Have you ever thought to yourself, “Why don’t adult people know how to communicate?”
Why don’t they know how to stay on their side of the line?
As a result of our conversation and some happenings we witnessed at the beach today, the kids and I all agreed that this should be a non-negotiable fundamental learning in every middle school, high school, or elementary school, even.
How do we deal with conflict?
And how do we teach people?
How do we teach kids from early on how to deal with this stuff so that they don’t come to being 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years old and still clueless as to how to deal with a situation with somebody who is from a different place on this planet, or a different color, speaking a different language, all of the things?
Drop a “yes” in the comments if you agree.
And just for the record, no, I don’t have kids that are adults.
They are 14, 16, and 17 years old.
And they already know this.
Tell me where we went wrong.
Tell me what we’re doing wrong.
It applies no less to your marriage relationship.
Try it out.
See for yourself.
Come back and tell me how it went.
If you’re married and you’ve ever wondered how to nail foreplay, here’s a tip for you from former Harvard President Charles Elliot.
Here’s what he says.
There is no mystery about successful intercourse.
Exclusive attention to the person who’s speaking to you.
Nothing else is as flattering as that.
Do without what you will.
Yes.
Yes.
If he was talking about it in the business sense.
Here’s your “don’t do this in your marriage in 2026” list.
Don’t sit down with your spouse and do the brain dump where you dump all of the things that are wrong with your marriage on a piece of paper—or five, because they don’t fit on one—and then attempt to do all of those in the month of January.
You know why?
You’ll never get to any of them.
You won’t ever get to any of it being actually done.
And you want to know how I know that doesn’t work?
At one point in time, I hired a weight loss coach, and he told me, “You only have to do”—and he listed, it was like 15 things:
Count your calories.
Send me your picture.
And send me your weight.
Send me your beginning weight.
And send me a text.
Write down all the things that you ate.
Keep track of your exercise.
Send me the calories burned.
Send me the time that you did it.
I don’t even remember all the things that it was.
And I’m like, I cannot.
There’s no way.
You know how long it lasted?
Maybe a little over a month.
We don’t do the brain dump and then attempt to do all the things all at once.
Not in your marriage.
Not in your weight.
It doesn’t work.
Here’s what you do instead.
You want to pick one thing.
You focus on that one thing.
And you and your spouse.
You put your heads together.
And then, 30 days later, you add another thing.
By doing that, over the next 12 months, you’re going to add 12 new skills to your marriage improvements.
And this is actually doable.
This is how it’s done.
So, with that, off you go.
Note that this is just the beginning of my “don’t do this in your marriage in 2026” list.
There’s more where that came from.
So, I’ll see you tomorrow.
