Julie Smith: Moment 94 - Doctor Julie: The ONE Simplifying Thing That Will Transform Your Life

00:02So values and goals, what is the difference? What is a value? Sure. So the way I would talk about sort of values and goals and therapy is really around a goal is something that you, once you achieve it, once you get there, it's done. So, you know, your goal might be to get through your exams. Okay. Exams are over, you passed, done. A value doesn't finish or end. It's a pathway. If you imagine your life as a journey, for example, it's a path that extends the whole of your life. And it's something that you choose to always stay close to when you can. And I think, you know, life will always take you in different directions.

00:42So sometimes life will pull you away from a particular value. But it's really about always evaluating and knowing where that path is so that you can pull back in that direction. So for example, when your, you know, your career starts to take over because it's so busy. And then you think, oh, I haven't spoken to my girlfriend all week. That's you going, that path's too far away now. I'm pulling back. I need to head back in this direction because this is important to me.

01:05And so it's a kind of, you know, winding path where you're, sometimes you're pulling away from it and sometimes you're going back towards it. And something that I included in the book was these sort of little values check-ins that I would do. And we do in therapy where we look at, okay just look at the different areas of your life doesn't have to be rocket science doesn't have to be really kind of airy-fairy it's looking at okay what's important in your life you might have family intimate relationships health creativity you know lifelong learning career contribution those kind of things and then you could literally kind of split it up into boxes and put in each box words not about it's what's really crucial is it's not what happens to you It's not what you want to happen to you. It's how you want to respond to things, how you want to be in that area of your life, what kind of person you want to be. So let's say you were looking at your, you know, romantic relationships. What kind of boyfriend do I actually want to be? You know, what kind of partner do I want to be? What do I want to represent to that person? And how do I want to come at difficulties? How do I want to sort of respond to problems that we face? And,

02:13and you know, that kind of thing. So it's all looking at the attitude that you bring to that situation in your life or that area of your life. And you might come up with words that, that then kind of resonate or, you know, maybe, I don't know, in maybe in your work life, maybe enthusiasm is a word that you just hold close to you. And that becomes one of your values. And so you can then sort of exercise that's in the book is you can almost rate, okay, how important is it to me to be enthusiastic in my work? Maybe it's 10 out of 10. That's really, really important to me. And on that same scale, then how much do I feel like I'm living in line with that this week or today? Two out of 10. I'm pretty tired. Can't even bother today. This job's really boring today or whatever. And so when you, what you've done there is you looked, you've opened up a discrepancy between, okay, this is really important to you, but you're not living in line with it? Why? What's going on? Not in a way that you can then be really self-critical, but as a tool to say, yeah, my girlfriend's really important to me, but I haven't seen her for four weeks. Why? What's stopping me from jumping on a plane right now? Okay, let's do that. And then,

03:21you know, when you start to do those things and you're coming back towards your value, the sort of rating for how much you're living in line with it would go up. And so doing that kind of exercise is really just a long, long winded way of saying, you can look at what's important to you. You can just do a really quick measure up of how much am I living in line with it? And what areas of my life do I need to pay attention to because I'm not living in line with it. So it can be kind of quite simple and a fairly quick exercise, really.

03:48I am. I was actually watching a video last night and there was a guy on YouTube. I don't know how I managed to stumble across it. The video had like 2000 views. This is not anybody, anybody would know but he was sat in his car and I found it really fascinating because I don't know whether I should say this or not but um I found it fascinating because he exhibited certain like narcissistic delusions of grandeur in talking about what he wanted to become and what he wanted from his life and um it got me thinking that it's quite difficult to understand whether something you say or write down or aiming for is a value or if it's just based on like an inherent deep childhood born insecurity because if you'd asked me at 18 what my values were I would have said a million pounds a Lamborghini like I would have I would have defaulted to these things because those were the things that would have like I don't know scratched my like insecurities right yeah but as I've as I attain those things and had more chance to reflect on what actually makes me feel good and fulfilled and complete I would have said family connection you know health two very different things right one's cause-based one is just an insecurity so how do we know the difference

04:52And you don't, right? Because, you know, it's always a horrible answer, isn't it? But you, you know, maybe you had that aspiration when you were younger, and, and you went with it because it's all you knew at the time. And then you learned some, you became more wise, and your values shifted slightly. And, and that's the thing. That's why I talk about doing sort of quite regular values check ins, because depending on your life, you know, stage, and what you're doing, your circumstances, chances, your values will change. You know, my values transformed when I had children and, you know, probably sort of flipped them upside down really. And, and that's okay. It was, I could never have known that that would be, I couldn't have prioritized my children before they were there anyway, you know? And, and for example, you might not have been able to know that you would feel differently now back then at that age, you didn't have the capacity to do that. You hadn't had the life experience. So it was okay. You know, there isn't this sense of, there is this right path. And if you get on it at 17, you'll be all right. You know, the whole process is a learning process. So it's okay to change direction. It's okay to discover this is not where I want to

06:04be, but I've learned something. Here we go. Let's change direction. Let's go in this direction. And now I've got the knowledge of where I don't want to be. Speaking of changing direction, then a lot of what's written about how we change direction is you've got to make this like big grand decision in your life. And then today you've got to go in that direction as if it was like a 90 degree turn and this can be quite terrifying for a lot of people because it's not easy to do you talk about this in the book you talk about habits and things like that and how we make change in our life what have you learned in your you know your experience as a clinical psychologist about how people do actually make meaningful change in direction in their life um i think something i've learned is that big meaningful change is not made drastically and quickly, you know, sustainable changes made carefully. And there's this process of it's not just action, there is a lot of kind of reflection. And then there's a bit of action, then there's a bit more reflection of like, we tried that, how was it? You know, do we need to change direction? You know, we keep moving. So it's a kind of bit by bit by bit. But we greatly

07:13underestimate how powerful and sustainable that can be when we do it bit by bit and, you know, develop habits, for example, and constantly re-evaluate and check in on which direction we want to go in. So I think something that I've learned, and certainly actually in my NHS work, for example, the type of work that I was doing, it took time, you know, if someone's really poorly and there's a lot to work through, that takes a long time and that's okay.

07:43That's kind of how we work. It takes time to heal and things like that. So I think I learned to sort of acknowledge that not everything has to be done yesterday.