Have you ever read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich? I highly recommend it.

For those of you who have never read the book, one of the things that Hill suggests is that you form a mastermind group for your life. Find people who have skills and attributes that you admire, or that you lack, and make them a part of your life.

Henry Ford was a great example of someone who did this. Ford grew up illiterate and uneducated. He had a dream of being rich, however, so he began to surround himself with skilled, educated people. They showed him how to get what he wanted.

I suggest that we do the same with relationships.

When I first got married, I can honestly say that I had no idea what kind of work goes into sustaining a long term relationship. I just didn’t know how it was done. I needed a lot of help. I got that help from not only my wife, but also from my bishop, a couple of good friends my own age, a couple of good friends who were older, and from reading several books on relationships.

The mastermind idea is different from my post on calling in the cavalry for particular situations. Calling in the cavalry means finding experts to take over for particular situations or events. You mastermind group doesn’t step in and do certain things for you. Instead, the relationship mastermind group performs two essential functions:

The mastermind group provides advice on particular subjects. Every once in while my wife does something that doesn’t make any sense to me. I can call up a member of my mastermind group and say, “Hey, my wife did this. What do you think I should do?”

The mastermind group becomes a think tank. When talking about relationships in general with your think tank, you should feel like they are providing useful, uplifting, and enlightening information and insights that will help you. They are the people you can bounce the “what ifs” off of.

In closing, some disparate thoughts on the relationship mastermind group:

- Business people often form mastermind groups to make sure their businesses succeed. There’s no reason that we can’t do the same for our relationships.

- Your mastermind group can be formal or informal, but you should definitely have one.

- Make a list of five to ten people who have relationships that you admire. Those people should be in your relationship mastermind group.

- You should evaluate the success of your mastermind group every year or so to make sure that its working.

- Be a part of someone else’s mastermind group. It’s called paying it forward.