Do You Know Your Core Values?

Often we just feel it, or we have a vibe that something is not right. Or, it's glaringly obvious but we're averse to disrupting our lives to change that something in our life due to fear-based reasons and these usually start with the "I can't because..." types of sentences.

When you're unclear or think you're crazy for not understanding what's not working in your life, a valuable tool to use as a solution finder is to break down your CURRENT SITUATION as compared to your LIFE'S VALUES.

We aren't (the majority of us humans) taught HOW to figure out what we value the most. Values are not tangible items, but instead they are inherent truths that live within you, and they're not supposed to be 'handed to us' by family. In fact, that is where we get into trouble. We take what other people supposedly value and make other people's values our own. STOP! That is not the way our lives work. We cannot live someone else's dream or the way they live their life because we must live our own lives and be true to ourselves. That can be scary because you're going to disrupt the status quo and it's very uncomfortable to be the salmon going upstream.

Values are NOT things like wanting that new car, or to go travel, nor is it money. Travel may represent a value of being adventurous, so the value of ADVENTURE is essential to you. Here is a sample list of LIFE VALUES for you to look at (a Word document) so that you can seriously analyze and get to the core of what you feel deep inside of you and understand what’s important to you and you alone.

When you start to unveil what your core values are, you will be either incredibly surprised or you'll look at your final list and think duh, I knew that. Regardless of how you feel after you have your final top 7 or 8 values, you will now be able to begin evaluating your life.

The next process I take my clients through is to look at that top value list in order of importance and compare it to what is happening right now in your life. Understanding what you thrive on helps you to many things like awakening your purpose, establish your relationships, and much more.

Here are my top values in order of importance as to how I live my life and what I do in my life:

1) Consciousness

2) Truth & Open-Mindedness

3) Leadership
4) Boldness

5) Perseverance
6) Empathy

7) Cheerfulness

When I first sat down to do this process at a seminar back in 2014, I was in a major 'fork in the road' moment and needed some serious assessment, that's when I realized how far I was moving away from my inherent truths.

Here are some incredible things that came from this and what can happen for you when you discover these for yourself.

• Realizing that purpose was way beyond the type of work I was doing at that time and may be the same for you. For example, I had the foundation right and knew that I loved helping people and helping them make their companies better, but I realized I was able to do much more than this and I had to think bigger. It drove me to get my certification and schooling to become a coach in 2017. It was because of this exercise and getting coaches for myself that I was able to change my life in profound ways. In fact, going back to this process helped me recently become even more clear as to who I am and what my purpose was meant to express into the world through me. So what's the lesson? You can think BIGGER! Never put a ceiling on yourself and what you feel you can accomplish!
• Becoming empowered to do something BIG. For me, I was empowered with the task of leaving the corporate world and my drive to go beyond the Vice President level in it. So I did just that. I was able to empower myself to build my own business. So it's important to figure out what you're seeking to change. In my case, the marketing agency/ad agency NYC corporate life was killing me... slowly. My 12-14 hour days every single day, the going out and drinking taking out potential clients, the constant stress-- this was no way for me to live. No matter how much yoga I did or how often I worked out, no matter how much I spoke about it with my partner (now husband) whom I love dearly, nothing worked to alleviate the stress. So I became angry and that anger produced itself physiologically in my body. I used to get bright red hives that covered my entire face and upper body and then would have anxiety attacks. Maybe not every day, but the fact that I had them at all was so not me. Corporate life gave me huge paychecks so shouldn't I have been happy? That's the funny thing; money does not make us happy when our drive and intent is just that -- money. That's the greed factor. In fact, I was quite the opposite of happy. I was a disaster most days because I knew something wasn't right and some days I felt like a totally miserable bitch. 
• Sometimes it takes some REALLY strong realizations. For me. I realized and saw in how my body reacted that I was not happy at all with the people I worked with or how I had to work within their construct. And, if you see my value list above, cheerfulness is one value that is imperative to me living the life I desire. How could I be miserable and be cheerful? That's not possible so I realized that I needed to be around people and in an environment that made me feel like my true cheerful self and would allow for me to express my innate cheerfulness into the world.
• I had to also evaluate that situations against my strive to help others and for myself to become fully conscious and awake. Moving from San Francisco to New York City, I was at the core a yogi, a runner, and an overall mindful/thoughtful person. I got to the point in New York City where meditating to me was just calming myself down to ensure I didn't get another bad case of the hives before walking through that office door. Not good nor ideal! 
• Empathy, I seemed to be detached from that core of who I am. My very basis of truth. I started to ignore my empathic abilities and question everything I was doing which made me feel like that insecure little girl in her 20's again and that was not OK either given I was in my mid-thirties and did not want to go back to that person I used to be.
• I know I am a leader, so oh was leadership involved in what I was doing? This was a value I was living in the position as a VP, but I was not in charge of the way that I led the team and was in a constant fight against bullies in the workplace. This made me start to take a back seat to what I knew was right. I was told to lie to clients about projects, and I did and from that place, I started to crumble. That created a ripple effect as I was not being truthful nor authentic, which are other very clear values I must adhere to.

See how this works? I could go on and on as my list was quite long. This is exactly why it's so essential to really look at your life NOW versus your inherent value list to understand what you have to change immediately. And that will 100% take a major disrUPtion moment and what Disrupt Now really means at the very core.

Do you have lots of questions, or are you ready to do the process to figure out your core values formally? Go here to set up a consult with me (free discovery session to see if we vibe)!