Create Your Values Create Your Future

This is episode 266 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Guess what? You can start your year strong by deciding what you want and creating a plan. We've bundled our values creation and empowered blueprint courses and provided a holiday discount to help you do just that. Check the show notes for the link and coupon code. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Well, hello and welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. I am your host, Kari Schneider, and today we're going to dive into another topic that I think will help you and your performance. That is the thing that lights me up is helping others, typically achievers and leaders, become their best in order to give their best, really optimizing that performance. So today's topic is all about values creation and specifically crafting your values to create your ideal, most fulfilling, purposeful future. Crafting your values with intention, creating your values, going toward what you really want for your life. And the reason that I'm emphasizing this topic today is because I have seen personally, I've experienced personally, how it really kicks us in the pants when we don't really know who we are or we don't recognize how we've changed and then we're simply not aligned with what we're doing in the world and who we really are. So the reason this comes up is because, A, we're coming into a new year, B, the companies that I work with often have a creation of company core values. And this is what happens with company core values. If it's a larger company, then there's typically been a professional entity come in to help the company make a strategic plan. And if this company has stakeholders or perhaps a board, investors, people that the company has to answer to, whether they're a for profit or non profit, non for profit, then the company has to answer to these entities. And so then there's an exercise done in order to create the company's core values, the company's vision, the company's mission, and a number of things that have to be reported to the public. And that's the outward facing document. That's the outward facing image or structure or reports that go to the public, go to the stakeholders, go about the company. But then what I get to see some of the things behind the scenes with the CEOs, the directors, the managers, the department heads, what I see behind the scenes are that they're, they may be a little bit disjointed. From some of those company values, because maybe they're not their own personal values, or maybe their department operates a little differently. And when that happens, there's a level of disconnect. There's a disjointed feeling between what maybe the company facing information is and what's actually going on behind the scenes. So what I encourage you to do is to be really, really aligned and decide what those core values are for you. Because as individuals, whether you run a company or not, whether you are owning your own business or not, it doesn't matter. The same exact thing happens with us as individuals. Instead of this outward facing strategic plan or company mission and vision, instead what we do as individuals, we go and we start outwardly becoming what we think we're supposed to be for the rest of the world. Maybe the rest of the world is our immediate family, maybe the rest of the world is our work environment. Maybe the rest of the world is just the way we thought we were supposed to look to the world based on how we were brought up. So then we have this core value system that isn't really aligned with what we want anymore, or who we think we are, or the future that we're trying to create. And so something feels off, it doesn't feel complete, we don't feel fulfilled. So that's when we have what's called what I call a values conflict. Maybe there are values that you've had in the past that don't align with values that you want for your future or that you currently have right now. And I have an episode on this from about a year ago, I believe it is. Episode? What episode is this? Values conflict is back in episode 214, so over many episodes ago. So this is about 50 episodes ago. And values conflict describes specifically what happens when you have values that are actually holding you back from another value. And then you have to distinguish what value is of the most importance so that you can align your behavior or your actions to that value. That's what's going to feel fluid, it's going to feel easy, it's going to feel awesome, it's going to feel like your life is going the way you want it to. Because everything in your mind and then the actions you put in the world are congruent. And that simply feels amazing. And the actions that come from that and the ultimate results and outcomes that come from that are so much greater than that struggle you've been going along with that might be resisting these old values. So what I'm talking about is really a. There's a lot of intangibles. It's. It's a philosophical way of looking at what matters to us. So let me give you some examples. A year ago, I revisited my core values and I got very, very intentional to create my new values for the year. And I did that. And I came up with some incredible values, and they were different than my values in the past. So in the past, before last year, I had love and connection as a first value, but then I had strength and integrity as a second value, and so on. I had, I think, a total of about 13 different values. And I revamped it all because one of the things that I discovered was that my second major value of strength and integrity have really been there for me for a very, very long time. Decades in fact. And these three words, strength, integrity and respect, had been so prevalent in my life for so many years that I started to realize that I wanted more of the fun, the joy, the. The other parts of me that were getting stifled from constantly living into strength and integrity and respect. My husband thinks I'm hilarious, but I wasn't allowing that funniness or fun to come out into other areas of my life, into my professional area. I may not have been smiling as much or making jokes as much or being as fun as fun with my kids, and those are naturally parts of me that have been there as long as I can remember. But I learned how to stifle them so that I would be taken seriously in the professional world. And then I really started to emphasize more strength and integrity and respect to really be accepted in a male dominated industry. When I was in high performance sport and now in leadership roles, I would use those attributes, use those values in order to really be taken seriously and be looked upon as being very professional and an expert in my field. Because what I noticed is that if I was fun, if I was being funny, if I was being goofy, then that in a package, an outward package of a small female, I just wasn't being taken as seriously. It seemed that I had to masculine masculinize, if that's a word, myself or my actions. And so I wanted to tap into something that was already in me and magnify that in order to have that professional respect. So strength and integrity and respect were key, key values of mine for many, many years. And then I noticed that I was not feeling fulfilled. I was not living into my best life. I was not feeling like my whole self. And so I expanded on my values. And last year, about a year ago, I created my values And I did this through an exercise. I actually have an online course that you can easily do this. It won't take you very long. It's not a long course, but there are multiple steps to it. But they are easy to do so that you can create your own values. So I went through my own course. These are the same things I deliver to clients and have them go through so that they can identify what's really important to them. And even if they're not completely clear on it, especially the first time they go through an exercise like this, at least it starts the discovery process, discovering about themselves. And I would suggest that the discovery process is the first step. It's the step for you or for all of us to discover who. Who am I? What do I like, what are my preferences, what matters to me, what is really important to me. And that typically unveils some values. Now the next step, and this is what I've been doing for many years, is intentionally creating my values, creating values that I want to go toward because I've found that they've either been not in my life as much as I want them to be, or I feel that they are my next step in growth. I am all about growth, all about optimization, all about finding what my next level is so that I can help other people do that. And so my values last year became number one, love and connection. Number two, optimal vitality and performance. Number three, growth, progress. Number four, contribution and generosity. Number five, my radiant feminine energy. Number six, adventure and exploration. Number seven, fun and play. That includes the funny too, the humor, games, jokes, humor, laughter. And number eight, a sparked spirit. This is my nature connection, my animal connection, the. The connection to my spirituality. So those became my eight values. And I'm going to tell you this, that I had created my values with intention. So not discovering my values, not tapping into who I thought I was, but rather knowing who I am at the time a year ago, knowing exactly who I was and then creating what I wanted for the future year this happened a year ago. And then using that platform of my values, I then made a plan. I made a plan for my entire year. I knew what I wanted to do with my business, I knew what I wanted to do with my family. I knew what I wanted to achieve personally. And I mapped it all out so that my values were, were supporting my plan for the year. And my plan for the year was in alignment with my values of love and connection, optimal vitality and performance, growth and contribution. Or, sorry, growth and progress, my contribution and generosity. All of the Things that I created for my values. Everything was all in alignment. And then when the year barely got started, I got so sick. So, so sick. Sicker than I've. I've ever been. I'm still dealing with this illness, although I've made massive progress. And I can tell you this, My entire plan, my entire documented plan for myself, for my business, for my relationships, my family, all of those things that was so wonderfully aligned in my values all got thrown out the window. Everything changed. Anything that I thought I could still do had to be adjusted or completely canceled or changed in some form or another. Anything I tried to do, even in a modified format, had to be adjusted, changed, or canceled. And that was simply because I was so sick and had to spend so much time trying to figure out how to heal this thing that I was diagnosed with called Graves disease. So I'm telling you this so that you can hear what the final result was. And the final result was that I still had those values that I created. And those values, now that I'm a year later, I can see, because I can look back, I actually have more clarity now. I can look back, and I can see that they served me more than I could have ever, ever imagined. They served me in ways that I had no idea I would have needed by putting love and connection as my number one value. There was a period of time that I thought, oh, wait, I'm gonna have to change my number one value to health because my health is thrown out the window. So health needs to be my number one value. But what I realized about the immune disease that I've been dealing with is that one of the key reasons that it came into into my life was because of chronic and complex PTSD from my childhood. And that was a really hard thing to deal with. And what I learned was that I really, really needed that love and connection that somehow, somehow I knew needed to be my number one value. I don't know how, but I knew that needed to be my number one value because that enabled me to take care of my health. If I didn't have love and connection as my one number one value, I wouldn't have prioritized with loving myself the way I needed to, to actually do the steps and take the actions I needed to heal this particular illness. If I didn't have that as a number one value and then optimal health and performance as number two, then I would have kept going down the rabbit hole of performing or trying to find the exact right answers instead of loving on myself and prioritizing with that. And it was the first time in my life that I had truly learned how to do that. And that's what this whole past year has taught me. And I mean, it's taught me a whole lot more. But I'm telling you this because when you intentionally create your values, creates the future actions you're going to take. If you decide that this is who I'm going to be, I'm going to be fun, I'm going to be funny, I'm going to add more of a sparked spirit and focus on my radiant feminine and my spirituality and my contribution and generosity. I had to get way more intentional about every one of those things. And if I had had strength and integrity in my top one or two values like it had been for decades prior, I can promise you that I wouldn't have made the progress that I made. It seems so counterintuitive because you'd think, well, to be this ill. I got so, so sick for so many months, and even now I still have so many symptoms, but I'm so much better. You would think that strength and integrity would have been a major tool, but it isn't anymore. And it wasn't this past year because strength has been there for me. So naturally I didn't need any more strength. That's not where the weakness was. The weakness and the need was around love and connection. The need was around prioritizing with my health in a way that was whole, in a way that was complete, in a way that was much broader than just the definition of health, as in having a clean bill of health. It was much deeper than that. And if I didn't have that value as love and connection as number one, I wouldn't have made the progress. I can easily say this right now. I would not have made the progress that I made because so much of my health and so much of the recovery stemmed upon healing old wounds, stemmed upon truly loving unconditionally myself and those closest with me, including my family, including my husband. And these were the lessons that I truly didn't understand. So I invite you this year. I invite you, I implore you. I, you know, if I could make you, I would. But that's not how I operate. I operate in a space of empowerment. And that means simply giving you the tools and holding the space for you to do what empowers you. And I offer you the suggestion, the invitation to create the values you want to live into. Don't just discover the values that you've had in the past, but rather view the values you've had in the past, Understand why you've had the values you've had in the past, and then choose. Choose and decide the values you want to go forward with so that you can create the exact life, feeling, actions and outcomes that you really, really want for your future. Values creation is about living into who you want to be so that you have the life you really want, the one that fulfills you and creates the connections you want, the outcomes you want, the results that you want. So I invite you to create the values, create these traits, these characteristics, these ideals that you want to live into, so that you're reminded every day what it looks like to be that person. Because if you have a desire for that value, if you have a desire to be that person, that means it's meant to be you. It's meant to be within you. So the values that I created last year were the biggest gift and one of the biggest tools that I needed to do the healing I needed to do. I created those values because I thought they were what I wanted to become or step into or align with for the next steps in my career, the next steps with my family. I thought they were all about that. I had no idea they were going to be my best tool, my greatest resource to go through healing a really challenging illness that I've been going through. So no matter what is coming in your future, even if you're making the best plan, the best strategy for exactly what you want coming in the new year, I invite you to create your values. Sit down and go through the exercises. We have a course for you. Even if you don't use our course and you've done values exercises before, revisit your past ones so that you can create what you want for your future. Don't keep repeating your past or putting your past into your future if it's not something you completely align with. If it is, then keep those values. Make it exactly what you want. If it isn't, adjust or change the prioritization or order in order to create the values you want to live into. That is my invitation for you. And in this special time of year when we typically get to reflect and we get to look forward, it's this beautiful space of holding space for the past and holding space for what can come in our future. And that is that holding space of being present and understanding and being able to get into the beautiful space of creation and who you want to become. So do it. Can't say it enough. I invite you, do your values creation. If you want support from us. We will pop the link into the show notes so that you can see how we can support you with an online Step by step. Have a wonderful rest of your day and a powerful week. We hope you have all of the wonderful values that light you up at your finger fingertips.

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