Mental Fitness for Good Health

What Is Needed To Turn Your Relationship into A Team?

Is your relationship a team?  Has your marriage become a team?  Do you want your relationship to become a team?

It may sound foreign to talk about families, marriages and significant relationships with analogies from the world of sports.  In the world of sports the team becomes the all-important focus.  Individual accomplishments and achievements become secondary to the welfare and success of the team.

Talking about your significant relationships as a team can provide insights for strengthening and developing stronger relationships.  From a mental fitness perspective, in team sports, it is important to become a committed team member rather than striving for individual brilliance or mercilessly criticizing a team member.

Every day I talk with people in relationships where there is a lost sense of "team.  For many couples, I believe, they’ve never thought of establishing a relationship from the perspective of a team.  In some relationships the members of the group seem to be antagonistic and opponents rather than teammates.

Jim Harbaugh is a former quarterback for the University of Michigan football team and currently is coach of the football team at Stanford University.  The legendary University Michigan Football Coach, Bo Schembechler coached Harbaugh.  In George Cantor’s book "I Remember Bo…" Harbaugh shared what he learned from Bo about the team.

This is what Bo thought Jim about building a team:

"You build a team or an organization on trust.  That was the basis of everything he believed.  If you could trust everyone around you, you had a team."

When Jim Harbaugh became a head coach, this is the philosophy he used to form a team:

"1. Winning by the rules is the most important thing.  If you cheat, that equates to losing.

2. Work harder than anyone else.  If you did it harder and you did it right, you are going to be more successful than your opponent.

3.  Make decisions on just two criteria: Will it help us win?  Is is good for the team?  Everything else is irrelevant and a distraction."

These quotations may not be very popular for people only interested in the pursuit of their self-actualization and self-interest.  From a mental fitness perspective it is important to learn how to blend ones uniqueness and individuality into a team committed to achieving team rather than individualistic goals.

How important is it for you to make decisions on what is best for your team?  Are you willing to conclude that everything else that is not good for the team is irrelevant and a distraction?

Remember, We Live within the Environment Created by Our Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

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