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

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. What do you want in life and how do you make the changes to get it? In this moment Dr Julie Smith helps you to tell the difference between a goal and a value, and what the difference between the two can mean for your life. While goal’s end as soon as you achieve them, a value is something you follow all your life. Even though life may pull you away from the path set by your values, you can always return to it. Dr Smith discusses the need for value check ins to remember what is important in your life and to reflect on the gradual changes you are making that lead to big meaningful differences in your life. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/Sew3KrnPIqb Dr Julie - https://www.instagram.com/drjulie/?hl=en https://www.tiktok.com/@drjuliesmith?lang=en Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  So values and goals, what is the difference? What is a value?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Sure, so the way I would talk about values and goals in 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. So 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

• 0:51Speaker 01

  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. And, and so it's a kind of, you know, winding path where you, you're, 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, 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 to you in your life? You might have family, intimate relationships, health, creativity, you know, lifelong learning,

• 1:35Speaker 01

  career, contribution, those kind of things. And then you, 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, what kind of partner do I want to be? What do I want to represent to that person? And how do I want to um come at difficulties? How do I want to sort of respond to problems that we face and, and you know, that kind of thing? So it's all looking at the attitude that you bring to, to that situation in your life or that area of your life.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  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 um you can then, and 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. It'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? Uh, 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've looked, you've opened up a discrepancy between, okay, this is really important to you,

• 3:03Speaker 01

  but you're not living in line with it. Why? What's going on? Not, not in a way that you can then be really self-critical, but as a tool to say, um, 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, you know, when you start to do those things and, and you're coming back towards your value, the, 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, it's 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.

• 3:48Steven Bartlett?

  I am, I was actually watching a video last night and uh 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 I, he was sat in his car and I found it really fascinating because I don't know whether I was gonna 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 eighteen what my values were, I would have said a million pounds, a Lamborghini. Like, I would have defaulted to these things because those were

• 4:33Steven Bartlett?

  the things that would have, like, I don't know, scratched my, like, insecurities, right? But as I've attained 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?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  And 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 you went with it because it's all you knew at the time. And then you learnt some, you became more wise, and your values shifted slightly. 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, 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 that's okay. It was, I could never have known that that would be,

• 5:35Speaker 01

  I couldn't have prioritised my children before they were there anyway, you know? 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's okay, you know, there isn't this sense of, there is this right path, and if you get on it at seventeen, 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 be, but I've learnt 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.

• 6:11Steven Bartlett?

  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 ninety-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 learnt in your, you know, your experience as a clinical psychologist about how people do actually make meaningful change in direction in their life?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  I think something I've learnt is that

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Big, meaningful change is not made drastically and quickly. You know, sustainable change is 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 underestimate how powerful and sustainable that can be when we do it bit by bit. And, and, you know, develop habits, for example, and constantly reevaluate and check in on which direction we want to go in.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  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, and there's a lot to work through, that takes a long time. And that's okay. That'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.