Are you proactive or reactive in your relationships? In this latest episode, we dive into the exciting concept of being proactive in our relationships while addressing the common fear of change that might keep us stuck. Recognizing that change can be daunting, the episode will encourage you to overcome apprehensions, emphasizing that staying stuck is not the desired outcome. Instead, the focus is on learning and exploring within the framework of the CAKE model, with an emphasis on Real Relationship Energy.
Communication is neither inherently good nor bad. You will learn that if messages aren't conveying their intended meaning, adjustments can always be made. Listen as we dismantle the notion of "relationship work" as a potentially overwhelming concept and redirect the spotlight to the importance of putting energy into relationships. By adopting a collaborative and teamwork approach, you will find yourselves proactively engage in decisions that lead to positive outcomes, strengthening bonds, increasing overall energy, and creating lasting positive experiences and memories in your relationships. Join us to learn how being proactive can transform your relationship dynamics and contribute to a more fulfilling and vibrant connection.
About the Host:
Meet Crystal, your relationship and social health coach. Crystal is the founder of Sparked Forever Relationship & Singles coaching. She started her journey supporting the neurodiverse community in navigating this, sometimes frustrating, neurotypical social world. Lessons and inspiration from her earlier work drives Crystal’s passion for bringing couples and singles together through acceptance, understanding and big picture thinking to grow vibrant relationships. Crystal understands that the foundation for our social health and well-being starts with making connections to others. When Crystal is not working with couples, she loves to be out on adventures with her partner and bonus kids or spending time connecting with friends over good food and fun music.
Links:
https://www.instagram.com/sparkedforever/
https://www.instagram.com/sparkitsocial/
https://www.tiktok.com/@sparked_forever
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Welcome, everyone to our love space today. You know, what you already know about me is that it's my mission on here to make you all get excited to be proactive about your relationships, right to be thinking about getting more of that real relationship energy, right as I like to call it the ar e into your everyday lives, making it easy for you to feel, you know, vibrant about being in love. I mean, I love love. Some people think it's super cheesy and whatever. But I, you know, that's why I'm here. Because I love love, I want everyone to get lots of it. And in lots of different forms, right doesn't always have to be romantic love that we're chatting about here. Because that as you know, all of our human relationships have the same foundational big picture building blocks, and we can bring in more of our friend love more of her family love more of a romantic love, you know, with any of these things that we're ever exploring on here for the most part, but I know that some of you, some of you may find some of this little scary, right? Because really what I'm asking you to do when I say like let's destigmatize this, and let's be proactive, is being a really I'm asking you to try some new things. To go into the unknown a little bit. You know, and I can understand I've been at those points where, you know, it's scary to do something new, it's scary to go into the unknown. And it's actually it's Oh, that's actually okay. I just want you to let let you guys know that that is amazingly normal.
You know, I was reading this book called surrounded by idiots, and I can't remember the author's name just off the top of my head. I wanted to say Erickson, something, I'll put it in the show notes, just so I make sure I give him full credit for, for his wonderful book. And now not everyone likes that book. I do like it. In some ways. I don't think it's 100% accurate. But I do think it has some good points. And as I like it, as I like to think in big picture ideas, it really helps you think about human interactions and people and different maybe personality types. And how is low human beings really interact with each other? It helps. It does some big picture ideas for that. Right. And actually, you know, what, another good point that that book, actually, with the besides the big picture ideas, is it really gets across the idea that communication is not inherently good or bad. Right. And that's, you know, what I have talked about previously is that the idea of communication is just sending and receiving messages. And whether we've happened to do you know, if we've happened to get our message across an n, a, n, n an impactful way, or a meaningful way, or in an accurate way, that's great, but that doesn't always happen. But that doesn't mean the way we communicated with inherently good or bad, or what have you, but anywho. So in that book, he kind of talks about how you know, because we can look at all populations on a curve, and we're always gonna have that big mountain, the bubble part in the middle that shows us the majority. So he talks about the fact that that bubble part is taken up by the color green, right, people who are the color green, and that most of the population and even, you know, us who are maybe not full on green people, we have some green Ines. And that green people have a reluctance see to change, just for the sake that they kind of enjoy the status quo, or they kind of enjoy the known. Right? And don't don't we all enjoy, you know, and you can even see that. And again, this the surrounded by idiots books, he does do a lot of workplace situational examples. And then that you can sort of see, like, if you've ever tried to do systems change, or organism, organizational behavior, and you're trying to, you know, bring in a new, like a new way to do things in an office or a new, you know, system, or a new management team or anything like that, right, trying to change the culture of a place is very, very difficult. And I think that, so I do think his point could possibly be true that there are a lot of people who are greens and even if they're maybe not super happy in a situation, that the idea of change can be even scarier can be even more intimidating and overwhelming than, you know, the what the uncomfortableness they're feeling at the moment. So that makes sense.
And I just tell you that little bit from that book to help you really see that it's normal to feel uncomfortable about the idea of change, and especially for you know, my neuro spacey peeps You know, some of us can have difficulty with pre imagining situations and scenarios. And that can make new situations and new set scenarios seem, you know, unpredictable. And even a bit, you know, unsafe. So, me asking you to be proactive and putting energy in your relationships, or, you know, even if your relationships are already a little bit and not a good spot, little bit rocky a little, you know, have a bit of the achiness to them. You know, a big word can be like, what if that change? What if me working on it actually made it worse? And isn't that the thing that keeps us stuck? Right, is thinking those what ifs? What if I shared my feelings? What if I expressed my needs? What if? What if? What if, what if we could go down? Right? Can we go all of us at certain days, certain days, certain times? I'll go down a huge, scary tunnel of what if? But what if you don't? What if you don't make those changes? What if you don't try to be proactive? Right? To me, that seems that seems much scarier, I think, than anything else. Is that what if peace to being stuck? And, you know, staying where we are? That, to me seems like a more a more frightening question to answer, but that's why you're lucky to be here. Right? Because we're not gonna go down crazy. What if? Rabbit Hole? Right? You know, so again, that relationship work blue? I don't like that word. We know, remember that we're not usually isn't the word work, but right, because blah, who wants to do work? That seems scary and daunting, right. And that doesn't seem like a good way to do change. But the idea of relationship work means that, you know, can mean to some people or maybe has mean has meant to in previous experiences, that you're going to find out or be told all of the laundry list of things that you're doing wrong. And I think again, that's why I think, you know, we really need to D stigmatize working on relationships, because I think that's what a lot of people think it's about is that I get to go learn about all the things that I'm not good at doing, or I can't do or that I've been wrong about. That's not what we're doing. Oh, my gosh, why would you come every week? If that's what we're gonna do? That's, that does sound horrible. Don't do that. Don't go. Oh, right. Right. Don't do that. That'd be silly.
Okay, so we're here, right? Because of the big picture idea of using our cake model by our communication, affection, kind from this energy kind of framework, and thinking of about our real relationship energy, right, our, our, our E. We're exploring and learning about it together, we're learning about not what's wrong, but maybe what's not working for you. Right? Like, if we think about that on a really basic level, like say, you're, you go to a doctor and you're getting hives. And the doctor, you sort of figure out its milk. That's, I mean, I just bring this up, because the problem is, I have not gives me hives. But, you know, if you think about it is the doctor can be like, Oh, you've been wrong. Who's drinking milk? Do the doctor is gonna say, you know, it is not working for you. Let's try some soy milk, some almond milk, some other, you know, non dairy milk replacement, or, you know, maybe just not just no milk ideas. But that's, you know, that's what it how it should also be when we're working on our relationships. It's not what's wrong, you know, for the most part, it's what's not working, or what needs to be adjusted, or what needs to be tweaked or added or taken away, right, like, please take away my milk. Great idea. You know, and we're also looking at our relationships from a teamwork, or here's our hot sexy word, as a collaboration, right between two people. Because of my bonus kids, I know that there's not as much group work that goes on in schools nowadays, for whatever reason. But really being in a long term relationship is like a long term group work project, right? You're constantly making group decisions. You're constantly bouncing ideas off of each other. You're constantly brainstorming and putting things together. It really is a collaboration. And it's not about two people. All battling out for supremacy, right? It's not about one person going to counseling or relationship coaching to get to find out who's the winner of the relationship, and then who gets to make all of the right choices, versus the person who is just the wrong choice maker. And I think that's how a lot of people can feel. Maybe that's how some of you have felt in the past, right, going to therapy, or coaching or getting advice from friends. I mean, sometimes advice from friends can be the best, and sometimes it can, you know, absolutely be the worst, right?
So thinking about getting away from that, right, that we're here to do. collaborative work, that we're here as a team, right. And I think a lot of the times the couples that are kind of all used the word accidentally, I don't know that anyone's ever accidentally. Well, I guess some people are accidentally successful, some people may know, why they're being why they're successful in their relationships in their collaboration as a couple, but I think that couples, you know, who may not even know that they're doing it and who are being successful in growing their energy together, are usually doing are usually making a lot of group decisions together. Right, they're doing a lot of the you know, chatting and talking about decisions, and opening, open, opening li Yes, opening really listening to each other, there we go, come on mouth, opening, really listening to each other with open air, there we go much better. And, you know, when you're proactive about your relationship, or about getting your relationship back into shape, you're going to also, you're going to be doing that you're going to be making a lot of decisions together, decisions that are going to lead to changes together. And it's actually been shown that change, and challenging ourselves with new situations, or new conversations with each other, or trying out those new details, right, those details the most talking about that you get to fill in read the big picture that your details that you're using to fill in the big picture ideas, that these things, these things strengthen these, these challenges, these changes actually strengthen our bond with each other.
K, I'll pause, let that just set in. Right. So changing challenges, when we have kindness with each other, strengthens our bonds. Studies have also shown that it increases our energy. Wow. That's amazing, because I always love to go on about our real relationship energy, right? And how we're so lucky, the beginning of our relationships to have that new relationship energy that we get to feel. And let's get that real relationship, energy to continue. Right. So these changes and challenges and experiencing new situations and conversations together actually creates that energy. Well, that's amazing. That's not scary. That's actually fantastic. Right? Because that leads us to creating it also actually leads us to create more positive memories and more shared experiences with each other, being in more new situations, experiencing more changes, experiencing more new conversations, right, more new decision making. That's amazing. So just starting on the path of change, and deciding that, yes, we're going to be proactive, or, Yes, we're going to work on things, just making that decision to be on that path actually already starts the positive things, right, because to make that change to be on the path, we're already experiencing a change. We're already starting new conversations, we're already being in a new situation together. So that's already making these small things that are going to strengthen our bonds and increase our energy for each other and and, you know, and increase, making those positive memories and shared experiences together. That's right. That is right. Yes. Making the decision to be proactive about your relationship that has already got you before you even do anything else before we even explore the kick model before we even do any of that. That already got you on the path to be sparked