Do you want a strong family?

Have you ever asked yourself, “What makes a strong family?” Have you ever asked your family that question? I’m reading a book, Will It Make the Boat Go Faster by Ben Hunt-Davis & Harriet Beveridge (thanks Maddi for the suggestion). They suggest the need when setting goals, to set them in layers starting with a “crazy” goal. They describe a crazy goal as bold, extravagant, fires our imagination, kindles our desire. I loved their explanation that “Great goals aren’t about being on a human hamster wheel, getting through chores. Why? Because great goals are an expression of what is fundamentally important to us.” As I thought about what is fundamentally important to me, I thought, a strong family. A strong family is fundamentally important to me. We recently buried my father-in-law, and in listening to my husband talk about the impact his dad had on his life, I was reminded, at the end of busy-ness, at the end of all that we do, the doing that matters most is our family - what memories are we giving them, teaching them, leaving them with when we’re gone? Because we’re all terminal.

As I considered the “how” - how do I help our family be strong, I decided we needed an agree upon a definition, so I nonchalantly asked my daughter how she would define a strong family and wrote down everything she said. I wrote down my own ideas as well. Then I asked my son and husband and added their comments as well. One son is out of the house, but I called him and asked him the same question. I read the definition out loud to confirm we all liked it. Next, I asked everyone to rate how strong our family was on a scale of 1 to 10. This started a discussion on rating each individual and then averaging. I shared with them the idea of a crazy goal and that our having a strong family was my crazy goal. I asked them if they wanted to share the crazy goal with me. We were all in agreement.

I suggested that if we all had the goal to have a strong family, then if we were always seeking continuous improvement, then maybe we could forgo the scoring - at least for the moment.

The next question was, “How will we continuously improve?” I suggested that the way we could demonstrate and measure continuous improvement would be via a weekly meeting in which we would answer three questions:

1. When did we see evidence of words, actions, or attitudes that we didn’t think were good?
2. What would have been a better way to communicate or act?
3. Are there any past events/memories we have where we’re holding a grudge that we need to say and let go?

My son suggested that we add another question: 4) When did we see evidence of words, actions, or attitudes that we thought were good?  He went on to suggest that each of us provides feedback to a different family member. In other words, one person would not get all the feedback, but each person would get feedback from one other person - and we would rotate it. He also suggested that after we heard “the good,” each of us would come up with a way that we could emulate “the good” as well in the following week.

As we jumped right into our first weekly review, the discussion and resulting goals amazed me. Some of the feedback was hard to say and hard to hear, but getting it out in the open helped everyone see themselves from another perspective. One of the results included everyone setting relational goals of calling and/or texting friends and/or family the following week. We agreed to create a list of all family members to help us rotate our outreach. We set goals around spending time together. We were reflecting and thinking about how we could be different - how we could be proactive. But most importantly, we were putting into practice acting in alignment with our values by setting goals around our values. It was powerful. It felt good. I felt like our family walked away from the meeting stronger than when we started. It’s been fun this past week to ask encouraging questions around goal progress. There is so much more work to do, but it’s good work and it’s moving our family in a positive direction. We will be a stronger family as we help each other be better.

We held our second family meeting last night. We started by reading our definition - vision - of a strong family. There was an added accountability discussion as everyone had to report out on what they had or had not done re: the goals they had set the previous week. Zeros and ones - my husband likes to say. Again, we walked away better for having had the discussion. It’s never too early nor too late to start this exercise. A common goal - a strong family. Isn’t this something we all want? If it is, make the time to pursue it with all you’ve got. It’s worth it.