I recently just finished reading ‘the Anatomy of Peace’. I highly recommend this book for everyone! It teaches principles that can help with marriage, parenting, work, and basically being a good person. From this book it talks about the influence pyramid (see below). My favorite thing about the influence pyramid is that shows that having a good relationship with your spouse can do more for your children than any other step.
I love this pyramid because it can help you understand a lot about where you might need to focus your attention. I want to share with you how this pyramid has helped me in my marriage but also how you can use these principles in any aspect of your life.
When I first read the book, Seth and I had only been married for two years. We did not have a ton of issues but there were still some disagreements and differences. Like most people though, I sought to start at the top of the pyramid. I wanted to correct a behavior I did not agree with, for whatever reason, and I figured that would solve the problem. I don’t even remember what it was about, but I remember reading this book and thinking I need to start at the bottom.
The first section of the pyramid is my favorite, because it is the only thing in my control. I can try my best in the other sections and do good but the solution will also come back to me. Where am I? Am I at war or am I at peace? I found that often times the things I struggled the most with Seth, were things I didn’t like about myself that I projected onto him. I had to come to terms with my way of being over being focused on his way of being.
The next section helped me so much when it came to building a relationship with my in-laws. I didn’t want Seth to be worried about whether I got along with them or argue with him about them because I didn’t want to drive a wedge between us. As I built those relationships with those that had influence on him, I learned a lot about who he is and how he is influenced. Learning about what encourages him because I was learning about him through people who were apart of his life from the beginning. This in turn helped me to have a deeper relationship with him because I got to learn who he was, who he is now, and who he can become.
Before we can teach, we have to learn how to listen. I love that listening and learning is before teaching because if you don’t know where they are at, you’ll never know where to start. I loved that I was able to start learning from him because it taught me why he did certain things. It taught me what doing certain things did for him.
After starting at the bottom of the pyramid and working my way up, the coolest thing happened. There was nothing left to correct or teach. Because we focused on making things go right, we never had to worry about dealing with things going “wrong.” So my advice, start with you, then make an effort with the people who are important to them, and you’ll find all the other steps just fall right into place.