Les Parrott
18 min read ⭑
“Leslie and I have always believed that if we could help an individual increase their level of self-awareness, it would radically change their relationships for the better.”
Bestselling author and psychologist Les Parrott has devoted his life to helping people build strong, lasting marriages. Together with his wife, Leslie, he teaches on relationships around the continent and has written several books, including the New York Times bestseller Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. They also founded the Center for Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University, equipping people to cultivate satisfying relationships that honor Christ. In his latest book, Bad Thoughts, which he cowrote with pastor Judah Smith, he guides everyday believers through identifying and combating toxic thoughts that hinder personal and spiritual growth.
Today, Les is opening up about the daily habits that fill life with meaning, the innovative relationship assessment he and his wife created, and how they helped launch eHarmony during the early days of the internet.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So how does a “go-to” meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
That’s an easy question! We live in Seattle, where there’s a restaurant downtown on the waterfront. Not many tourists know about it, but all the locals and certainly all the fishermen come to it. It’s called Chinook’s at Salmon Bay. I think their tagline is “Where the fishermen eat” — and it’s true. It might be the freshest fish you can get.
My go-to is salmon — whatever is in season, whether it’s sockeye or something else. But here’s why it’s really meaningful and what it reveals about me and my life. My wife, Leslie, and I have two sons. (Yes, my wife and I have the same name. It’s a little confusing, but we’re both Leslie, and we both have doctorates. That’s just the way God planned it for us.) That restaurant has kind of been an anchor point where we have celebrated, had meaningful conversations, mourned and had touch points throughout our and our boys’ lives. When Leslie and I came out of graduate school in Los Angeles, moved up to Seattle and began teaching at a Christian university here in town, one of our very first meals in the city was at Chinook’s. We’ve been going back for 30 years now. It’s the kind of restaurant where all the servers know who we are, and we know what we’re going to order before we pull into the parking lot. That place is a touchstone in our lives that we can anchor many developmental phases of our family around.
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QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?
Here’s something quirky that nourishes my soul. It’s such a part of me that anybody close to me knows about it. It’s very simple but has deep meaning and a lot of benefits — walking. For more than 20 years, I have walked a minimum of five miles a day. I rarely miss a day. My current streak is 898 days in a row of walking five miles, and that’s a minimum. Yesterday, I walked six and a half miles. So why do I do it? It centers me, for one, and it has become an almost reflexive habit. I can hardly talk on the phone without walking. Even as we’re doing this interview, I’m walking.
I’ve done a deep dive into the research on this. It nourishes us clear down to the molecular and cellular level. It is such a good thing for us to keep moving. If I’m on a Zoom call, I’m usually walking. I put the camera around on the other side of my desk, and my team knows I’m going to be walking the whole time. It drives them nuts for the first few minutes. Then they realize that’s just how I am. I think better when I’m walking. I know it’s peculiar. For example, if I’m flying somewhere and arrive in a new time zone but still haven’t reached my five miles of walking, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep going.
The other habit that’s more directly related to how I’ve structured my life is writing every day. I am fed by that. It’s a spiritual exercise in some ways. I bring it up because I am definitely a night owl and have written most of our books well past midnight. There’s a quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that is emblazoned in my head and tattooed on my brain. It says, “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.” I identify with that. Somehow, the late night improves my productivity and creativity.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power head-on?
That’s an easy one — control. I try to control my world way more than I should or want to, but it’s a propulsion. Of course, that is fed by anxiety. Anybody who’s seeking control is fueled by anxiety to get everything under control. Years and years ago, I wrote a book called “The Control Freak.” I joke that that’s my autobiography. It’s not, but it very well could be. Psychologically speaking, control is rewarding because it keeps you productive, passionate and tenacious, and all those things pay off for you. It’s a pathological thing that gets rewarded in our society.
I’m well aware of my tendency toward control, yet I continue to battle it. I’m always trying to release that sense of control and let God direct my path. On the surface, it simply looks like I’m productive. The world might say, “That guy is crushing it! Look at him grind.” We have all kinds of vernacular to describe somebody attempting to control their lives. But we can’t see the craziness underneath the surface. When you dig down, you find anxiety.
We all want to be in control. The happiest people on the planet are people who have control in their lives, control financially and control of their emotions. The problem is when it becomes such a driving force in your life that it begins to enter a toxic zone that is not healthy. That’s when you need to look more closely at how it could be creating anxiety.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
First, there’s the book I co-wrote with Judah Smith, titled “Bad Thoughts.” It’s the result of therapeutic and psychological work that took place over the last decade. Judah came to me as a psychologist and said, “Hey, I’m not struggling with anything at a deep level, but I want to make sure I’m solving problems before they start.” In my line of work, it’s rare to have somebody motivated to work on preventive intervention. That was the start of our therapeutic relationship.
At one point, Judah realized as we were doing this work together that so much of it comes down to what’s in our heads. He said, “I wish we could X-ray my mind and begin to pick my thoughts apart.” It was an interesting analogy we played with for a while.
I said, “You’re right. So much of what we’re talking about takes place in the mind. We fill our heads up with stuff that prevents us from hearing God.”
He said, almost pleasantly, “I would love to write a book with you on this and the progress that we’ve made.” That’s how this book was born. It took us a while to pull it all together. So one of my passions is the message in “Bad Thoughts.” It’s unique in that I’m pulling back the curtain to reveal what’s taken place in our therapeutic work together. There’s a lot of vulnerability on Judah’s part and some caution on my part, too, because I’m protective of that sacred space where we’re doing that work. That was the dance we had to perfect in order to share this with the world.
There’s one more thing that has really captured my intentions, thoughts and heart. Leslie and I have always believed that if we could help an individual increase their level of self-awareness, it would radically change their relationships for the better. As we psychologists sometimes say, “Awareness is curative.” You can’t do anything until you’re aware of it. We have just released something that is pretty exciting to us. HeartChart is totally free and takes less than four minutes to complete. People can go to MyHeartChart.com, answer a few questions and get this incredible series of insights about the state of a particular relationship in their lives. Whether you’re single, dating, engaged, a newlywed or you’ve been married for decades, you can do this. The assessment will help you coordinate two things. No. 1 is commitment. It’s not much of a relationship if there’s no commitment. We don’t want to hear, “I’ll see what I can do.” We want, “I’ve got your back. I’m with you. I’m investing in this.” No. 2 is connection. While commitment is a willful thing, it’s something that we decide on. We practice. We exert effort on it. Connection is more emotional. You simply feel it. Either you have it or you don’t. Either I feel close to you or I don’t feel close to you. Sometimes we can’t even identify why or when, but we just know when it’s there.
Those two things, commitment and connection, are the compass and GPS for charting a relationship. That’s why we call it HeartChart. MyHeartChart.com will take those two elements and give you coordinates that place you somewhere on a map of your emotional heart and allow you to see the current state of your relationship.
Leslie and I have developed lots of assessment tools. Years ago, we cofounded the first online matching company called eHarmony. We developed intricate ways to help people understand how they’re hardwired and the DNA of their personalities. We have another assessment tool called Save Your Marriage Before It Starts (or SYMBIS). If you look at assessments like that, including Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Keirsey and so forth, you will find they all look at the traits you possess. That’s super valuable because your traits and personality don’t change. But then there are states versus traits, and states are very fluid. They do change from season to season. So that’s what MyHeartChart.com will help you do — it helps you understand the state of your relationship.
Did I mention it’s free? Totally free, no strings attached. We’ve built this to help individuals have a wonderful experience. You don’t have to have your partner do this. You can do this on your own. My hope is that we will see churches have HeartChart campaigns, that we will be able to help people anywhere and everywhere access this free opportunity and experience insights like they never have before.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I always pray for the Holy Spirit to be part of my work because I’m following a calling. I’m an innovator. I’m an entrepreneur and a creative. My calling is to help people make bad relationships better and good relationships great. At the most fundamental level, the Holy Spirit anchors my motives. It’s pretty easy to be driven by ego, urgency, outcomes and control. I try to be conscious of that. Trust me, I know it’s there. But the Spirit continually calls me back to a deeper purpose, to serve and not strive, to trust and not control.
The Holy Spirit is fully integrated into my work experience at this stage of my life. There are times when I more consciously lean into the Spirit’s wisdom and discernment for decision and clarity, but whether I’m writing or counseling or leading my team, I want to pause and listen. I think you know when it’s God talking because it ultimately leads to love. It shows in how I’m treating my teammates and employees. How I’m treating my end users and customers. Does it ultimately lead to love, and is the process loving? I can’t always claim that it is. There’s frustration and manic urgency sometimes.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
That’s a very personal question for me, and I’ll tell you why. As a psychologist and passionate follower of Jesus, I have done a lot of work on the psychology of my life. I attempt to be attuned to what’s happening within me psychologically. At this stage of life, I’ve done a decent job of that. At the beginning of this year, I thought, I really need to ramp up and balance out my spiritual life with the same practices I use in the psychological field to grow and stay healthy. I was leaning into that way more than I was into spiritual practices. I thought, The first thing I want to do is to connect with a spiritual mentor — not a coach or somebody who will do a Bible study with me or give me assignments. The bottom line is I wanted to be spiritually illuminated. That was the phrase I came up with at the beginning of the year. I want to be more spiritually illuminated. I want to be heard and seen. I want to see my dark side spiritually better than I do. I am going to confess, I’ve had a really tough time finding someone who can do that for me. I won’t give you the list of people. You would know some of them. I think it’s rare that we can help somebody else become illuminated on the spiritual front. For whatever reason, our reflex is to bring it back to ourselves so often. I’m still seeking that. So that’s pretty abstract, but that’s the first part of my answer.
You also asked about disciplines or spiritual practices. I would say there are seasons to that for me. I’m a big believer in micro-habits. I have been disciplined about building tiny micro-habits into my life for physical health, including how I eat. It’s the same thing on the spiritual front. There are times I turn to God, such as while I’m brushing my teeth. It’s just a habit that is easy and is built into my system. It’s a micro-habit, a consciousness. It’s being aware. It’s so easy to be distracted by everything else in life that’s nagging for our attention, and we don’t give our attention to God. So I have to build in those little moments. Before I walk into my home in downtown Seattle, I do my best to say, “I’m walking into holy ground. There are two little boys behind this door who need a dad. What I’m about to experience right now is holy ground.” It’s those kinds of things. And by the way, those little boys are now grown and in graduate school. But the idea of building systems like that is essential. I’ve been down the path of performative spirituality and trying to earn God’s favor. I’m well beyond that. It really comes down to presence, not performance, and becoming more conscious of God’s presence in my life.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?
One that comes to mind was a professor I had in seminary, Lewis Smedes. He opened my eyes in new ways. Lewis Smedes was an ethicist at Fuller Theological Seminary. He’s gone on to heaven, but he was so unique, so special, such a gracious professor who was startling, compelling and compassionate at the same time. I would put his whole library of books up there as life-changing resources for me in my early 20s.
Another would be Martin Seligman. Martin Seligman is a psychologist, maybe one of the most influential living psychologists today. He came up with the concept of learned helplessness and also spent the bulk of his years studying optimism. What the apostle Paul calls “hope,” psychologists call “optimism.” Martin started what is now known as positive psychology, which is all about flourishing. Clinical psychology is largely dedicated to studying what goes wrong with people, whether it’s depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders — you name it. We want to look at what is going wrong and how we can help that person. This is because, when psychology was just getting started, there was a huge world war. The trauma that war created is what we refer to as PTSD, which set psychology down a path of focusing almost exclusively on pathology. About 25 years ago, Martin Seligman became the president of the American Psychological Association and cast a vision for psychology to go back to its original roots and help people flourish and thrive. He wrote a book on flourishing — the very first one, really — and created a new discipline or track in psychology that we now call positive psychology. It studies what can go right with people as opposed to what goes wrong. It’s almost like the fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and goodness. As a result, psychologists all over the world study the fruit of the Spirit, character and virtues. They have a book called “Character Strengths and Virtues,” and it has become the guiding beacon for psychologists who are studying that.
By the way, there’s a thread that runs between Lewis Smedes and Martin Seligman because Lewis wrote a whole book on hope and Martin wrote a whole book on optimism, as I mentioned above. I had lunch with Martin one day in California by chance. I happened to be at the first TED Talk to ever take place, and it was in California. I could hardly believe I was eating lunch with one of my psychological heroes. As a Jewish man, he integrates faith in a subtle way into what he writes. That was an instrumental turning point for me. Learning how to bring the science of psychology to your own faith. He helped me do that in some ways.
Next is John Maxwell. John became a mentor when I was a teenager. I shadowed him, and we ultimately wrote a book together called “25 Ways to Win with People.” John is such a big visionary. He taught me more about vision, passion and how your passion feeds that vision than anybody else.
I’ve also recently been appreciating the writings of David Brooks. I’m going to put my dad in there, too. My dad, A. Leslie Parrott Jr., was president of Olivet Nazarene University and Eastern Nazarene College. He had an incredible way of leading with a winsomeness and embodied so many things I aspire to, a vision that I’ve learned from so many other people that I’ve mentioned. It would be a terrible omission if I didn’t mention my dad — not because I simply feel I should, but because it’s genuine. He’s been gone for 20 years, and there’s rarely a day that goes by when I don’t wish I could pick up the phone and tell him what happened today. He cast a vision for me to transcend the limits of denomination. As a result, it opened up my world to a new ecumenical spirit to see the kingdom and the body of Christ in a much bigger fashion than I might have had I been raised in a different home.
We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?
A little over 25 years ago, I was having a late-night dinner in the home of a friend and mentor, Neil Clark Warren, up in the hills of Pasadena, looking down on the Rose Bowl. We had just spoken to a large group at a venue near there. Leslie and I — along with Neil and his wife, Marilyn — were sitting at their little kitchen table. Marilyn made us some food, and Neil said, “Hey, have you heard of this new thing called the internet? I wonder if it could help you with your BHAG?”
For context, our BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal) has long been to see the divorce rate lowered by a third in local churches in our lifetime. For every single percentage point that the divorce rate is lowered in churches, the lives of more than a million children are positively impacted. So that’s been our biggest goal.
Neil went on to say, “If you took some of the research that I’ve been doing on how people match and how important that is, we could help people.”
Long story short, that late-night conversation turned into many more hours and weeks and months of conversation that led to the establishment of eHarmony, the first-ever online effort to help people match well when it comes to marriage. It was all driven by that BHAG. It wasn’t simply a cool business to get into. It was all a ministry effort. We were in California, and as we built this thing out, we surveyed the country to figure out where we could find the most singles that would be interested in other Christian singles. All the arrows pointed geographically to Dallas, Texas, where there are big megachurches and lots of singles groups. So we moved to Dallas for 12 months. We could not get a pastor to come to a free lunch and receive free books to hear about this new thing called eHarmony. Nobody was interested. We realized that people viewed the internet as a scary thing. Technology was scary, and it was a dark place. That was incredibly frustrating, and we were very close to giving up. Anyway, we ended up doing a radio interview and got our first customer, Susan. We had to find Susan’s soulmate, right? Obviously, it grew and became something big — not because of the church but almost despite the church in some ways because the church just wasn’t quite ready for that technology. It was too scary. Obviously, it’s a very different story today, but that was my experience of the birth of the internet.
We’ve dedicated the bulk of the last 25 years to learning how to use technology in a way that is very life-giving and accessible for people who follow Jesus. That’s why we offer our assessments and are releasing something new within the next nine months or so. We’ll do another interview about that sometime.
On the professional side, I lean into technology. On the personal side, I understand the sentiment of needing to fast and step back from it. I rarely do that. Maybe it would be good for me to fast technology sometime, but I’ve never felt the need to do that. I love what technology can do, such as through YouVersion. What Bobby Gruenewald has done with that app is incredible. I’ve told him that many times. I love being able to access God’s Word at a moment’s notice and my Bible verse of the day. I focus a lot on mental health issues through the lens of Scripture. Thanks to modern technology, we can look at the integration of psychology and theology in ways that used to be way too cumbersome to do effectively. So that’s been incredibly enriching for my own personal life as well as for our ministry.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
At this stage of my life, I’m in a personal renaissance of spiritual awakening like never before and have a desire to tap into whatever creativity God wants to work through me. I have no shortage of that right now in my life, and it’s very exhilarating. One of the things is a nonprofit that we are going to be launching here very shortly called AMFM (Association of Marriage & Family Ministries). For the first time, we hope to help churches have one place that gives them practically everything they need to run a marriage ministry, whether they’re launching one for the first time or are interested in setting an existing one up to last. Our goal is to give them the resources, tools, coaching and inspiration they need to do that well.
It’s not just us; we’re bringing together lots of different leaders in the church to make this happen. Back in the early 1970s, I was a kid, and youth ministry was just becoming a thing. In the ’60s, there were very few churches that had a youth pastor, but in the ’70s, that really began to shift. Today, we can’t imagine a church that wouldn’t have some kind of youth ministry, even smaller churches. It’s an incredible on-ramp to evangelism. Well, in the same way, we want to see the church latch on to marriage ministry so it becomes ubiquitous, just like youth ministry is today.
We are firm believers that marriage is one of the church’s great, untapped portals for evangelism. We know from research that over half of couples with a marriage problem will come to the church before they go to a therapist. It’s an incredible opportunity, yet churches miss it when they aren’t well equipped to minister to couples and families.
So that’s what’s on the dashboard of my life right now. We’re going to launch it first in the state of Idaho. Why Idaho? Because it has one of the highest divorce rates and one of the lowest marriage rates in the country right now. So we have already launched an Idaho marriage initiative. We’ll be providing this to every church that wants it throughout the whole state, and then we’ll take it national.
Christians aren’t immune to marriage problems. According to Barna research, 54% of Christians have at least one relational or emotional issue that affects their marriage. As Les mentioned above, marriage ministry is a powerful evangelism tactic. But it’s also a vital means of discipleship and healing for married couples already in the church.
Does your church have a marriage ministry? If not, how might God be calling you to pray or step out in faith toward that goal?
Les Parrott, Ph.D., is a New York Times No. 1 bestselling author and cofounder, with his wife, Leslie, of the Center for Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University. He holds relationship seminars across North America and is the author of High-Maintenance Relationships, Love Talk (with Leslie Parrott), 3 Seconds, The Hour that Matters Most (with Leslie) and Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts (with Leslie). He’s been featured in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and has appeared on The View, CNN, Good Morning America and The Oprah Show. Les lives in Seattle with his wife and two sons.
