The Three Words that Every New Bride Wants to Hear

A sister in the Val Verda somethingth Ward sacrament meeting I attended yesterday told a funny story.  She and her husband had been married less than a week.  The bishop of their new ward in Arizona asked him if he and his wife would speak in sacrament meeting.  Husband said yes.  Wife hates to give talks.  Was mortally ill at the thought… dreaded it every moment.  Sunday morning, she just can’t overcome her fear and tells her husband she’s not going.

“And then he said the three words that every new bride wants to hear.”

[So I, for one, am thinking “Aaahhhh… he tells her he loves her, how sweet.”  But noooo!]

“Tough it out.”

In Made to Stick, the authors explain the power of the unexpected element in a story.  If you know that your audience has a “defective schema”, and you know how it’s defective, you can “pull the rug out from under them with a well-structured surprise” and your message is likely to stick with them.

That’s what this sister did for us.  She then went on to explain how “Tough it out” had become a theme in their family and had helped them deal with many forms of adversity over the years.

I liked it.  And it stuck.