Value Your Vibe | LQ030

Crystal Clark: 00:00:00

Welcome to our love space today, I am so excited for you to be here with me today, because it's so dreary outside while I'm recording this. So it's so nice to have some company here to explore together the idea of how we create the vibe in our relationship. Now I'm super lucky that my emotional cup got filled up this weekend. Was celebrating a friend's big birthday, and it was just so interesting to see how everyone's participation in the lead up to the big birthday celebration. I won't mention the the milestone age. I'll I'll keep that secret, but how everyone's participation in leading up to the birthday celebration that that really created the vibe and the tone for the celebration. So things like, you know, the celebrations on the weekend, and, you know, people are texting in the group, text about it, you know, on the Wednesday before, right? And sending stickers and sending, you know, decorations that they're going to be bringing or that they brought, and sending ideas for what we can do and and like I happen to be driving along and this awesome song came on that just really put me in the mood, called the weekend by Michael Gray. If you are into dance music and you are ready for the weekend to come, then definitely check it out. It is a great track. I don't know if I can link it in the show notes, but if I can, I will do that for you, but anywho. So we were all, you know, putting in these little bits of input and excitement. And you know me, how I was talking about when you're planning a mega moment of love to make sure to send those texts to each other, right, just to you back and forth with your LOL, to start to get that excitement and that connection going. And it was just so awesome to see that in a different kind of relationship context really play out and be so vibrant and so full. And that really got me thinking, you know, as I was coming down from all the excitement about how we set the vibe in our relationships, and how do we make a vibe, our tone for our relationship that's actually going to be useful or helpful to us. And you know, really what it is, unlike just being able to send the texts and build up excitement for a relationship, the actual really important vibe or tone for your relationship really comes from your values. It's actually value that set up your relationship and the tone of your relationship for success. So, you know, I was in a I had a first very long term relationship, right?

Crystal Clark: 00:02:56

And and that did not work out so well in the end, despite the fact that we actually had a pretty strong, just natural connection, and we had a lot in common. And just like natural commonalities, like we both enjoyed to watch sports, we both like going out to the same kind of like events or outings or concerts or music or things like that. We tended to gravitate towards the same sort of personality types for friends or like couples, friends and things like that. So that always makes it easier, because we if someone met someone new, we both enjoyed hanging out with that person, right? Or meeting their significant other and hanging out as a group. So there's a lot of good just like natural, accidental commonalities and matches. But what happened was that we didn't really do anything intentional or purposeful. We met when we were young, and it was like, you know, whatever, we're just going with the flow. And we got through, yeah, not really some hard times, like, some regular hard times, like, you know, maybe some family deaths and things like that, which are like, you know, just things that we can expect happen as we get older and as we grow up. But you know, anything that was actually, you know, a relationship difficulty, a real adult problem, or, you know, just like, what are we going to do on our life's journey together? It started to be a tug of war. And really, that's because our relationship had nothing purposeful or intentional behind it, and we didn't really, maybe we thought we had shared values, but our common, our core, our personal core values didn't really overlap. I know we've talked about values on here before, so like, our Venn Diagram of value didn't have much overlap, like maybe one or two things. And as we know, I think that is in an episode I put out in September about doing some values work. And I love values work. Can I just tell you like I adore it. I especially adore it with not just with couples, but with singles or people who are ready to get back into dating and want to be a bit more intense. Intentional and purposeful about their relationships, even about their friendships. I've worked with a lot of people who just want better. You know, connections overall, not just romantic connections. And doing values work in those kind of places is fantastic, because it really when you are clear on your own personal values and your core beliefs, then you can go in to your next relationship or your friendship or whatnot. And it's not like this, not first date talk, but you know, you'll be clear. You'll be acting purposeful and intentional in your own life once you know your your your values, and then you'll also, when you are ready to sort of, you know, kind of get maybe a bit more serious to someone. You go like, you know, what's really important to me? It's this and this and this and this and and, you know, this is kind of how I want to practice life, and how I want to, you know, navigate challenges and things like that. And the other person can look at you go, Whoa, dude, right? Because that's what we say to each other when we're starting a romantic relationship, they could go, Whoa, dude. I am into that too, like yes and yes and yes. And how about we add these two in, and fantastic, and let's go from there. And so I think this, this values work, is just fantastic. But that was something that me and, you know, my first long term relationship that we had never done, we had never even thought about. And what ended up happening is we were always in a tug of war, or not always in a tug of war, but when these adult challenges came up, we ended up being in a tug of war because I would support my point of view, or what I thought would be the right relationship choices with my core values, and the other person he would be supporting what he thought was right or great to do in the relationship with his core values. And the interesting thing about core values, and we'll dive in to those a bit more in a minute, is that actually, neither them, like none of the core values right are really inherently good or bad. They're not inherently right or wrong. So what can happen with those is that both our arguments sound valid and but what happens is that there's a tug of war between like, no, come this way. I'm supporting my argument with this, so obviously that is right. And then the other person's like, no, come this way, because my argument is being supported with this, and that's obviously right. And there's just this back and forth tug of war where things, after a while, things just start to become impassable and not impossible, but impassible also probably impossible. And you actually start your core values start to grow more and more apart from that, and that's where we can where it makes it hard to come back back together. And we did go to get guidance on this, but I think that deeper work of what our values were actually were and how we wanted to practice our life, we didn't get to that deep work, and so we weren't able to work it out. So this is why I really believe that values are going to set the vibe for your relationship. They are that foundation. Because when you are having a difficulty, right, when you come up with a challenge, when you need to get navigate something, your shared values in your relationship, your intentional, purposeful shared values in your relationship, that's going to be the guide, the thing that that you fall back on, for your answers or for your choices, right? If you don't have that vibe, if you don't have that guidance, you have nothing to fall back on. Or you guys are each falling back on your own thing, right and again, then we have this tug of war back and forth. And we're not solving any problems when we're in a tug of war. We're not coming to any real resolutions when we're in a tug of war. What happens is we usually end up pulling someone right, pulling someone in to a decision, right, into a choice. And so it's like, someone has to take one for the team, right? Someone has to be like, Okay, it's not my turn to have my core values met. And that's kind of a hard thing, because then you're not maybe living as authentically, right? You're not living as much of yourself as you quit. And so of course, there's going to be some compromise and give and take in relationships, but we don't want anyone to take one for the team, right to suspend those values for the team. That's not going to be good. So in my relationship, I'll give you an example. I'm just going to pull out my little values cards here so I could read through them for you. So like I said, inherently, there's no values that are right and wrong. So in my relationship with my love of life, our values are fun, fun, and they define this. I have these wonderful little values cards. I'll put the link for them in the show notes. I'm not affiliate. With them. I get no money from them, just to make that clear. But they're very cute, like, I love I'm into the, I don't know if you're a hippie dippie or whatnot, like me, but I am definitely into the oracle cards and things like that. Because I think it's just, it's just fun, every once in a while to peek into those. So these are kind of made, like, you know, oracle cards, or tarot cards, and you can kind of go through them. I'll explain how to do that in a minute, but that's just so you can get a look at them. There's also free printable ones, and I will see if I can find a link to a few different free printable ones to put the show notes for you guys too. But one of the things that we really value in our relationship is fun, and the definition they give us a fun for this is to engage in playful amusement. And the other one that I kind of put with that. So I'm going to tell you that you need to come up with five core values. So I kind of have like five and a half, because I think the other one that goes with fun that we've picked out is humor, and in our relationship, or in the little definition of humor for this value, is to have and appreciate a sense of amusement in yourself and others. And the way that plays out in our relationship is that we can use humor in fun, in both exciting and joyful and delightful times in our life and in also in challenging times. So if one of us has a bad day, it's actually standard practice in our house. So I know this doesn't work for everyone, and this is why our values are neither inherently good or bad or appropriate or inappropriate, but in our house, it is totally good practice that if someone has had a bad day, if someone's had a bad day, we are going to use humor or a funny dance or a thing like that. I'm sure you can tell by some of the suggestions I give you guys for lightening things up or reconnecting after arguments is we're going to be silly and wacky and whatever with each other, because that works best when someone's having a challenging time. For sure, we listen to that person we want like we, you know, support each other, we actively listen to each other's words, and then we might do a silly dance for the other person. Now, if you're in another relationship where humor and fun are not part of your core values, and someone is, you know, venting about their day, and you go, Okay, well, let's, like, shake it off with a silly dance. And then you start dancing around like, you know, whatever my favorite animal have since to be at that

Crystal Clark: 00:12:26

time, some other people, right? Some other couples are going to take offense to this, right? Someone could turn around be like, Hey, you are I'm in a serious mood, and you are joking around, and you're not taking my venting or my word seriously, and so you're not actually listening to me, so you can see how, if you don't have, like, aligned core values, right, these shared core values that you're basing these challenging times on, that things are could get uncomfortable, or could you could have many, many more miscommunications. And that's why doing this values work is actually so fantastic, because, as you even if you realize like, hey, we really only have two shared values, right? Again, I'd love you to have five, because I think that's really going to be a super strong foundation for your relationship. But if you find out that you only have two, when we do this work, then you will also find out what their other values are, and when you find out what the other persons, very important core values are because our core values go into our belief system, right? They go into our everyday choices. It's like that episode that I did. There's a podcast episode I did. It must be in the teen somewhere, maybe episode nine or 10. I think it's called get centered. So that episode in there, we talk about having different centers, and how, if you're not, if you don't know each other's center, you have different centers, is going to be a tug of war. And our centers are really lots of times, you know, a conglomeration of what our values are, or are linked, at least to our values. So and my relationship, we also have social connection, so during COVID, so this is to prioritize close and ongoing relationships with other people. And I think, you know, you can, as you can tell from my vibe and how, you know, I think it's the best way to support couples. Is that I think social connection, at least between the two of you, is amazingly important. But in our relationship, social connection is also important. So during COVID, you know, this led to a lot of our decisions during COVID, and how are we going to be super creative in following the rules? But we both know that as a couple, we need to connect with our friends circle. We need to have that social connection time. We need to be out and about in a world, in the world, of course, in a safe way during COVID. But you know, whenever we were allowed in restaurants or going out to the parks or whatever we could do, even to just be in the same vicinity as other humans, was important to us, and that helps us make just our daily choices of what we're going to do and how we're going to be happy in life. Another important one is health. So that is to live in ways that promote overall wellness and vigor, and that is 100% important to us. We both have had a bit of a family history where, you know, it's a concern for us to really be have great health and be vibrant people for our children when they are growing up, and potentially grandchildren. Fingers crossed, you're not gonna push that card. But, you know, that's really, really an important thing for us, is that we want to be able to enjoy our time and our social connections, but in a very, you know, I guess, like energized way for as long as we possibly can. So whenever we have to make life decisions, like, if you have to go the gym, and it is like, have to go the gym just because to look good or whatever, this really helps us when we are not in the mood to go to the gym or on a long walk or take our vitamins or whatever we are doing at the moment. It really gets us into that mindset of, hey, this is a value of ours. This is not just a thing that we need to do. We're not just going through the motions, but this is actually going to fulfill our life and make our life better in the long run. And we both believe in it, and that can get us to the gym right, that can get us, you know, being more moderate on kind of our our indulgences and things like that. And then, you know, we have love. I think you would be able to guess that one about me. Then the last one is integrity. Now I the reason I share this last and this will kind of go into my next few examples that are not my core values, but, but we'll see how they could play a tug of war sort of situation is integrity. If I say integrity, you're gonna be like 100% that's an important core value. Everyone should have integrity. Because integrity, according to my low values card here, is just to adhere to a practice of honesty and of having your outer world reflect your inner world, to be what you seem to be. And actually, that is not important to everyone, and that will come as a surprise. You may be like, Well, Chris will know it is, but that's actually not true. Not everyone needs their inner self and their outer self to reflect each other. They not everyone needs that to be in alignment. Maybe there could be made an argument that if those two things were more alignment in alignment, then you would be able people be able to navigate other pieces of themselves in the world and relationships more easily, right? Because it's definitely more easy to be like, Hey, this is how I feel on the inside, and this is why I'm portray, I'm portraying the exact same thing on the outside. Or, you know, I have said this thing, and I'm going to have follow through with it, but that's actually not important to everyone, I think, as we know, because people ghost people all the time, or people just, you know, like, I'm the kind of person where, if I've made plans and you give me the check in, text like, Hey, are we still on for lunch today? I'm like, of course, we were still on for lunch. We made a plan. It's been set, I would be weirded out if we weren't still on for lunch and I haven't thought to text or call you because I'm actually sick, or my apartments have run long, or there's some sort of emergency going on, or there's, like, you know, some legit reason I can't make it. I have made this plan. I'm going to follow through with this plan, but that's because that's personally actually important to me. So even sometimes in moments where I am maybe a little sluggish, a little tired, a little hormonal or whatever, if I've made a plan, if I've committed to something, I will pull myself up to it. And usually, once I get there, I'm energized and I'm fine. So that's usually a good choice for me to do any who I know that's not for everyone. But again, you know these values are not for everyone. So I'm going to, I'm going to go through just a few to kind of show you how the tug of war could go. So, you know, I have this idea of purpose, the purpose versus success, okay? Purpose versus success. So we have to live life with meaning, intention and direction. That's purpose, okay? And success is to attain a particular goal as measured by wealth, position, accomplishments or honors. Now, if you have someone who is like, Yeah, let's base our life on purpose, versus someone whose core value is success, these are going to look different. Now you might think, Oh, well, if I'm doing purposeful work, I'll be successful. Anyways, we could go down philosophical rabbit holes with each of them, but the way this usually plays out in a tug of war is someone is more worried about finding work that's meaningful, or things like that, maybe finding life pursuits that fulfill their purpose, versus if someone doesn't have the purpose value, but they have The Success value, they may become, you know, more focused on I need this promotion. I have to put this extra time in at work because I need this accolade. I need to move forward. I need to go do this thing, that thing, this thing, whereas the person who just want, who just wants their to find their purpose, you know, might could, you know, have like. Like not their dream job, but volunteer at the cat shelter because they love animals, or volunteer for animal activism, and they're having the time of their life, even though there's no wealth or success or promotions associated with that. And those two people will have a tug of war when we need to decide whether we should move across country for a promotion or stay here where I am, you know, wildly involved in the, you know, animal activist community, right? So you can see how that tech war might play out. Okay? Another one. I've tried to pick some ones that people are going to think are inherently good. And as you if you do your if you do print out some values cards, or order these cards, or find whatever cards you're going to find, and try to do this at home. It's a great man, like a moment of love, by the way, you're going to be like, well, all of these seem right at the moment. I'm going to tell you how to get through that. But another quick example is stability and vulnerability. Okay, so stability is described as having a life that stays fairly consistent. So these are the people that love routine. Love to do the same thing every week. You know, these are like, I don't know if you remember any of the shows like, I Love Lucy, or anything that you've seen on me runs that like Nick at Night or whatnot. But stability would be like, you know, every Monday is meatloaf Monday, and every Tuesday is Taco Tuesday. And every Wednesdays, I don't know. Oh, wait, Wednesday, wine, Wednesday. And we like the same job. We like going to the same place. We always want to go the same vacation spot. That's a person who loves stability, okay? And then we have vulnerability. Now,

Crystal Clark: 00:21:32

you know me, I love the vulnerability, and this is described as to honor uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure and self and others. So being vulnerable is very important to you. Okay. Now, if stability is important, you may decide as one of your core values, you may hide things, or decide not to share things, or maybe not be open and honest, because you are trying to preserve the stability in your life. That is not right nor wrong. It inherently right? Depending on the situation, if you're vulnerable, you may throw stability out the door and and able to exercise and honor uncertainty and risk. And so those two people, they're going to be having a tug of war, right? I'll give you one, one last one here. Oh, okay, so this is one that could come up is if we have family or careers, so to the family, one is to prioritize the health, well being and happiness of those in your family. This doesn't just have to be your your children and your and the little people that live in your love space. This could also be your extended family, right? Or just your you know your brothers sisters, what? Not, not just the family that you've made in your love space, and then career. And so career is to prioritize progress in your profession or occupation. Now, again, someone who's prioritizing family is not going to choose the job where they have to move away from their parents, their brothers and sisters, their in laws, their nieces and nephews, things like that, versus this, person who is has career as a core value, again, not inherently right or wrong, they are going to prioritize moving away to expand their job. Also, I think these two pieces are maybe it'd be love and career, but I think these two pieces will also be a tug of war, if someone wants to have a long distance relationship so that they can go after their career. So again, you can see how these things could play a tug of war. Now, these packs of cards, they come with, you would not imagine a whole like, I think there's like 50 or 60 potential values that you could have, and you're gonna be like, Well, that seems overwhelming. So if you are going to do this work at home on a mega moment, but de love I love it, or just a Wednesday wine night, Wednesday wing night, I don't know what you're having, but what you do is you take the cards, you can also do this at separate times, and then come together for the the second part. But the first part is to go through the cards and to just sort them, and you're gonna make a yes pop, a yes PAL is you look at that card and you're like, 100% that's me, 100% yes. Family is important to me, no matter what I don't it's like a gut instinct, intuition, vibe. Then you can have also have a maybe in a no pile. So the no pile is like, not totally not into it. And and then the maybe pile is like you're torn. And usually that torn feeling is like, I feel like this is an important value for life, but it didn't give me that gut intuition twinch That my yes pal gave me, but it's going to feel bad putting it in the No pal, that's why we're giving ourselves a baby pal, give yourself that maybe pile. After you sort through that what you're going to do is you're going to go through the maybe pile one more time and put it into yes or no's. And I think what you're going to find because, again, we're trying to get rid of as many cards as we can. We want to really whittle down our personal core values to like five to 10. I'll give you 10. I think five to seven is better, but I'll give you 10. And then when you do. Your shared values work. You want to get to five. So again, we're gonna go through a maybe pile see if we left any actual gut yeses in there by accident. If not, they all go into no's. And we're just gonna look at that yes pile. When we look at that yes pile, we are then going to go through it again and see if there are any nos, if there are any maybes, because, again, we want to get that yes, pile down to five to 10 cards, five to 10 values, and once we keep sorting and sorting and sorting and getting through those things, then that is when we have our set of values and write it on a sticky note. Write it in your journal, put it in your reminders on your phone, take a picture of them, post them up on the wall, do whatever you want, because I think it's important to remind ourselves, you know, often, or just have it in view of how we want to practice and live life, right? Sometimes we get caught so caught up in the busy days that we forget how we want to practice and live life, or we forget of what's important to us, because we're just trying to survive, right, especially with everything that's going on in the world now, a lot of us are probably just trying to survive. Okay, so once you have your personal five two again, I gotta be generous to your five to 10 values, you and your love of life are going to come together and you're going to share what those five or 10 values are, and you're going to see if there's any magical, amazing overlap already. Hopefully there is. If there is not, what you guys are going to do is you're going to mix up those 10 to 20 cards and you're going to sort through them again, but as a couple, right? So what gives you the gut yes or the gut No? And then you get to have a little chat about it, and a little perspective of how you think it plays out, how you think that value plays out in your life as a couple, and what you think you would do when certain decisions come up for certain things, and that is how you're going to get your five to 10 list. Now, again, for some people, some people love to be DIY, fantastic. So if you're going to be DIY, this is for you. If you're not super DIY, okay, then I can totally help you out and support you with this. It's fun. You know, usually it takes like a one to two sessions to do. It's it's just great. And we can use the fancy cards if you want. But that's what, really what you are going to come up with. Now, the last part of the sorting process that you're going to do is 100% you need to write these on a sticky note, on a whatever. You can even make it lovely. Like I said, if you're DIY people, and you love to be crafty, make a beautiful thing about it, right? Like all of those paintings you get at Winners or or wherever you're shopping, and they have like, the the like, live, love, laugh on it, or there's other ones that have other quotes, or like, these are our house rules, right? This is kind of what you're making. Like these. These are our house values. These are our love space values. That's what you're putting together. So put it on a sticky note, put it on a something, put it on your fridge, put it on your wall, so it's in a place that you walk by sort of daily, right? It's not like you have to stop and always read it, but it's there. It's in your eyes view. It's in your mind's view, right? And it's going to be a reminder, even if you don't know that it's reminding you it's going to be there in the back of your brain. So setting these values, it is what is going to set the vibe of your relationship. So what are your values that you're going to come together on? Right? They're like, they're like a theme song, or, Oh, better, better. Nowadays we don't have theme songs. They're like the playlist, right? Your values, these core values that you guys are going to come together with, these are the playlist, the playlist for your relationship and for your path together, set your values to set your vibe and be sparked.