Personal development coach Nick Brancato identifies misaligned priorities as the major cause of conflict between couples. In PRIORITIZE US: Unlock Lasting Love with One Simple, Proven Test, he provides a tool and workbook to help couples identify and address areas of friction. As Brancato sees it, even seemingly trivial differences in priorities between couples regarding subjects including work, sex, and money can eventually lead to potentially damaging rifts. A difference in values when it comes to making decisions can have dire consequences. “Over time,” writes Brancato, “these unmet expectations—whether spoken or unspoken—can become emotional landmines in your relationship.”
The book lays out the ten main areas of potential conflict and identifies these as “Universal Life Priorities.” The aim is to quantify these “core priorities” for each person in the relationship. This is achieved by both partners ranking each of the areas on a scale of one to ten. If partner A considers “Health” to be their number one priority and partner B rates this as an eight, then there is a “difference score” of seven. Through using the PRIORITIZE US workbook system and comparing each partner’s completed rankings for each priority, a TDS (Total Difference Score) is achieved. By focusing on this TDS, and using it as a basis for dialogue, the aim is to work through potential conflict to a position of understanding—a new alignment. As Brancato writes, “This new alignment doesn’t mean agreeing on every single thing; rather, it means understanding and respecting each other’s values and finding ways to support both individual and shared goals.”
PRIORITIZE US is clearly written with an introduction that outlines its aims and the strategies it will use to achieve them. The core of the process seems to be increasing conversation. Brancato identifies a need to “find balance, so that neither partner feels neglected or overburdened by competing priorities.” To that end, the ideas he proposes appear sound—though the process of marking scores on a printed chart and calculating numbers seems rather quaint in the age of apps and instant online quizzes. Though the process of finding a TDS is not overly difficult, it would seem to lend itself better to an online questionnaire and website than a traditional book.
As a prompt for meaningful conversation, Nick Brancato’s PRIORITIZE US: Unlock Lasting Love with One Simple, Proven Test is a solid workbook designed to help couples bridge their differing priorities.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader