Episode 26: Values

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Welcome to the 26th episode of Don’t lose your balance. My name is Mallory Durrick. Thanks for joining me, today I am going to be talking about values. And if you were in the gratitude room this morning, which is it’s Sunday morning, it’s Sunday afternoon now, but it’s Sunday morning at eight o’clock this morning, Eastern Time, we talked a little bit about values and I want to read something that initiated the conversation, we use something called 365 Gratitude Journal calm. And I love this website, I pay for it. And it helps initiate conversation based on a prompt and sharing gratitude within the context of whatever a story might be. And the prompt is. So it begins with emotional habits. And it says you don’t have to control your thoughts, you just have to stop letting them control you, which I thought was very, very relevant and very, very important. It asks you to write down your values for each major relationship in your life, work family, friends, partner, kids, and then write down your intentions. What are you going to do to get closer to your values. And I had in my listing of all of the episodes that I wanted to talk about, I actually had values as one of my episodes. And since I struggled so much last week, I really did struggle with boundaries. I want to talk about values today. And then I can get this topic off my list. Okay, so I did a little more Googling, and I thought, well, we all know what values are for ourselves, but do we? So I thought, well, how do you define your values? And then I went on this website, and it said, Before you answer the question, you need to know what in general your values are. Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work, they should determine your priorities and deep down, they’re probably the measures you use to tell if your life is turning out the way you want to to when the things that you do and the way that you behave, match your values. Life is usually good, you’re satisfied your content. But when they don’t align with your personal values, that’s when things feel wrong. And this can be a real source of unhappiness. This is why making a conscious effort to identify your values is so important. So if we go back to the prompt from gratitude journal, it says Write down your values for each major relationship in your life, work family, friends, partner, kids write down your intentions, what are you going to do to get closer to your values? It brings me to what happened when I lost sight of my values. I certainly had once I had a moral compass. And clearly and I talked about this this morning in the gratitude room, I somehow when I strayed, or I used medication, to self medicate to get through whatever I was going through, my values just flew out the window. I don’t even know what happened. And of course, I may blame or assign some chemical imbalance. I certainly could do that. And then it just was, you know, all hell broke loose. And I think to myself, well, what are my values, my values to leading a good life is making sure that I’m honest, and I’m caring, and I’m loving, and I’m intentional about what decisions I make and how I’m going to conduct myself. So if I say to somebody, Hey, I’m going to, I’m going to help you I’m going to be there for you. I want to make sure that I actually fulfill that promise. I want my children especially to know that they can count on me, despite whatever might have happened in the past and the past could even have been 2021 They can still count on me. And I don’t want anyone to feel like because I live my life a certain way. which is private and private to the point of I, I don’t go out a lot, I don’t go to restaurants. I don’t go to parties. I mean, I know we’re not all doing that. But I’m much happier when I’m more or less alone. I don’t want anybody to think that because I choose to live my life a certain way, which is so private and alone, that I am not going to be there for them. You know, we think about what do we value? What not just what are our values, but what do we value as important in your career in my career, what do we value as important in my career, I value that my clients care about what I do. And I care about the work that I put out, in my personal relationships. I want my family and my friends to know that I love them, despite not wanting to accommodate their every

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desire. Do I value stuff, some stuff, I guess I value, I don’t need to have some of the things that I might have had or wanted back in my youth, I realized it didn’t really fulfill me. So that’s something I think I should speak to from what do I value when it comes to not just morals but do I need all the things that I think are going to make me happy and the honest truth is no, I, I value the simple life I like having enough. I don’t have to have too much too much as a bad thing. Not enough is a bad thing. I value eating well, I value exercise, I value mental health, I value creativity. These are the things that I stand for. These are the things that I find helped me live with intention, values, equal intention in my eyes. And if I can get that right, I’m doing good. When we talk about values, and we think about our moral compass, for example, I have one I have a very strong moral compass. But I don’t know what happened to my moral compass. Back in the day, I think I was just so dreadfully unhappy that I wasn’t as mindful as I am today about morality and ethics and everything that went along with it. There were so many justifications I probably made in my head about what I was doing and what I wasn’t doing and who I was hurting and maybe who I wasn’t hurting, or, or what, what I sold myself on in the beliefs of what I believe to be I don’t know, was it even remotely okay. And of course, it was not okay. None of it was okay. But that didn’t mean that I had lost. I guess at the time, I had lost complete sight of my values, I still wanted to be considered a good friend, I still even wanted to be considered a good wife. Maybe I felt like I didn’t have such a great husband. And there was some level of justification that okay, well, I’m gonna go do what I need to do for myself. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t even think there was that much thought that went into it. I mean, there certainly was some thought about what I’m doing, whether I was swallowing seven pills, or 10 pills, or I was straying in the relationship. I don’t, I don’t think I was I Was that intentional, and saying, Okay, if you take these 10 pills, you know, your whole life is gonna blow up. Because I think I might have said that, I’ll worry about that for another day. And when we think about our values, we want to be looked at as somebody who is a good person, we, we have strong values that help guide us. And I guess I would like to look at what I have right now. And how I live I in work, I am very intentional about completing projects and doing it to the point of a client being happy. And if they’re happy, then I’m happy if I have a good relationship with my parents, for example, I feel like I can speak to them in a stronger way as opposed to a needing needy way. That’s a good thing. And I feel very happy about my relationship with them with my children. While I said this this morning, I don’t talk to them a lot. And I don’t want to be like a burden or a nuisance. So I let them come to me if they want to talk. It’s a little bit easier to talk to my daughter, I imagine because my son is so busy, and I never know where he’s at when he’s when I would call him or text him. But I do think that I have strong values. Now I do think that if I look at this particular prompt, and I define my values, I can be happier. I’m going to continue reading this and see if this is going to stay in the podcast values exist whether you recognize them or not. Life can be much easier when you acknowledge your values and when you make plans and decisions that honor them. If you value family, but you have to work 70 hours a week in your job, you will feel internal stress and conflict. And if you don’t value competition and you work in a highly competitive sales environment, are you likely to be satisfied with your job? I don’t know if this is just about career, I think your values in your marriage or your relationship needs to be aligned. Number one,

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I don’t think my ex husband and I were pretty were aligned in our values. Maybe what I consider to be important, when it came to conversations didn’t happen, I think I probably caved a little bit and in things that I wanted or needed, rather than asking, and I don’t know if it was just with him. I think it’s with every relationship that I’ve been in, which is why I look at my relationships now. And I say better not to have any that are romantic and be happier. I don’t need to feel the weight of a romantic relationship. And maybe that’s just right now, does that make me unkind? No, I don’t think so I show up when I need to show up by help. When I can help. I feel like doing what I’m doing for me isn’t a wrong thing to do. I I would like to believe that whatever mistakes that I made in the past or lost sight of whatever values I had, and I know that I had them, they returned and hopefully returned a little bit stronger as I got older, because I know where I messed up. I know where I fell, and I fell hard. And I’m not unique. I know I’m not unique. I know a lot of people messed up, and maybe people will talk about it. And maybe they won’t. I know that by me talking about everything that I went through, not only can I help others, I really helped myself because it makes me conscious of everything that I went through. And it allows me to recognize the behaviors and forgive myself for them, and then move on. I mean, how long can I actually hold on to this pass, even though it’s something that I talk about every single week, because I’m revealing so much about myself? You know, I don’t know where this podcast will end? Because how much can I talk about all this. But I do think that when I made the one year commitment for 52 weeks, and so far, I’m 26 strong. I mean, halfway there, I may end it. And I think it will be a result of I bottled up in one forum like the podcast. And I said, Okay, we’re gonna talk about all these topics. In the beginning, there was this incredible momentum. And I’m very proud of that momentum. I’m also proud of my marathon here where, even though I was going quick in the beginning, and I’m now taking much more time in between episodes, and I’m not even scripting them. There’s something very special that happens. And it’s funny, somebody said to me, and I know they’re listening right now, this boundary episode was boring. And I thought, Well, my life is not a Netflix documentary to entertain. It’s really just a way for me to articulate my life, what I’ve learned, explain to whomever may be listening, how I fell. And I fell, like I said, I fell hard. And how I came back, the other came out the other end, I don’t want to say I’m shining, because I’m not shining, I’m just extraordinarily happy. And if that is a goal of anybody’s, then there is a light, you can achieve what I managed to attain and achieve through hard work and effort. And there are episodes I’m going to talk about which are going to be self help and therapy and even self medication because I read that that was a topic that I had wanted to talk about because I think a lot of people do it whether the moms take a drink at the end of the day, because they call it what did they call it wine juice? And then you know, I look at that, and I say, look, I did a lot of wine juice, and I might have had two glasses and I was better. But I don’t necessarily know if that went against my values. I think values are something that helps keep us on a track. Do you know what I’m saying? Keeps us on path. And if you know what they are, and you know that you’re kind of like at the end of the day? Yep, I checked that off, then that’s a good thing. I can’t say that. There is much to change in what we can change about our values other than if we don’t like something about ourselves. You have 100% right and responsibility to change it. I look back and I think Did I have values then even when I was messing up? Yeah,

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I did. I did have values and I still wanted to be looked at as good person I still want it to be looked at as a good wife did I? Did I still show up as a wife? 100%. It’s just I knew that whatever I had going on in the back of my head, I was wrong. And baby, like I said, I talked in the beginning about the moral compass. Maybe that was the problem. And let me say this, anybody who’s listening and saying, Oh, God, you had no values. You can be judge and jury all you want, but you still at the end of the day, need to look in the mirror and say, Where have you struggled? Where have you suffered and in your own strain, nobody gets out on skates, no one, it’s just a different varying degrees of that, you know, maybe you’re the kind of person who, you know, in your career, you climbed to the top. And you might have stepped on five people because she didn’t care as long as you got to the finish line. And that happens. Does that mean you don’t have any values? Of course not. It just, that’s what you did. Those are the things that you chose for yourself. And there’s nothing wrong with that. When you look at your life, think about your life and your values. And if at the end of the day, I guess I can put my head down and say, Did I do okay today? And did I fulfill whatever promises? I said I would, I’m good. And I’m happy. You know, I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say I’m happy lightly. I really legitimately am happy. And I feel so grateful that I have found whatever happiness I have found, because I know when I look around me and I say, Well, how’d you get there? I know exactly how I got there. And it’s going to be different for every person. There are a lot of people who would look at my life and say, I could never be happy if I were sitting at home alone all the time. And yet here I am really happy doing what I’m doing. Fulfilling the promises, being creative, resolving my past and moving towards my future. And while it doesn’t have this big end goal finish line, there is something there I don’t know what it is, but I know there’s something there and I like exactly where I’m at. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Don’t lose your balance. If so follow me download it, share it with somebody you know, that you think might find value from it. I have a website, don’t lose your balance calm, which I mentioned all the time. And I am on Instagram and I have two accounts one is called Don’t lose your balance. MSD That’s Mary Sam David, and the other is Mallory underscore Durrick. Thanks again for joining me and I hope today and tomorrow and always you find your balance. I’ll see you next time and I look forward to hearing your feedback about how you live your most balanced and authentic life. See ya

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hi, I am Mallory Durrick. I am a creative. A Marketing Strategist and Web Designer with a small and modest boutique Marketing Agency living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am the creator and narrator of this podcast, Don’t Lose Your Balance. This is a culmination of decades of self-help books, countless doctors, numerous hospitals, including rehabs. Once a wife, now divorced, a mother, a grandmother and an addict in recovery. These are things that I am and have experienced.

I’m sharing it all. Baring it all. Hoping to help others; not lose their balance.