If you're running into a difficult season in your marriage, maybe a day or two or five days,

five weeks, it's really important to remind yourself of the truth

of God's word and to find hope in Him. I'm John Fuller along with Greg Smalley and

his wife Aaron, they lead the focus marriage team and we're

going to hear now from Ted Lowe who's done a lot of research on what makes couples

successful. In a previous episode he talked about something called Fred in my head a term he uses for those

negative voices in our heads and hearts here now is focus president Jim Daly

Ted let me ask you this might be the question of our time together but how can we start

to change our mindset toward our spouse if it's you know someone's listening or watching going yeah that's me I

80% of my thoughts are negative about myself and about my spouse how do you

arrest that and get that under control and put Fred and Freddie or

Frederica back in the box and have a more positive joy filled life.

Well if we just focus on the what do you think about yourself,

there's five intentional thoughts in the book,

but if we just focus on what do you think about yourself,

I give an exercise in there, and this exercise has been proven,

it's been around for 30 years it just

nobody knew it but it's basically you name your Fred you give your Fred a name

Fred or Fred Rica you give them a name and what that does is it separates those thoughts from you.

It gives them distance from them and then you write down those negative thoughts and

when you see those on a piece of paper, when you see them and you capture them, you see how concrete they are, you can see more easily why they're not true, why they're not kind. And would

Abba really say this to me? Would my Abba really say this to me? And then I give people categories. What types of thoughts

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