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It's easy to dream about success – about repairing
your marriage, about doing better at this relationship than you
did at others, about learning the skills that you know you need.
It's something else to realize your dreams.
What does it take to succeed?
Dr. Sanford's experience as a relationship coach, marriage
educator and counselor has taught him that for lasting improvement
to occur in your relationship or in your own behavior four essentials
are required – insight, skills, practice and support, specifically
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- Gaining new insight into the relationship and yourself
- Learning new relationship skills
- Applying and practicing those skills and
- While you learn, getting support from others who care
about your success.
These four essentials are the foundation of Dr. Sanford's
relationship coaching program. As a participant in the relationship
program, you gain -
Insight. To bring about positive change, you have to discover
possibilities for action that weren't there for you before.
More options lead to more opportunities for success.
Access to the site Relationship Library of 600+ "insight
& action" articles written by Dr. Sanford helps you
understand the relationship and your own and your partner's
behavior.
You can search the library using over 120 keywords, from acceptance,
addiction and anger to vitality, vulnerability and work. Every
one of Dr. Sanford's clearly written, practical articles
gives you a useful slant on its subject. Many have approaches
that you can apply immediately in your relationship.
New Skills. Most relationship problems can be traced
to an absence of essential skills. Look closely at the problems
and shortcomings of your relationship, and you will find situations
when specific skills were called for that simply weren't
available.
In our program you find out what those skills were, and you learn
them – plus new skills that come into play when the relationship
moves beyond solving problems to building success.
Practice. A skill is just so much information unless
you apply it in your own life and practice it, until that skill
is really yours. With your coach's help, you will plan a
practice program for yourself, centered around skill goals and
a series of "experiments" that you and your coach
devise, in which you practice new skills in specific situations
and note the results.
As a participant in the coaching program, you also get membership
in the Practice Community and your own online journal (blog).
It is a log where you can record your skill goals, experiments
and observations about your relationship and the work that you
are doing, either for yourself alone or to share with other Practice
Community members. The blog is also your insurance that you won't
misplace the work that you have been doing, even after you finish
coaching.
Support. Striving to change your relationship or yourself
can be a lonely task. Knowing that somebody else supports your
effort and cares that you succeed can sometimes make the difference
between keeping a commitment to yourself and giving up.
You get strong support and encouragement from your coach. He
or she is the guardian of your commitments to yourself. He holds
you accountable for the promises you make to yourself. He remembers
your dreams and won't let you abandon them, even when you
are tempted to. He urges you to expand your sense of what is possible
for you and your relationship, encourages you to set larger goals
and helps you achieve them.
Part of the strength of this program is that it isn't
dependent on the relationship between you and your coach. Through
the Practice Community, you also get the benefits of peer-learning.
Everyone who is in a marriage or couple relationship or has been
in one has experience and wisdom to share. Through the medium
of the blogs (journals), you get to share your experience with
others, benefit from theirs, and give and receive support in a
shared community of people intent on growing.
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Overview
