Episode 21: Why Your Relationship Needs a Vision (And a Visionary)
In today’s episode, Liz touches on being a visionary, having a vision for your relationship and future, and why this is so important for your relationship. If you’re someone who wants to reach beyond simply having “goals” or a “checklist” for your relationship’s future, this one is for you.
EPISODE NOTES:
There is a difference between visionaries and integrators, and there are essential parts of both.
Visionaries are the dreamers, they drive thought and innovation. Integrators are the doers, they balance the chaos.
It’s important to look beyond simply writing down goals for your future and for your relationship.
In writing down and practicing the path to reach your goals and achieve your dreams, you will find yourself more fulfilled because you’ve done the work to get there.
When visionaries and integrators can pull on their differences and use them as strengths, they can really take the time to explore the vision for their relationship.
Relational self awareness allows you to create a healthy dynamic for your relationship.
Liz Higgins (00:02): Hey, y'all! Liz Higgins here, and welcome to the Millennial Life Podcast, where my main goal is to share conversations that will inspire you and drive you toward the life and relationship you desire. I'm here to share what I've learned as a licensed therapist and relationship coach specializing in millennial relationships and wellness, as well as transformative conversations with other professionals. Thanks for listening and enjoy today's episode!
Liz Higgins (00:34): Hey everyone! Welcome to the episode today. I want to talk to you about being a relationship visionary and why that is so important for you in your relationship. So, as I have come into my own in this world of entrepreneurship and really tapped into who I am as a practice owner, as a business owner, as somebody who really, more and more and more, has come to believe that I can reach the goals that I want to set for myself, I can have an absolutely epic and amazing business and life that I want to invite into my world. I have learned so intensely that I'm a visionary. I am such a visionary that I have such a hard time breaking goals down and focusing in on the next one to three action steps that I need to do to get to that goal. To, to make this whole thing happen.
Liz Higgins (01:36): And as I've learned about the difference between visionaries and integrators in business and why there are essential parts of both of those things, I always come back to this thought around how applicable this is for our partner relationship. It's just so true. I think that in the therapy realm, in the couples therapy world, we hear a lot from the big names about how important it is for couples in the modern world to create a shared meaning, a shared vision. Like where are you headed? What is the goal here? Why even get married? I mean, the traditional themes and reasons why a lot of people did things including marriage, including having children or not, including like whatever, whatever... Are really not the same groundwork today for why couples match up. I mean, we're so fiercely independent, we get married much later. We, um, are having less children.
Liz Higgins (02:38): Some couples choose not to have children at all. Like I think you've really got to be rooted in the vision for why being married, or in a committed relationship, feels like the thing you still want to do. And it's kind of sad because I still hear people get real vulnerable and real honest, and that's not sad, but what's sad is that I hear them say things like, it just feels like the thing they're supposed to do. And I think it just speaks to how tethered we are to our roots, to our families, which is beautiful. That's fine. But people are making choices about their life in one of the times in our world when we have the most freedom to do, really, whatever we want to do. We're still making choices based on the sheds and based on the tradition of it all. And I think now more than ever, we have to be so incredibly intentional about why we make this choice to be in a committed relationship.
Liz Higgins (03:36): Because if you're not grounded in that, if you're not rooted in a mutual understanding for how important this is to you, then you're not going to act accordingly. You're going to act how you feel like acting. You're going to behave in ways that are just trying to get needs met, not necessarily through the value system of your relationship that you define together. So in the same way that for my business, I'm such a visionary, I'm thinking ahead, I'm always in the mindset of the mission behind what I'm doing with either Millennial Life Counseling or Millennial Relationships. Like I dream, I think about this stuff. It feels consuming and it's exciting to be in that head space. I'm trying to tap more into that for my relationship and bring an awareness to that part of me and how it impacts my relationship, because I think I kind of do the same thing.
Liz Higgins (04:35): I have these big views and ideas and dreams for the kind of marriage that Greg and I are going to have forever. And for the next, you know, 10 years. And what it's going to look like, and the things that should happen at what point. But, you know, if you were to ask me ‘how are you specifically going to accomplish those things together’ and ‘how are you going to make sure that through all this personal growth and all the business goals that you have, that your relationship's going to stay’. Number one, cause all these other things you described sound like they're going to take a lot of time (and it's true). And nothing has taught me more than becoming a mom. How quickly your time can be stolen from you. If you are not incredibly intentional about nurturing the things that are most important and being the past two or three years have felt like a total whirlwind for me because at the same time, and I notice a pattern here about myself.
Liz Higgins (05:31): I tend to bring on big things in my life. Um, at the same time as one another. Like starting to have a family, expanding my practice, wanting to have this great marriage relationship, and somewhere in there wanting to become my best self and feel like I'm taking care of me. And that I'm the healthiest that I've been. Yeah, it's really hard. And you've got to break the goal down and get into the specifics of how am I going to make that happen? What support do I need around me to ensure that I can show up my best self and not me at my last fuse, or me holding these raging expectations towards my partner, without having said any words to him about what he was supposed to do to share in this vision.
Liz Higgins (06:22): So this is part of why I think couples therapy, going through a coaching process, taking a course on your relationship, really devoting nitty-gritty time to sitting with pen and paper or your iPad or whatever, and sharing openly with each other. ‘These are the dreams I have for us. These are the visions. This is what I want.’ And you know, most of the time when I start asking people those questions, you get some really generic, totally intangible things. Like I just want to feel happy. I just want to feel like we're best friends. I just want to know that we're going to make it through everything together. And those are beautiful thoughts and they'd make lovely social media posts, but they are not concrete. They're not concrete and they're not specific. And I don't think that life and having a great relationship is only about being able to set specific goals.
Liz Higgins (07:25): I mean, but I do think that's a piece of it. I think you need to tap into whether or not you're more of a visionary and the dreamer and the one that has these ideas around what you'd like to experience and creating something great. What that looks like, painting that picture out. Or are you an integrator, is your strength more to execute ideas, to hear an instruction and carry something out to the best of your ability? The more that I've thought about this, um, even lately in my life, as we're really stressed and overworked and trying to manage a lot of different things, I get real visionary about stuff and that's not a bad thing... But even just thinking about a visionary from an entrepreneurial stance - their creativity, their passion, their interests, to help their idea and business grow and expand is so necessary. But then when things get going and life gets tough and a lot is going on, a visionary can start to feel very overwhelmed.
Liz Higgins (08:31): The momentum starts to stall a little bit and people hit their max. And for me personally, that's when the resentment starts to creep in. It's like, okay, I had all these beautiful, wonderful ideas, and this is how I thought this weekend was going to go. And this is how I, where I thought we'd be right now in our life. And this is where I thought I would be. And I haven't been taking care of me and there's too much going on. And the integrator balances this dynamic, they maintain harmony by getting into the nitty-gritty, you know, they're the doers. They have a unique ability to kind of tackle a lot of things and seemingly stay sane. And as I think about that again, from like a business perspective, I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh, that's totally my partner. That's totally my husband.’ He's just more detail oriented about stuff and he can go get stuff done without it being a big issue without holding big resentments about stuff it's just calm, cool collected
Liz Higgins (09:35): So visionaries are the ones that drive the thought and innovation. The winning dynamic here is when you can pull on your differences as strengths, and if you can spend time, take time to explore the vision for your relationship. And I will direct you over to John Gottman and the Gottman Institute for this because they've got the sound relationship, house exercise that can really help you just print out this handout and look at different aspects of the life. You're trying to build together. Name those things. Start to get an idea beyond things like we want to feel happy. We want to feel like we're friends. We want to feel secure in this relationship. And actually defining the path to those feelings, the path to that experience, because what you're going to find is when you can blend the visionary and the one that kind of dreams about what things could be like with the actionable practice of relational wellness, relational mindfulness, and, um...
Liz Higgins (10:46): What Dr. Alexandra Solomon calls relational self-awareness, you get into the nitty gritty of what you need to specifically, uniquely do to be that for your relationship. And it does create an epic relationship and it does make you feel happy, connected, secure, and all those things that you're striving for. But rather than just speaking out that one vision or that, you know, feeling or goal that you're trying to reach, get into the practice of working together, pulling on those strengths and creating this kind of dynamic. From there, you're going to feel all those things you want to feel because you're doing the work that needs to be done to get there. Okay. So I hope this wasn't too all over the place, but sometimes I just think about things a little differently. And when I'm doing business research or learning something new, that's going to help me as an entrepreneur. It just so happens. I find parallels that reach over into the relationship realm and partnership realm. And I just want to share it with you. So let me know your thoughts. I'd to hear if something else like this has landed for you, resonated for you, and let's keep having these conversations.
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