just imagine how this can open up conversation about the impossible becoming possible.

In a notebook (that you can keep) write down the following headings on separate pages and number your page from 1-101:

WHAT WE WANT TO BE

WHAT WE WANT TO DO

WHAT WE WANT TO HAVE.

You are not trying to fill it all in at one time but enter as much as you can think of.

Remember this is not about practicality, it’s about thinking out of the box.

Include physical, mental and spiritual aspects.

Again, everything and anything is possible so let your imagination soar. You are stretching your believability arms.

If your intention is clear and you’re passionately involved in your vision, the means for achieving it will come to you. The how-to’s will simply begin to manifest in ways more magnificent than you can imagine.

Write your vows to support the dreams that you wrote. Include a line something like this: “I promise to always dream with you and imagine the most that is possible.”

Then, of course, keep reading and reading those vows over and over and over. You will begin to see those ‘impossible’ people, places, things, ideas, situations, experiences and opportunities show up in magical and mystical ways.

THINK BIG!!

(Use this exercise for your own personal life as well as the life of your marriage.)

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it!

www.WeddingVowsandCeremonies.com/Secret_Life.htm for my Ebook on THE SECRET LIFE OF WEDDING VOWS (it’s the ‘more than’ link)

I want to give you a hint about what you can buy as a gift for your parents or grandparents or any boomer and beyond you know. It’s a book by Pat Burns, ‘Grandparents Rock.’ This book isn’t about wedding vows but since I adore Pat Burns I want you to know about her book.

I spent two and a half years being mentored by Pat Burns along with Mark Victor Hanson and Robert Allen. It was an amazing time of my life. There were no small thinkers. Pat, mark and Bob believed every person had potential and every idea could be shaped into something important.

www.GrandparentsRock.com

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda Bardes, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it!

The secret to long lasting wedding or marriage vows is to be writing them with a strong dream or vision embedded into the words so that you are creating a powerful attraction force Then, you reinforce that dream by reviewing it over and over again.

The headline comes from a quote that I found jotted down on a piece of paper. It’s a quote from some resource, probably The Science of Mind Textbook by Ernest Holmes.

Here is the complete quote: “Any idea held steadfastly in mind is bound to reproduce itself in form. Hold fast to your dreams!”

It means that if you continue to hold onto a dream, get into the feeling of it, and keep doing whatever you need to to support that vision, eventually it will show up in your life.

You must be impeccable with your word, which means that whatever you say supports what it is that you are wanting to bring into your life. Don’t belittle yourself or your situation but see what you can find that is positive about it.

When you have written your wedding or marriage or commitment vows and infused those vows with a vivid vision and dream because you have taken a little time to talk about it you want to keep it alive.

That is why I keep saying that you must continue to read your vows over and over and over again. This is a perfect example of ‘holding an idea steadfastly.’ You never get too far away from it.

This works whether you have written wedding vows or what I’m calling LifeVows. LifeVows are the vows you write to and about yourself and the life of your dreams.

When you have something that you can read over and over again it continues to reinforce what you are affirming. You will be drawn to the people, things, ideas, opportunities and experiences that mirror your dream.

Stay true to yourself, continue to hold your dream, your vision, your life clearly in your imagination until you are actually living it.

I’ve put some links on the right to books that focus on my main message, which is about thinking BIG and living the dream. Or to put it another way, by holding an idea in mind without giving up, you are creating a strong Law of Attraction.

Love, light and laughter,  Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it.

www.WeddingVowsandCeremonies.com 

When I give my seminars for writing your own personal wedding vows, I take it as a success if a couple decides that they are not compatible enough to follow through with their wedding.

Truthfully, it hasn’t happened yet, but it could and is probably only a matter of time.

What I want to share with you today is some material I heard from a marriage coach on a TV show that I listened in on too late to get everything. She was talking about the 7 questions to ask yourselves when it comes to whether or not you are compatible.

I only got 5. But these five are still very important. Here they are:

1. Have I set my own separate identity? Do you have other friends and activities outside the relationship that give you a strong sense of self. Times have changed. It used to be that a woman married her husband and took on his identity and his dreams and goals. It’s vastly different these days.
2. Are your financial personalities compatible? How do you handle money? Is one of you a spender and the other a saver? How do you handle debt? Who pays the bills? All these are questions that should be answered early on.
3. What are your goals and your career aspirations? Do you both want children? Will someone stay home with them? Who? If the opportunity came up would you move somewhere else if you didn’t know anyone there?
4. What are your spiritual needs? What is the role of religion in your life?
5. Are your ideas of fun compatible? Does your partner like physical activities like backpacking and you would rather go to the movies? Is your partner a sportsaholic and you don’t care who is playing what or where or when? Does you partner like to engage in activities like golf but you aren’t interested.

That’s the end of my notes. I’m going to add two of my own. These are questions that I have my couples spend some time with at the seminars and when getting ready to write their own personal wedding or marriage or commitment.

6. What are your values? Values are more than not lying and cheating. Some of them you will have covered in the above questions. Here are a few to think about: money, sex, self acceptance, religion and spirituality, competition, community, extended family, team work, knwledge, loyalty, beauty, philanthropy, etc. On a score of 1-10, how do you rate the importance of each topic?

Here is a quote from the 10 Commandments of Marriage: Commandment #1-Honor Yourself- “When you hold yourself high with integrity and self respect and never compromise your values you can trust other people, your partner, and the universe at large. it’s the basis for everything else that defines your life.” (Go to the wedding vow eBook page link and follow the link for a totally free copy of 10 Commandments or go to www.WeddingVowsandCeremonies.com )

7. What makes you come alive? What do you love? Here’s a quote by Howard Thurston, “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go out and do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” When you are loving what you do then life is a whole lot easier.

A lot to chew on, isn’t it? Take it all a bite at a time. Print out this article and then take one question at a time.

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach

Helping couples write down the dream and then live it.

www.WeddingVowsandCeremonies.com

I was thinking last night, after listening to the vice president candidate for the Republican Party, Sarah Palin, about how the format of electoral speeches is a bit like the format for writing wedding or marriage vows.

There seems to be three main parts to the speech.

1. Who am I, where did I come from and what do I stand for

2. What is the dream I’m trying to sell you on

3. This is what I’m willing to do to make that dream come true

Let’s see how this translates into the writing of your vows.

Let’s start with ‘who I am.’ You could write something like this: “I am the most lucky woman in the world to be marrying my soul mate, my love, the light of my life. You have added a dimension to my life that I cherish. With you I have dreamed bigger than I ever thought I could and believed in myself with more passion than ever before.”

Then the dream. I suggest that to get the most out of your vows you sit down together and talk about the life you want to live together. (I give you more guidelines and idea generators in my Ebook, The Secret Life of Wedding Vows. See link at right.)

What are the elements that will make it an amazing life? What will it look like, feel like (as in a hand resting on your shoulder or holding hands), feel like (energy, passion, and comfort), taste like (late night spaghetti dinners by candlelight with wine after the kids are tucked tight in bed-if you want kids and have you talked about that?) sound like (lots of laughter, singing, encouraging conversation and affirmations), look like (where are you living, what are the ‘things’ that compliment your family). “We have created a dream that will give us the energy to keep striving for the best in ourselves and in each other. We have affirmed that we will seek to grow together, to keep our passion alive, to be models for our children and others and make a difference in the world.”

Next the promise. What are you willing to do to keep the dream alive? Some of the answer to this question has to do with your own sweet self. “I will love you by striving to grow and be healthy for both our sakes.” “I will honor who I am by living from my values and my integrity and be impeccable with my word.”

“I will love you by always making our relationship a priority in my life.” “I will love you be encouraging you to be successful in everything you do.” “I will promise to read our vows every day to keep the dream we have crafted alive and growing.”

That should just about do it for today.

Except for this. Political speeches usually seem to be pointing fingers at others and throwing cold water on who they are and what they are offering. That is not an option in your life.

You life is about supporting each other, building each other up when there are times your partner doesn’t know who they are or whether they are even living up to their own expectations of themselves.

Your life is about sometimes seeing more than is visible and continuing to affirm that the dream is alive and well!

Keep living the dream. Follow the RSS feed to sign up to receive postings as they appear.

Love, light and laughter,

Rev. Linda, The Wedding Vow Coach-Helping couples ‘live the dream.’

“Email me. I want to know what you’re thinking.” RevLinda@weddingvowsandceremonies.com