Stick it to Stuckness | LQ029

Crystal Clark: 00:00:00

Welcome to our love space today, it has been so dreary the past week or two, and just like a little unseasonably cold, a little chillier than it should be, that I am so excited to have a bit of sunshine out today as I chat with you all. And I don't know whether it's the weather that kind of sparked this thinking in my brain about this idea of why we stay stuck. So I know last episode, we talked with candy, who's wonderful, about this idea of inspired action, and that really made me think today, when I was looking out at the sun and thinking about how stuck and yuck I felt in the rain for the past couple days, but really made me think about the idea that really the only way to move forward to the person that we want to be, to that relationship that we want to have, is to use inspired action. It's the only way where we are moving to that, you know, on that path we want to be on, and doing it in an easy or joyful or motivated way, every other kind of action that we could take will either maybe not get us there, right, which was actually really interesting to think about, that there's actually kinds of action that we could take part In that actually don't get us moving on that path and then or that, they feel like drudgery, right? And so then that's going to stop us from doing the actions we're not going to get to the actions that are going to move us forward. So why do we stay stuck? Why do we stay in that place that isn't really doing anything for us, right? And you may even and it may even be working against us. And I know for me, when I'm having stuck moments, it's actually more it's actually not about being stuck somewhere bad, like it's not a super toxic, dysfunctional place that I'm stuck in where nothing is working about the situation, and it's really obviously obvious to everyone around me. That's actually not usually what I experience when I'm stuck. It's for me, it's definitely more about being stuck in that passive action piece, right? So that piece where, you know, we touched on it last episode, but it's about being second that planning and deciding part, so knowing all the right answers and maybe actually knowing the concrete thing or two. Because sometimes we can know, like, the vague idea, right, the vague answer, but we don't actually know the concrete things we can put in place to sort of flesh out that answer, like kind of those details that we're always chatting about, right? So, but we might actually, or I might actually know, like those one or two concrete things that I could do to move myself forward through this situation, and still, for whatever reason I don't know, I'm just not making the time. I'm not putting aside that energy to do that action. I'm not investing in the actual thing that I know can make things better. Can make that difference? I'm sure that happens to you. You know, you need a mega moment of love, for example, right? We all know we we need them. That's what we call our big times of a connection on here, like our date nights. But you know, it keeps falling to the bottom of our priority list, right? It keeps falling off our to do list, to make that dinner reservation or call that babysitter to see if they're available, right, or whatever it is that you're planning for that mega moment of love. It just keeps falling off the to do list, right? It just keeps getting deprioritized. And it's probably been on there. I mean, for some of you, it's probably been on there for a month or two already, and it's like, Ah, right? We should be having mega moments of love way more often than that. Never mind just sitting, just sitting in passive action on those plans, right? Or maybe it's that we try something new once or twice that's like a probably another thing, a way I get stuck is I've tried the new thing once or twice, but I haven't actually really made it into a habit or a piece of my relationship, so I haven't really tried it enough times for it to take effect, for it to really have that impact. And then that's where it gets stuck. At the bottom of my list, it's like, ah, it sort of worked, or maybe it kind of felt good, or maybe I sort of enjoyed it, but not really enough to put it at the top of my list right. And then that's where your relationship ends up being, right? It ends up being stuck at the bottom of everything else. So when I talk to couples, one of the top reasons that they say they get stuck. So that's why I often get stuck in places. But one of the top reasons that I run into, with a lot of couples that I chat with is that, and when you're thinking about this, you know, this is you, if you're the couple where things are okay, or like, blah, or Matt, or there's like, you know, some lots of eye rolls. And eye rolls are. Actually, you know, not a good sign in your relationship. So if you're like saying they're like, ah, oh no, we, we, I roll each other all the time. It's actually a bit dismissive and not great though. You know, come on over and chat with me about that sometime. But so maybe you are in the spot where nothing is outrightly horrible. Most of us won't make that change until things are actually horrible, and we can let things slide and be kind of in that sort of happy, kind of unhappy spot. But until things are absolutely horrible, we often won't make those changes right. And that is where I find a lot of couples get stuck, right? What odd creatures we are, right? And it's so easy. It's easy. It's really easy to stay stuck in a ma, okay, relationship place, right? Because you don't have to prioritize anything. You don't have to explore, you don't have to pause, you don't have to do or change anything to remain in that space of not having a horrible time. That just seems mind boggling to me, right? Because that's not what we want, that's not what you want, that's not what you want, is just maintaining in a place to stay above horrible No, oh my gosh, no. We want to be sparked, right? You want to be sparked. You want to be excited, you want to be loved, you want to be wanting to come back to your relationship for more right? So put more energy in, and you get more wonderful energy out. But many couples that I chat with, they stay stuck because they don't think that the change, they don't think that tweaking simple little things can possibly make things good or great or hooray. That's what I want for all you guys. Is a Hooray relationship, right? That's the pathway we're towards. And kind of like the idea of happiness, you know, we never actually, you never actually stop and go, Oh, I'm at Hooray done. But it's just like, every year, every day, every month, is a little smidge, little micro, smidge more hooray. And that's what we're going for, right? Where, when we look back on it and reminisce, we're like, wow, yeah, that was good, or that was great, or look at all those hoorays that we shared together, right? So, but when we're thinking that change is not possible in our brains, right? That's how our brains trick us, right? Our brains want to trick us, especially our little survival side of our brain, our left side of our brain. It really is that our left side I've lost, I've lost my directions on brains,

Crystal Clark: 00:07:50

but our survival brain wants to keep us safe, which is fantastic when we're running from a wooly mammoth, for sure, but we're not currently running from a wooly mammoth in our relationship. So it's actually our little judge inside of us that makes us judge ourselves, judge our ability, right? Judge our power. That small changes can actually unstick us from a situation, right? So I'm not sure if you're actually familiar with the Positive Intelligence work of Shehzad Carmine, but it's fantastic. He goes through a lot of ways that our brain actually sabotages us when we stay stuck in our survival brain too long, right? We want to get into our Positive Intelligence, creative, problem solving side of our brain more often, because that's going to actually give us, you know, that's actually the place where we can tap into our inspired action. That's actually the place where our little nuggets of inspired action ideas come from. So that's where we want to be. And if you are stuck in a blah relationship, and you are stuck in the passive action, which is just thinking about thinking about making the changes, right, then you are really just surviving. You're in that survival mode, right? And and he'll actually goes into detail about, you know, how our judge, our little judge inside our brain, will actually tell us that these small changes are not important and can't change anything, and so we should just stick with what we're doing, or our judge will tell us we could actually make things worse. So let's not rock the boat. But our judge actually never tells us, hey, actually these little changes could make things better, right? That's our creative problem solving side that thinks those thoughts, and he actually has a great quiz where he takes you through a whole bunch of different more particular, specific ways your brain can sabotage you. So I'll put that in the show notes, because it's super fun to go through. Ooh, this could be like a micro moment, not maybe a micro moment. I might be in between a micro moment of love and a mega moment of love. But hey, you could pull it out on your phones tonight on the couch and both kind of go through it and then read each other's answers. Or chat about each other's answers, or, you know, kind of go through it together. I think that would be fantastic, so I'll put it in the notes for you. But so even if you have acknowledged that change is needed, and you've come across some ideas, and you're listening to podcasts like this, and really deep down, you might want, you might believe, you like might want that change, but you also, deep down, might believe that nothing is actually going to change if you do anything right, or that these things will just keep slipping back to the way they were, that even if you changed it, it's only going to change for a few months. And actually, his book goes into some detail about that, where it is true that we can slip back to our baseline really easily, and that's why it's best to make small changes and just pick one or two things to change practice, start to make those things a habit, and then add something else to create into making it a habit. So passive action can actually make us feel good, like candy was saying last episode, can actually make us feel a little bit virtuous, because we feel like we're being self reflective, we feel like we're being in the know, but we're not actually executing anything. We're not actually putting anything into place. We're not actually changing our life or our relationships. So despite the fact that it feels like we're doing something, we're actually not. And most couples I run into are in that place of stuckness, right? So we know kind of the right answers we right, but we don't really have a true belief that these small, simple things that crystal keeps telling us that are so easy to do and will make such a mega difference, that, you know, somewhere in the back of our mind we just think it's too simple and it's not going to change. So never mind. Okay, so the next kind of way i i talk to a lot of couples and they get stuck is they get stuck with not finding the right fit in the detail. So I've got you with the big picture. The big picture that I'm giving you our cake model, right? Our communication, the fact that we need to have communication, affection, affection, kindfulness and energy in our relationships, those are all true. Those are all important moments and or those are all important moments. Those are all big picture ideas that we need to fill in the details for. And sometimes the details we try to use to fill those in are the wrong fit. And instead of just saying, hey, this thing we tried is the wrong fit, let's try a different detail, you know, then we just throw everything out the window that actually the whole strategy, the whole process, the whole big picture thinking is wrong so, you know. And this would be like an example of this would be, what if we have, I'll just do the cheesy example, if we have people that think that, you know, a date night or a mega moment of love has to be going out to a fancy restaurant and getting fully dressed up and having a babysitter and Ubering there and back, so everyone can have, like, a million bottles of wine, and I have to buy you flowers, and there's all these have tos, right? And for some couples that is magic. That's a fantastic, spectacular night. And I will say I enjoy an evening like that once in a while myself, but it's not for everyone, and it doesn't fill up everyone's emotional love cup, and it's not a great way for everyone to connect with the love of their life now, but if you have a belief that that is the right way to connect with the love of your life, and you try it, or even the getting to it, is just so laborious that by the time you booked the place and found a babysitter and called around and pulled some favors, right, it's not always easy to find a babysitter these days, pulled some favors the fact by the time you get there, and maybe you had to rush home from work, and then there was traffic in there, in the Uber and like, blah, blah, blah, you know, it's not for you. And so there's all these things that are going to make you feel not good about that evening. And then you might say, like, oh, well, mega moments of love don't work. Well, that is not true. We just didn't have the right fit, right? And so we can get stuck in this, and also when we don't have the right fit. So for example, with that date night thing, if it's not the right fit, then you will get stuck in the planning process. Because it's not actually that inspired action. It's not actually motivational to exciting to you, right? It doesn't actually have that potential to spark up, right your heart for that day, right? To give you a moment of joy. And so planning it, trying to book the date right, trying to think of where you're going to go is going to seem like drudgery, right? And so you're going to get stuck there, and you're not going to move forward, and because you're not having those experiences where you're getting to connect with each other, where you're prioritizing and putting that time aside for each other, that it's not going to work, agreed, or it's never even going to happen, so you can't even get that moment of connection. So things not being the right fit can often get people stuck. But. Don't be stuck there. It's a process of tweaking and trying, right? And sometimes, you know, like, we might be like, hey, well, when we first started going out, this is what we love to do together, so this is what we want to restart doing together. And you might actually find that you're not those people anymore, right? It could be like, hey, when we met, we love to be, you know, super physical and adventurous, and we would go out mountain biking. And do you know what? Let's unhook those mountain bikes in the garage, let's dust them off, and let's go down a trail again. And you might actually find, well, you know, it's been five or 10 years, so maybe we're not quite in shape for that. That's gonna be a thing. Maybe the weather, it's the wrong time of year. Maybe we're just not in that vibe anymore. Maybe we're just not feeling that hardcore anymore. And so this is no longer right fit. The trap there, the trap that you're judging your brain, your survival side of your brain, is going to get you to say, it's like, ah, the magic is just lost. That that's why the mountain biking mega moment of love didn't work, because we actually don't connect that well anymore, and so our true passion from 10 years ago didn't work because we're not connected. Okay, that could play a hint of it, but Shut up, stupid judge in your brain. That do you see when I say that? How ridiculous that sounds, right? You may be a different person. You may as a couple, need to find, to find again, what is going to spark your passions, to find again, what you will enjoy together. You might have to actually find new things to do. Maybe it's going to maybe your next fun thing that you take up as a hobby will be something that neither of you have actually done before. Wow. Okay, so finding the right fit for your details, that is another piece that you really need to do. Don't throw everything out the window because we tried two or three details and they didn't work, right? You need to find the details that are going to work for you, okay? And the third, I think the third, most popular way that I find people getting stuck in that passive action or getting stuck from moving forward in the ways that they know are possible and wonderful to do right is that

Crystal Clark: 00:17:25

you haven't found the right support. Okay, so that's one of these things, and I am totally like this. I can listen to podcasts and Leslie, I'll binge them sometimes when I find right, when I find someone I love and super connect with, and it doesn't even have to be on relationship stuff, you know? It can be on any aspect of my life. And I'll be like, yes, and I'll dive into those podcasts like crazy. But sometimes it's not enough to just hear and know the steps right, that I actually need to go to that person for their services if I'm going to make a big change. So for example, like, if you're on a bit of a health journey, like I am as of late, because the love of my life also needs to be on a health journey. So we partnered up, and we're on a joint health journey together. So you know, I might actually need it's one thing for me to read the books and listen to the podcast and go and find buy some supplements and some vitamins and all those things, and, you know, and a few cookbooks, and really trying to change our diet and think about the exercises we're going to do, versus going to someone who can actually help me walk through the plan, right? And so maybe the other things you're like, No, I know change is possible, and we have found some things that are the fit, but things are still, you know, we're still not making traction in making these tiny changes, these small tweaks to our relationship, right? We're still not getting to that place where we want to be in order to be sparked, and so I think that support piece, right? Can be a big part. So one of the things is just having someone there to take you through everything in a systematic manner, right? So sometimes our brains make us jump around a bit, and especially if you're a bit nervous, basically, your brain might be jumping all over the place, right? So someone who knows a lot right, someone who's very versed in how we're going to tweak and and work on your relationship, and they can streamline it for you, and when you're jumping around all the place, having that support there, that person there to call you back and say, Hey, okay, so this is what you guys tried last week. How did it go? What did we like? What do we want more of? What do we want less of? What would we like to try for this week? You know, is it overwhelming? Do we need more things to work on? Less things to work on? So having that support person to bounce ideas off of? Do. Walk you through some of the stages and steps, right a person to keep you on track some of the time, that can be really vital for getting unstuck, right? Because, again, you can go through the podcast and you can be like, hey, this week we're going to do this, and maybe we'll do it two or three times, but you might do it a few more times. If you know that on Tuesday, you're having to see that person for accountability, that person to check in. If you're like, ah, Crystal, there you are, right. Oh, you know, it's very awkward and embarrassing. I and this is what I know from my own personal experience, especially when I was going through supervision with my master's degree and my board certification, is that, you know, there were some times where I skipped the reading, or I skipped the steps, right? I skipped the steps. I was not working on making my practices a habit, and when I went into supervision, right, there's like, a little bit of accountability there, and I had to step up to that piece. And so sometimes, if we don't have, if we haven't found that right support, the right channels for accountability, the right channels for helping us check in, right some of us are DIY cell starters, and some of us are not. And if you're not a DIY self starter, that is 100% fine. I am horrible at DIY. I am not a self starter, as you can see with my little you know, example of getting supervision is I actually need me personally. It's not for everyone but me personally. I need some social accountability. I need someone there to be like, Ah, this person is going to check in, and I want to do a good job. Sometimes it's not enough. Wanting to do a good job for yourself. Whoa. Another weird brain thing that we do is, why is it not a good enough job for me, right? Huh? That is a weird brain thing that we do. And if you're a person where that is how your brain works, or maybe as a couple, that is how your dynamic works, finding the right support doesn't have to be me. Could be me whatever you like, but finding that right support to help guide you through some plateaus, some of the some Getting Started times, all of those pieces that is really going to get you out of that passive action spot, is going to get you out of the planning spot, because even actually messaging someone, booking in for a discovery chat with someone that is actually an inspired action that's actually getting you out of that planning stage, even just booking a call with someone, right? DMing someone and saying, Hey, I like the way that you support people with relationships. And I would like some of that. Let's do that right. Crystal, I would like you to support me. Perfect. Okay, that's actually an inspired action step. We've actually done one step in the right direction and then showing up, right, showing up to the coaching session, showing up for, you know, some online courses, showing up and participating. Those are going to be parts of inspired action. Those are going to move you forward, right? Those are active action. They're not getting you stuck. So just to kind of recap quickly, see where you're at with getting stuck or being stuck, and how you're going to unstick yourself, right? So it could be that your little brain is tricking you and making thing, making you think that change is not possible, and you might not even know that's happening. Take the quiz. Think about what's sabotaging you in your brain. Thinking about that. It's okay when you try something out in your relationship if it's not the right fit, don't throw out the whole big idea. Don't throw out all of the big picture thinking. Hold on to that and just throw out that one detail. Throw out that one mega moment of love idea. Throw out whatever that detail is that's not working for you, and try a different one. And finally, if it, if it's going to help you, get unstuck, get support, right? That's why things like Weight Watchers and things like that have worked for lots of people in previous years is that it was support, it was accountability, it was a way to get you on that path and to get some traction so that you can actually start to find the joy and the inspired action in that path. I hope you can find some inspired action this week and be sparked.