Thursday is showering with positives
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If It's On the Prophets Mind It Matters
Bombarding your spouse with praise and cultivating charity are two things that will enhance just about any marriage, Mark D. Ogletree said in an Aug. 20 session of BYU Education Week.
Brother Ogletree, a marriage and family therapist, taught the class "Thursday Is Showering with Positives" as the third installment of a four-part series called "Improve Your Marriage This Week."
According to Brother Ogletree, praise works wonders in marriage because rewarded behavior continues (conversely, nagging always leads to resistance). Thus the actualization of the following four statements will result in positive praise becoming an effective marital implement.
- Today I will focus on overlooking the negative aspects of my spouse.
- Today, I will focus on the positive in my marriage!
- Today, I will compliment my spouse on his/her positive attributes.
- I will show my spouse how much I appreciate him/her.
As gospel principles go, charity is extremely pertinent to marriage. If one prays for the gift of charity as Mormon exhorts in Moroni 7:48, spiritual eyes will be opened to view one's spouse in a more favorable and heavenly light.
Brother Ogletree quoted Elder Marvin J. Ashton of the Quorum of the Twelve from a talk about charity during April 1992 General Conference.
"Real charity is not something you give away; it is something that you acquire and make a part of yourself," Elder Ashton said. "And when the virtue of charity becomes implanted in your heart, you are never the same again. … Charity is accepting someone's differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn't handle something the way we might have hoped."
Getting and keeping the Spirit is a prerequisite to receiving feelings of charity for one's spouse.
"I think that's one of the greatest things we can do, is to seek for that Spirit — whatever it takes to get it into our lives," Brother Ogletree said. "And I promise you that there are promptings that we receive each day, thoughts that come to our mind as ideas of what we could do to make our marriage stronger.
"To follow the Holy Ghost and its promptings will teach us and inspire us to do good things, especially in our own families and marriages."
