Tune into Episode 21 – let’s chat core values right here in your browser, find it on your favourite platform (head here for the links) or keep reading for a transcript.
Links mentioned in this episode:
The Inner Compass – 8 week online group coaching experience where we cover perfectionism (among so many other things!).
I mention James Clear’s list of core values you can review to find yours
Transcript
Hi, hello and welcome to this episode of the Rules Are Made Up.
Today I want to talk to you about core values, what they are, why I recommend you figure out what yours are and how you can do that.
Now let’s kick things off by talking about what core values actually are.
Essentially they’re your fundamental beliefs, like core beliefs that you’ve really, really internalized about things and values that are incredibly important to you.
They are so important to you that they guide your decision making and your actions and behaviors.
And oftentimes that happens without you actually paying attention to it, it’s just it just happens. I know that’s not necessarily very helpful to explain, but they’re like you’re guiding light your North star, you know they influence you without you realizing it, that’s probably a good way to put it.
And that last sentence, that they influence you without you realizing (a lot of the time) us actually one of the key reasons I recommend you figure out what yours are. Especially if you don’t know them already, and even if you do have a set of core values, like if you’ve done this kind of work before, you can always review them, look at, you know whether or not there’s actually something else that has become important to you, because these can change over the course of your lifetime, right?
You don’t, you’re not born with a set of core values and core beliefs that never change. Like so many things, they change as you as a person grow and evolve.
Now back to why I recommend you figure them out or you do continued work on reviewing them, is so that you can get a better picture of where your actions may or may not be aligned to what you actually deem really really important, right?
Because you might either find that your actions are very aligned to your values like you’re a very values driven person and everything, or almost everything that you do is in line with what you deem important? But you may also find the opposite or maybe not exactly the opposite, but you may find that once you’ve actually done some work to discover what your values are, you may start to realize that not everything that you’ve been doing has been aligned to those values.
And I’m not saying that you literally have to, you know you figure out what your values are and then everything is, you know, aligned in driven by those, that’s not necessarily how this happens either, but it is really, really helpful to figure out if certain things are important to you or as important to you as you actually think they are because you may find when you start digging, when you start going deeper, that actually that thing that you thought was important isn’t actually part of a value of yours, so maybe it’s OK to not keep doing that thing, or to see how you can tweak your existing actions and behaviors so that they start to become more aligned with that core value and ultimately the person that you want to be.
Now, in terms of how you find your core values and use them most of the time there are lists and I’m going to link to one from James Clear in the show notes.
Because most of the work that happens around core values is that you review a list and you basically start by circling or highlighting 15 or 20 things that are sticking out to you as important. And then you basically whittle that down to 10 and then from that you whittle down to five and then some people, depending on you know their way of thinking, they even recommend you whittle that down to three because you can’t really have 5 or whatever.
I usually go with three to five personally, and my core values (in case you wanted to know) are empathy, curiosity, compassion, strength and growth.
Now are all my actions and decisions fully aligned with those five values? Nah. I don’t even have to look deep within right now and do some kind of exercise, I could tell you off the bat that not everything I say and do and decide to do is aligned to those five values. Which might actually be a good time or a good reason to review them for myself and I could go through that exercise now and actually show you what that looks like, but it be remiss of me to actually tell you that working on our values and whether our actions are aligned or not, is actually one of the first things that we do inside The Inner Compass, which is my eight week group coaching experience for over thinkers and perfectionists where you learn to navigate life and your goals by being less of a dick to yourself.
And so instead of doing it now on this episode, I am going to do it with the next cohort, because this work is never done right? Just because I know a little bit more and I coach others on a lot of these things does not mean that I don’t need to do the work myself and continue to do it.
So I usually do the course, the program, the experience alongside the students that decide to enroll which brings me to the last part of this episode, which is to tell you that enrolment opens this week the 22nd of June, and it closes on the 8th of July. So there is plenty of time to go and check out the sales page which is linked to on the show notes, to ask me questions if you’ve got any questions and of course to sign up.
There are three different payment options available and an option to upgrade your experience for some more 1:1 coaching as well.
As per usual or the information is going to be linked in the show notes and I want to say thank you again for tuning into this episode and I’ll chat to you next week, stay curious!
