Episode 06: Microdose on Values: How Knowing Your Values Can Help You with Indecision in Relationships

In Episode 4, "Why It Can Be Hard to Find Your People, And Keep Them," we talked about how indecision can make us feel stuck in some relationships. Our guests touched on a few ways times they've come to a relationship fork in the road:

• "I don't know which friend group to prioritize."

• "Do I go out with a group that I’m not clicking with just to say I have plans?"

• "Should I stay with my high school sweetheart?"

• "Is this a truly toxic friendship, or do I need to be more forgiving?"

When people can’t make a decision, often it’s because two things that are very important to them at the same time are playing tug-o-war. What’s really going on here is a values conflict. Values are the things that are important to us in life, and there aren’t good ones or bad ones. There are only YOUR ones. And it’s important to know what they are. In this episode, you'll get a primer on learning what your values are, distinguishing them from "shoulds," and how to know when you're in a values conflict. If you want to do more work to discover your values, here's a questionnaire by Dr. Russ Harris (a leader in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) that's pretty fun to complete: https://ag.purdue.edu/department/arge/_docs/covid-docs/values_checklist_-_russ_harris_a.pdfAnd if you'd like to dive even further into values-based decisions, you can learn more here: https://thehappinesstrap.com/