Blame

"Never take the blame. Your wife will always be ready to assign the blame whether you ask for it or not." That was the advise that I received from a trusted adviser. With many years of experience being married, that was some advise that he thought was worth while for me to know.

It is too easy to blame someone else for doing something wrong, bringing up their faults or anything else to bring them down. Another thing that is extremely hard to do is to erase "no" from your vocabulary. Erasing the word "no" or any other variation of the word (don't, won't, can't or not) is even harder than you may think. Over the past couple of months I have been trying to get rid of the word. Instead of saying," I don't want to eat soup for lunch," I would say, "I'd rather have something else to eat for lunch."

Changing your statements the way I did in that example may seem very easy but try undoing 20 years of no's! As I have learned from being around small infants (months old) to 4 year old children for most of my life, "no" is in the top 5 vocabulary words that children learn. It usually only topped by "da da" and "ma ma" who are usually saying no to them.

Without blaming parents or any other figures who taught me of the importance of the word "no," I have realized that was their own way of expressing what they would rather have me do. For the next couple of weeks, try to eliminate that word "no" including all of its variations and try to stop blaming others directly. How do you think people will react to you? My guess is that people will notice a change and be more apt to requests.