Look Where You're Going
In this episode, Libby talks about keeping your attention and energy toward what's really important.
Transcript
The other night I was getting some support from a coach and yes, I have a coach, coaches need coaches. And I was talking to my coach because I had been feeling really stuck in some feelings about parenting and how hard it can be sometimes. And I realized I had allowed myself to fall into this pattern of just beating myself up in a really unhelpful way, which I know better than to do, but I just kind of got caught in a loop and it's one of my weaknesses. Well, so my coach said something to me, so very profound and the shift that it has created since then has been so powerful that I just knew that I had to share it with you. So that's what we're gonna talk about today, which is keeping your eye on what really matters.
So if you've never heard of kimchi cuddles, kimchi cuddles is a comic by Tikva Wolf, a very talented cartoonist. And if you haven't heard of this comic, I really recommend you go do a Google search right now for kimchi cuddles. I'll link in the show notes. Anyway, one of my favorite kimchi cuddles comics is a very early piece which is four panels of a conversation between two people, one person whose polyamorous says, oh man, I'm so tired. I didn't get any sleep last night. And the other person says, Hey, I don't wanna hear about your weird poly sex. And then the polyamorous person responds sex who has time for sex. I've been up all night, emotionally processing with everyone.
And I mean, this comic is funny, right? A lot of polyamorous people laugh because that sounds pretty familiar. In fact, there's a, there's kind of a joke that like polyamorous people don't have more sex, but they do have more processing. But I actually have a friend who has told me that he keeps a very close eye on the processing to fun ratio in his relationships and tends to get quite concerned if the processing starts to take over the fun. Now that doesn't mean that processing isn't necessary and even very important. If you've been listening to my podcast for a little while, you know, that I've devoted a fair number of episodes to tools that can help you emotionally process more lovingly, but also more effectively so that you don't get stuck in loops or escalating fights or keep getting caught in unhelpful or destructive patterns.
<Affirmative> and I do think it's really important to learn how to make things better when things are going sideways and put some attention on that, I think being able to have healthy conflict and repair is really important. And if you don't know how to do that, you might have to put some work into practicing it. However, if you get too focused on that, you can lose track of some very important things in particular, why you're doing your relationships in the first place. Now, when I say, why do relationships? I don't mean why have relationships at all. I've talked before about how relationships are the core of our well-being as humans. And that's because they're essential to our mental and our physical health. I also believe that relationships can be a tremendous catalyst for growth. They are reference points for our understanding of ourselves and in a more tangible way.
Most of us need other people to survive, to share resources, to give us care. And as I've said before, our brains are wired to be connected and loneliness is as dangerous to our bodies as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, loneliness can literally shorten our lifespan. So, I mean, hopefully, if you're listening to of this podcast though, you're already on board for the need for a relationship, but I am asking a different question here. I'm asking a bigger question, which is what role do these particular relationships play in? How you see your life? How are you embodying your values and becoming more who you are and who you want to be through your relationships? When you think about the people in your life and the connections you have, how do you wanna feel with them about them? Who is it that you really wanna be with these folks or who wanna become and overall, what do you wanna create?
What's your vision far too often? I think we spend a lot of time and energy noticing how things are wrong, or how things feel bad or how things aren't the way we want them to be. And if you're polyamorous, that can actually, in some ways be our default setting. I think a lot of us who have chosen this way of relating are at least initially motivated to become poly because of what we don't want or what isn't working for us in the dominant way of being. And it's not just monogamy that we don't want. A lot of the times we don't want control or ownership. We don't want to put our relationships or what's possible for them in these little preset boxes. We don't want the isolation of nuclear families or coupled them. Some of us don't wanna participate in the patriarchal institution of marriage.
We don't wanna be confined by traditional gender roles or heteronormativity or sex-negativity. If we're relationship anarchists, we don't want Amato normativity, which is the idea that romantic relationships are the pinnacle of all relationships and should be the main goal of our lives. We wanna step off the relationship escalator I could go on, but what I see less of in all of this is what we're stepping forward into what we truly dream about, what wanna create for ourselves in the world. And I think monogamous people too, can often get stuck on what they don't want when they're in relationship. You don't want to lose each other. You don't wanna have a relationship like your parents did. You don't wanna be cheated on you don't wanna share. You don't ever wanna stop having sex with each other. Maybe if you're married, you don't ever wanna get divorced, et cetera.
And it's so easy to get tied up in what we don't want to the point that we forget to turn our attention to what we do want again, what we dream of, what we hope to create lives and project out into the world. And to me, that is a little bit like trying to climb a mountain or go on a long journey somewhere while constantly looking backwards and sideways in any direction, but the direction of where you actually wanna go. And, you know, I tell my kids this, when they're learning to ride a, I tell them, make sure you're looking at where you wanna go because wherever you're looking, that's where you're gonna go. So if you're looking at the ground, that's where you're gonna go. I realize that it might feel hard to craft a vision for your relationships because ultimately relationships are something that you co-create with.
The people in them, you might have your vision fine, but you can't just impose that vision on other people. I think this is true to an extent, but I think often we can place an overemphasis on going with the flow or being organic instead of intentional and following wherever the relationship goes. And then just kind of making things work as you go along, creating as you go along and not keeping an eye toward our own personal dreams and our own deep values and working on making our relationships, serve those values and help manifest those dreams. At the end of the day, just getting the baseline needs that a relationship provides, like connection, not being alone, healthy touch sex, maybe someone to care for us and share resources with all the while working to not feel miserable together. I don't think that's really enough to fully nourish us.
I mean, if we're thinking of relationships as a like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that's just getting our baseline needs met, but we have these other needs on top that we also wanna reach for. And I think ignoring those is playing small. We human, we humans are creatures. We, humans, are creatures who want meaning in our lives. I think we're wired for that too. I think many of us have dreams and goals for how we wanna live, what, how we wanna show up in the world and what we wanna make. And I think one of the ways that that shows up is how we create relationships. And I wanna offer that when you're working on some things that can be hard within your relationships, like taming, your woosh practicing compassion, protecting your boundaries, being gentle with each other, creating security and trust. A thing that can help is to remember that all of it is in service of this larger dream, this vision.
Remember what you're ultimately trying to create here that can help you sometimes let go of things that maybe aren't so important to hold on and move on from things that you might be getting stuck in. It can help you from those hours and hours of ruminating and processing that can really grind you down. It stops you from digging in your heels or running away or getting stuck in a loop. There's a reason that I say in my introduction of every episode of this podcast that I believe love is why we're here. We're not here to have healthy conflict or good boundaries. We're here to love all of that other stuff is in service of that and whatever dreams you have for what your relationships can be. So I have a practice for you which is simply to take the time to get present to your vision.
And if you are a person who really likes handouts, I'm going to have a link in the description for a handout that you can download to guide you through this. But I'm also going to do an audio version of that for those of you who are audio folks. So if you're able to, I want you to spend a moment with me now if you're in your car, don't close your eyes, but if you are not, I invite you to close your eyes and just clear your mind, and now just create a picture in your mind of what you most deeply long for in your relationships. What is your biggest hope or wildest dream for how you want your relationships to be in your life? How do you wanna feel when you think about, or you, when you're together, what do you see for your future?
And I want you to get deeply in touch with this vision, for the role of love and family and friendship and in your life. And what meaning do they have to you? What values are you looking to express through your connections to others, as you think about this, don't get bogged down in the details and the specifics, because those can and will change in negotiation with others. What I want you to do is just dream about how you want those things to feel and how you want your relationships to feel and how those connections are going to feel. What kind of love and what kind of partnerships and rituals and experiences and practice and traditions do you want to create.
Now, I want you to imagine that you went to bed one night and while you were asleep, a miracle occurred. And just like that your, your, and your relationships are now exactly as you always dreamed, they would be. And you wake up and you begin your day. Now, what happens in your day that lets you know, know that the miracle occurred? What do you experience? How do you know that things have changed? And that now all the love in your life is exactly the way that you want it to be. I really want you to spend some time with this. And again, if you wanna work on my handout, you can write it out or journal it. I really encourage you to just really free-associate don't think too hard about it.
If everything was as you right now, what would that look like for you? And after you've spent some time on this, I want you to revisit all of those ideas and all of those thoughts. And if you've written it down, then just reread what you've written. And then you can distill down that vision into a sentence or two or even just one word. Or maybe even if you're more visual, maybe a symbol or an image. And I want you to picture that word or that phrase or that symbol. And if it's, if it's something verbal, you can speak it to yourself. Or if it's something that's an image, I want you to just bring it to the front of your mind.
That is something that you can come back to. Now, my vision is simple. I'll tell you I want a family where we all accept and affirm each other exactly as we are. I want us all to share in connecting rituals and experiences that make us feel connected to each other and also to something greater than ourselves. My mantra's kind of a little embarrassing right now. I, I may revise it, but right now what I came up with is I want my home to be a refuge of peace and love. And I feel like that sounds a little hokey, but that is what I work to create in everything I do for my home and what I create there in my family and the people who are, are extensions of my family and other people that I love now. I mean, do I always succeed in keeping that vision at the forefront of my mind?
No. I think that that's why I was stuck in a loop was because I had lost sight of that and sort of gotten stuck on the particulars. But when I'm really tuned into that vision, it's so much easier to not get stressed out or been out of shape or wanna fight about something it's easier to not even be irked by inconveniences or minor in considerations as a result of the coaching that I got. I, I think I've decided that I wanna begin a Morning meditation practice, where I spent some to time just really focusing in on my vision before I start my day. If you're able to distill your vision down into something short, like a mantra or one word or a symbol or a picture that you can bring forth in your mind, that again, that's something you can return to and connect to when you're having a hard moment when there's tension, when there's conflict and it can really help turn things around because it's a reminder of why you're here in the first place and who you're really speaking to and whether this is really worth it.
Once you've gotten really clear on what you are trying to create, I then encourage you to have conversations with the people in your life about your vision and see if you can together create a vision for sharing your lives. There may be places where you don't overlap. There may be priorities or values that you don't share, but I encourage you to try to find the Venn diagram in the middle of the venn diagram, where you do align, find your story together, her find where you have shared meaning, and then make a point to have those conversations regularly about what you are creating together and why it's so important to you. And I, I would recommend having this meeting at least like maybe once a year or maybe twice a year or quarterly, but just have this moment of like looking at the big picture and looking at this deeper, bigger thing that you're going for together, having a system of shared meaning that you can keep coming back to can really help you also make decisions and tackle problem with just a completely different energy.
The focus stops being about, you know, is this the right thing to do? Or does this serve my needs or your needs? And instead becomes, is this truly in line with what truly matters to me is this serving what I wanna create? Does this serve my vision and your vision, keeping your eye on that and actively taking intentional steps to create it together is probably also one of the most powerful ways to create security and trust and deep connection. While also having the power to let a lot of problems and challenges just feel less important, sometimes melting them away altogether. So to recap, focusing on problems can just really weigh you down and wear you out sometimes. And it can really help to reorient yourself why you're here and keep your eyes, keep your attention focused on what you're striving for, turning towards your values and the greater meaning your relationships have in your life can help you get unstuck and keep you from getting too mired down during the hard times, getting clear on what you wanna create in your relationships. And then distilling that into an easy way to turn back to that vision through a word or a phrase or an image can help you keep your attention and energy focused forward towards what at your building, towards what you truly desire from your life and from love.
