Get Centered | LQ018

Welcome to our love space today. I'm here out on the rainy west coast. Recording in the drizzle. So if you are listening from a drizzly rainy place, hopefully you are all snugged up like I am. If not, and you're enjoying from a wonderful sunny patio or out having a walk, then I am very jealous right now of us any good fortunes, that anyways, this week, I had such a wonderful, interesting breakthrough with one of the lovely couples I work with. And so I just wanted to share that with you in this actually, I think it's going to be a two parter, it could even jump into a three part or half depending how deep we dive in. But so the couple is working with this week, we're really working on honing their communication skills with each other. So they're already starting to get the big picture of communication, and sort of where some of their miscommunications are coming from, but we kind of still keep hitting this, this brick wall with things. So we were you know, diving into some things. And this is why I love the the model that we work on here more of the coaching model rather than the counseling model because it allows us to dive into some paths and then see how we're going to get some forward motion in these. So I just love it. Because there is questions I can ask you that are going to unlock surprises that you didn't know were there. And I didn't know where they're surprised. And now we can go down. Dive into those explorations. So exciting to me, so. So let me start by putting out a few. So they came across something interesting. Okay, that's I not sure if I passed that on. But we came across something interesting. Now, before I let you know what the interesting surprise was that we uncovered. Let me put out a few kind of questions, a few scenarios to you, and see where we go with this. And this is so that you can dive in on your end to a participatory episode. There we go. So my two big questions are, what are the things that drive you in life? What is that one aspect? That sort of thing that you kind of are basing a lot of your decisions around? What is that thing that's driving you to make certain choices? Okay, so I'll give you now my scenario. So those are my two big questions. Let's take those and let them just sit in the back them, you know, ruminate back there, while we think about these scenarios. So if you were at work, and your boss asks you to stay late, but you know that this is going to delay, or interrupt the start of your Mega moment of love, right, your date night, your Mega moment of love and connection. Do you say yes and stay? Okay, if your mom wants to invite all your extended family to your wedding, okay, here's another scenario. And your partner or your soon to be partner, you're already partner, but you know, planning the paperwork for it. While it's a small wedding, do you feel caught in the middle? And stuck between those two things? What if your partner can't drive your kids to dance class tonight? And they tell you that it's more important for you to drive them than going to your own yoga class? Is it? Is it more important? I'm sure I've got a lot of your brains going. Now, I know if I was sitting back. Like I got to think of these scenarios. But if I was sitting back and listening, I know my brain would already be maybe trying to defend one side or the other it would I'm sure your brains are already kind of spinning, kind of trying to defend if there's when you think is right or when you think it's wrong or, or whatnot. Okay, if you get an amazing, unexpected tax return, it's kind of that time of year if you're listening live. So, you know if you get an unexpected, amazing tax refund, and your love of life thinks this is the perfect opportunity to take a trip to Mexico to unwind together. Do you agree? Or is it more important to pay off that credit card? Whose rent if one of your friends wants you to do a girls trip, or a boy's trip, but your budget can only afford to cover one weekend away? Are you a bad friend If you decline and instead do a trip with your love of life with your significant other care? This is the last one if you do I'm probably getting everyone revved up. So if you're revved up right now, take a deep breath. But if you hate clutter in your ad, your love of life is an extreme collector. Who is right about how many items get to enter the household? And how many items get to stay. Right? Okay. So, you know, these are some big, big scenarios, big communication things. I'm sure, like I said that everyone that you're probably all starting to get pretty quickly. And that's because these situations are really pinpointing they, they might resonate with you, because maybe you're the collector. And that you feel you should have a right to get all of your little tangible things, all of your little possessions in your life. Maybe if you're the person who wants to pay down the credit card, you know, maybe that situation makes you feel prickly. Like how on earth? Could someone want to go on vacation? Right, you're probably already jumping ahead to certain facts about why one side or the other side is important. And why is that? Well, it's really bringing out that intensity, because these scenarios are actually questioning, for some of you out there questioning your own self identity, these questions are actually questioning what you center your life around the kind of what you believe is the most important piece in life, or one of the most important pieces that you're putting that you're allowing to, I guess influence your decision, and that you're giving more control to or more power to in your life. Right? If I'm if I'm questioning what you have built your identity around, okay? If I'm questioning your identity, then I'm also questioning your self worth. Because often our self worth is based on what how we identify what we identify as, right? And if I'm questioning that, and I'm hitting it, that center for you, and then I'm now telling you that that's wrong, that if you're the person who wants to pay off the credit card, that's wrong. If you're the person wants to go on vacation, that's wrong, then I am starting to question that center. And if I make that center for you, that thing that is driving you, if I'm questioning that, then it's going to make it feel wrong, or unimportant, or not valuable. And if that thing is making up your identity, then you're going to feel like your identity is wrong and important, not valuable. And if you think your identity is that, then your self esteem, your self acceptance, your self love. It's all it's all going to be devalued. It's all going to be questioned. It's going to shake you it is going to shake you Now does anyone feel shook with that? I know, when we hit on it and session the other day was like well, okay, cared that did that did shake us. No one wants to have their their sense of self shaken, right? No, that's why we get prickly like me just, you might have never even been in any of those scenarios I talked about. But just hearing them just being a part of the listening to them. It makes us feel prickly because maybe we aren't that question some something inside us. Right? That that makes us feel like there is a right or wrong. And so what do we do when we feel question when we feel shaken? When we want to go and defend ourselves? We want to jump in and protect that. That little bit of sense of self that we have in there. Right that don't question my identity. Don't question my self worth don't question what I base of what I'm centering my life on. Don't question that. Right. Then we get defensive and jumpy. And then we have to come up with a list of arguments right? Fit. And then that makes sense. When we start to protect ourselves and defend ourselves, then we actually that stops our communication. We can't be community, good communicators, because now we're almost like, oop, we're stopping the mail coming through. I didn't like those letters I received. I didn't like those emails I got and so now I'm just not opening up my email for a few days, right? You shut down and it starts to make you feel like the other person doesn't understand you. Right? How could they not understand that going on vacation is more important than paying off the credit card? How could they not understand that paying

off the credit card is more important? How can this how can they not understand these things? Right? And that's when those fights and those arguments. It's those bigger miscommunications and that tug of war. If you are in a relationship right now, where you are feeling that tug of war. This may be what we're hitting on today. Right, if you're feeling that push and pull, and we just cannot get on the same page, and we keep having these arguments, and crystal has told us that, you know, these arguments like are like an argument is maybe more of a misunderstanding and a misunderstanding is maybe a miscommunication. And so now we're thinking about communication. Okay? Well, it actually could be something even a little bit deeper than just our communication, right? So that's when those fights and things are going to ramp up. Because really, we're having a tug of war between centers. Right, so what is your center that? What is the center thing, crystal that we are talking about? Right? It's this thing that influences your decision. So what is that for you? So the general list if you go and look up, like centered people, or people centered ideas, the general list that comes up, and that many carry with us and I feel like, again, big picture wise, probably many things could be slotted into these bigger titles on this list. Some of them I think, even when that's really the list, we can maybe put together but anyhow, here we go. So you could be centered around your spouse, you can be centered around yourself, you can be centered around religion, friends, pleasure, possessions, work, money, and family, those are kind of the big idea ones, right. So which of those do you think you are? Like, I know, and I've actually done some work on this previously. So I know that, that I'm a person that tries to move past this, but I am definitely a spouse centered person, I think you can probably tell from this podcast that I am, you know, in between kind of I did friends was also on here Rec. So I'm kind of between the spouse and the friends, you know, we could even put that into bigger picture that I'm socially centered. And that that's the most important piece of my life. And let me tell you, it's true, I base most of my decisions on whether it's important to social connection or not, right. And so again, that's not the end all be all, and not everyone we meet and life is going to have that same center. So if we think about that, I want you to sit and think I'll go over that list one more time, just so you don't have to rewind. So are you spouse centered, self centered, religion centered, friend centered, leisure center, that would be like the person who's, you know, really looking for fun, and things like that pleasure centered, possession centered, work centered, money centered or family centered. Okay. And again, you know, if you want to get in touch with me to dive into this kind of work more definitely feel free to do so follow me on Instagram at at Spark forever or on tick tock at sparked underscore forever. And feel free to DM me and you know, we can be in touch for that. So if we hop back to these examples, those are those scenarios that made us all feel Prickly, let's to if you're feeling Prickly, will shake the particles off, take a deep breath, you know, all those kinds of things. Because we want to now be active listening, I got I got you to get those particles going just so you could see, you know that it is inside you this center. But let's brush this off so we can move forward. Okay, so the examples if we go back to those, you can clearly see now that we have two centers pulling and pushing, so you know, we have that person with the vacation versus the debt dilemma. Which one of those is right? Well, neither, right. Those are coming from like a pleasure versus money, sort of two centers, going back and forth and tugging at each other. Right? And the one where like, are you willing to postpone date night or maybe canceled altogether to help, you know, support your work or your office, and it might not be for extra money or pay and it might not even, you know, really improve your standing at work. But if you're a person, you're really doing work versus spouse there, right. So if you have one spouse that is going to be upset about canceling date night, because their spouse entered and the other person is work centered, you can have a lot of tug of wars over that right? One person is going to seem like a workaholic. And one person is just going to seem never happy with the amount of time you put in. Right? We have the wet that wedding example. Right? Who gets who is right about how big the wedding list should be your soon to be spouse, or your mother who wants to have this wonderful family moment. And so that's really someone who is feeling torn, because maybe they feel they should be spouse centered. But maybe they're really family centered. And so you know, they want to so if they chose the like, yeah, I want to make my mom happy. I want to do the family focus thing. You know, that's where they feel torn on that piece. Right? You also have the family versus self one with the example of that, should I drive my kids to dance class? Or should I go to my yoga class, which is part of the self care time I put aside for myself? Right? So again, there's no right or wrong there per se when we think of it big I know you're probably coming still coming up with arguments and your brains about which one could be right or wrong. But if you are then say like, oh, which 1am I, which side am I defending? And how is that important to me? And where have I done that in my life, because that will actually probably tell you a lot where your center is. And again, same thing with the girls trip or boys trip versus, you know, just a couple's weekend away when you have to make those hard decisions. You know, depending what perspective you're coming from, if you're coming from a friends or social perspective, versus a spouse centered perspective, you know, again, you can argue that both sides are right, it really depends with that what perspective you are coming from. So you can see in that big picture way, how easy it is to have that tug of war, right? So couples were your centers line up. So again, this is like anything that magically accidentally lines up that we met another person in this whole ginormous planet of human beings. And we happen to share the same love language. And maybe we also happen to share the same centers. Okay, well, lucky, lucky, that couple right are lucky those couples, because they don't have to put as much energy in to figuring out, you know, how we're going to balance this tug of war, how we're going to understand where our center is, that's going to be really the important piece there. Right. So if they have the same centers, like if you have to work center people, and they're going to be totally fine if someone wants to cancel a date night to, so that the other person, right, so that the other person can stay at work, and be a great work team player, and the spouse that's at home, right, the significant other that's at home, they may actually even feel excited, happy, you know, feel proud or good about themselves that they were able to contribute, right? If you're super work centered, you even feel happy when you can contribute to other people's work probably right? You're like, oh, my gosh, I helped you stay at work. But if you're if that is not if you're not both work centered, right? And sometimes we we label those peoples workaholics, right, because all of that that is so important to their identity, their identity is their work. And if they lose that sometimes, you know, and that's kind of sometimes when we go through the midlife crisis, or the big changes in life, sometimes we lose our identity. Because we're losing that thing that we have centered so much of our life, our decisions around if we are work centered person, and we lose our line of work, we get very confused, right, you will get very confused, you wouldn't know what to do. Because you've lost your center, you've lost your identity. And then that does, like I said, it affects your self worth, right. Because if you're measuring yourself on that workpiece you lose your self worth or some of it right, it gets devalued it gets lowered, right? Someone questioned it by firing you or, or it was questioned by you no longer being able to work in that line of work anymore. That's a big deal. That is heartbreaking, right? So you can see how if it lines up magically, lucky you. If it doesn't line up, magically, we can see how there's a tug of war. Now, in part two, we will jump more into, like how we how we can change that and set that up. But it's your job to identify your center. Right. Or maybe you can even like this is this is where maybe the couples who are kind of like pretty good with communication or re sitting down and having you know, some, some in depth thoughtful chats with each other great because you don't want anyone to start to get prickly. But you know, this could even be you might want to even talk about examples of when you guys have seen this or felt this in your relationship, this tug of war piece. And that will help you probably explore and find out which each other's centers are right but don't be scared. Right? So I know because it makes you feel prickly. It makes you feel like if you're thinking right now like oh my gosh, you know, I am pleasure censored or oh my gosh, I am family centered or friend centered or, you know, I'm, I'm this and it makes you feel embarrassed or uncomfortable because maybe that doesn't feel like what your life should be like or what you thought your life was centered around. That's okay, because remember, what do we love around here? We

love vulnerability, right over here at Love corks in our little love space. We love vulnerability. And you can 100% be vulnerable with yourself right now. And you can say yes, that's the kind of person I am. Yes. I am centered around that. Now I can see how when that gets questioned or when there's an opportunity to support that center. That that's the choice So make, right so again, I use the word choice because it's easiest and so many of us are, I think accidentally work centered. You know, if something starts to question your work or question the importance of your day or your checklist of what you have to do for work, then you do get defensive. Right? Or, you know, or if people question, you know, like your money set, or like, I guess, maybe, maybe the choice is between your family, like luck, there's lots of people where they have a tug of war between having, they feel like they have to choose their family or their spouse. Now, that's probably a situation where you're filling that poll, you might be more family centered. And you might be trying to consider your spouse as part of your family. But maybe if your spouse is more spouse centered, they don't need that extra family dynamic that's coming in from extended family or whatnot. I also think what's not on the list, but I think this will go actually under the Family Centered part is you can be family centered, like, I totally aligned with my family, like my mom, my dad, my brothers, sisters, and I give them you know, first dibs, first attention, whatever. My choice is centered around my connection to that family, you could also be family centered, like with your children, right? Like where you're, you're the I mean, children need things for sure. But that your decisions and your choices in life and what you emphasize, and what you give your energy to is sort of funneled more towards your children. And that gets hierarchy that gets like, you know, the top of that hierarchy list, right? And not everyone's like that, and people who do have family at the top where it's like family, but your own children centered, then most of your life decisions are based on that you're like, I'm okay to not go to yoga class, I'm okay to not go on vacation, I'm okay to spend all my money towards private school, like whatever choices you're making, because that is influencing your choice setting. Whereas other people be like, Oh, no, I would never. If I have to give up vacations to go to have my children go to private school, then that means you know that I don't probably have enough money to send them to private school because vacations are really important, right? So again, you can see now how, how these decisions that people make, just like these everyday choices, really have a deeper context, a deeper center to get to. So again, we're all about being vulnerable here. So tell yourself the truth about your center. If you can't tell yourself, who else are you going to be able to tell? Right? And we love vulnerability here. So be vulnerable? Tell yourself, you can even say like, Yep, I'm Crystal the blur. Like, actually, that's a great way to look at it fit to fill in that blank part. Right? Yep, I'm Crystal, the person who is amazingly awesome at my job. And that's me my job. Right? Or you could be like, I'm Crystal, I'm the great bonus mom. And that's my job. And that's 100% My focus of life, right? Or I'm Crystal who is so good to have in front of hard at times. And that's 100%. Me, and how I want people to think of me, right? You could go down that list and see what comes up and resonates for you. Because I think that as to get into this part two, where we're going to actually tweak that you need to know what your center is. Okay, so that's what I want you to do before we jump into part two. If you're kind of binging these episodes, before you get to this next one, I want you to pause and really try to identify what you think your centers, even if you're kind of like, Oh, I'm sort of torn. Right? But there might be a hierarchy of two or three of these things. Right? Then just think of whatever the top one is, which one would you serve the other ones? Right? Because I think there probably is one, right? If you're like, oh, no, I think it's like family and spouse and work be like okay, well if there was a work decision, which one would I choose? Right? And again, there's all those detailed things but think of this big picture because that will help you hit on it more easily. Okay, so yeah, so I want you to really find your center then then what I think would be fun is to see if your centers are in alignment with each other if you and your love of life go you know check in with your centers and find that you have the same one super cool I think you're gonna probably find that they're different or you might find like your top ones are the same so maybe you're both spouse centered but maybe there's a second one under there that's really quite close and maybe that the one where you have the tug of war with right maybe that one is a friends one versus a family one or a money one right that's where people say they most people fight about like two or three things right but I think we actually find about more but it's like kind of wet centering that what's holding that down. What is giving you your tug of war. So reflect on where those miscommunications are coming From because knowing this about you, knowing this about the love of your life. Having this understanding of where you guys are both anchored is going to help you stay sparked