Well, not surprisingly, there are intense feelings about the election. As was true in last week’s Part 1 of this two-part series, I am not going to tackle politics. We have enough of that whenever we look at the media or listen to our contrarian family member.| Shaunti Feldhahn
We are days from an election. Red vs. blue. Talking heads are digging in their heels on extreme positions. Political texts seem to arrive every five minutes (I live in the battleground state of Georgia, but I know it’s everywhere). And of course, there are very real and legitimate concerns.But the concerns I have are of a different nature: How do we walk through this ongoing season well?| Shaunti Feldhahn
Our human default is to feel stuck, hopeless, like a victim, self-pitying. We might get passive in response, we might get angry, we might vent. But the ‘stuck’ feeling is natural. What isn’t natural is what we have to do to overcome it: we learn a healthy sense of control. We learn that there is always something we can do, even if there are also things we need to accept. We are not helpless. We can train ourselves out of helplessness in the particular area where we are tempted to give up.| Shaunti Feldhahn
Learned helplessness is basically handling things with a sense of futility in the face of difficulty, because we don’t think we can bring about change. It may mean quitting, checking out, getting angry, feeling sorry for ourselves, becoming passive, or dozens of other responses – but the underlying feeling is a sense of helplessness and futility.| Shaunti Feldhahn
his week is the second installment of a two-part series in conjunction with the launch of season 4 of our Family Life podcast, Married With Benefits! Brian Goins and I have based this season on my Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages findings. In part 1, we looked at three steps to begin change in your marriage. In this part 2, we’ll tackle three steps to build the habit that all happy marriages have.| Shaunti Feldhahn