Values Conflict

This is episode 214 of the Empowered Team Podcast. 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. Welcome. Welcome to another episode of Mindset Monday. And I am so excited to bring you this topic because it's changed my life. And I'm not just saying that. I'm genuinely excited to bring you this topic because when I create these episodes, it really lights me up to dig deeper into a concept and really bring some structure to it so that it can potentially add value to my life and definitely add value to other people's lives as well. So this one is called a values conflict. And the reason I'm excited about this one is because I think that when people can see this within their lives, it makes a massive, massive difference for understanding where breakdowns are occurring, especially breakdowns that you don't know why they're happening or they're happening consistently in one area. So this can be helpful in work at the home front and in really anything. So you'll see as we carry on. So, first of all, I like to bring my clients through a values exercise about every six months. And the reason I do this is because unless somebody's really clear on what they value, then oftentimes they're going to feel lost. They're going to feel lost in decision making, feel lost in the direction that they're going, both personally and professionally. But when they are very clear on what they really value in life, then that is, it's so much easier. It's like a guiding light, this guiding value, so that people can go in the direction that they want to go so seamlessly. So a values conflict is really precipitated by two other things, and I would call it a values disruption and a values evolution. So sometimes the values disruption is almost always there for a values conflict. But values evolution is something that typically happens in different stages of life. So I'll give you an example here of the definition, not an example, but the definition of value. And. And this is a person's principles or standards of behavior, one's judgment of what is important in life. So that's what we're talking about with values, principles, or standards of behavior, one's judgment of what is important in life. Now, clearly, this is a personal distinction. This is your personal decision. This is always subject to your own opinion and what you want. It's your choice. But sometimes we feel that these values have been subjected upon us, perhaps by family, especially when we're young. So what is a values disruption? So what I'm calling a values disruption is typically a change in life that brings a significant change that has one's values shift in either priority or completely change. So this values disruption, it can be. I can give a few examples here, but I'll tell a little story first. I was really clear on my values many years ago. About 20 years ago, I consciously created what I thought were my values. They were just these three words that I really wanted to live by. But ultimately, in looking back, I was actually starting to create my values. And it was strength, integrity, and respect. And those three words guided me through so many things. And in looking back, I can see why I chose them, and I can see why they were so useful for me because there was a lot of either struggle or challenge or just various things that came up in my life that really had me rely on strength. And I wanted to be a person who lived in integrity. And I wanted to respect various things around me and act in a way that was respectful. So those three words which were, became my values were really, really important to me. Now, I didn't realize that there was some things missing. I figured that living by these three and just kind of whatever my personality brought, that that was just all going to be great. Well, little did I know that over a decade into marriage that some of these same values, seemingly fantastic, were actually causing some problems in my marriage. And over a year ago, or I guess just under a year ago, I got coached by Tony Robbins very, very intensely for a few hours. Now, I like to think of that, as my husband pointed out, well, you just got a million dollars worth of value because for someone to be coached by Tony Robbins as a client or one on one with Tony Robbins, it costs a million bucks a year. It's crazy, and I don't have a million bucks to spend. But I was in a really unique situation and I got coached, and it was around our marriage, and it was around masculine and feminine energy. And what I didn't realize when I got after, until after I got coached really, was that the majority of my life I was living in masculine energy. So much masculine energy. And I just thought that that's naturally who I was. And little did I know that that masculine energy was really there, not only because I was trying to be someone that would be loved by my father, but also I was using this masculine energy because it was the example that I saw over and over in my family, in society of how you succeeded or how you got ahead or how you dealt with problems. And so that's where this strength, integrity, respect can be fantastic and can also be very feminine. But the way that I was utilizing it in my values was in a very, very masculine way. And what was happening in my marriage was that that was bumping up against a strong man's masculine energy as well. And without going too deeply into masculine and feminine energy, when there's too much masculine on one side and on another side, it really leads to bumping heads. And so that really, really shifted me to being able to open up and realize that, oh, I'm actually a very feminine being. And there is massive amounts of power and radiance and creativity and all of these incredible things that come from being a feminine being. And it doesn't mean that I don't have masculine energy, and it doesn't mean I can't use masculine energy. But what it really brought to my attention was that my marriage, something and someone who was so important to me was being affected by some value that I held so highly and an energy that I kept living into unconsciously from the programming from my childhood. So I started creating, and that was a massive values disruption in that moment, getting coached in that event, a relationship event. So that disruption led me to create radiant feminine into my top values. So in my top 10 values, radiant femininity is part of my top 10 values. And that never would have been there before without that values disruption. Someone shook my belief system and my value system enough to cause a disruption. So other examples of a values disruption would be things that just typically happen in our lives, but really can be very disruptive. Something like a graduation or getting married, having a child, losing a loved one, changing careers. Things like this will easily cause enough disruption that you start to take a look at your life through a different lens. And it often starts to create a values disruption. Now, I was very aware of creating my new values and the evolution that I was going through, so I consciously created a value of radiant femininity. However, when people go through values disruptions like marriage or having a child, oftentimes we're using the old set of values to go through that change of scenery in life. And it doesn't necessarily work anymore. It's like trying to land a plane that has. Is a float plane, it has floats on it, but trying to land it on a Runway and you wonder why you're crashing. So the next one that I'm referring to in this, in this topic is values evolution. And I'd like to describe this as the realization that a shift has occurred and a conscious choice to make changes to one's values, that there's a conscious choice. So this is where you actually do realize that, oh my gosh, the plane is flying, I'm in the air, and I can't use floats anymore to land on this Runway because I'm not landing on water, I'm landing on a Runway, and I only have floats. So I got to change these floats into wheels to land on the Runway. So that's what would happen in a values evolution. One thing that I noticed, I was, as a single mom years ago, my daughter was about three years old. And I, prior to having her, I would be, you know, even when she was a baby, before she was born, I would love going out with my friends and I might stay out late. And it didn't matter if it was 3am When I came home. And even if I had to work the next day, that was no big deal because I could always get up and get it done and be on time. And yet, when I had a child, everything changed. And so I consciously made the choice of not going out with my friends so much because it meant getting a babysitter. It meant I would lose time with my child. It meant I wasn't there to put her to bed. It meant all kinds of things. So I consciously shifted my values toward family when I normally had high up on my values list, friends. So if friends were top one or two now, family was number one. So that would be something that I experienced in a values evolution. Another example of that is sometimes when you've gotten married or you have a family, then that family value, say you had a family value that was number one or number two on your values list, and you knew that this is one of your top values. Maybe it's top three. But now that you've got your own family, you might see that those traditional trips home that's really far away for Christmas may not happen every year anymore, because now your value of family has shifted more to your immediate family, the family you've created, maybe your spouse and your children. That's become the new immediate family value versus your extended family value. And if you don't distinguish between the two, sometimes there's this disconnect or even conflict because people want you to go and visit and do what you've always done and keep up with the tradition. Meanwhile, you, you're trying to keep up with your own traditions. You're trying to keep up with the things that you're creating for your immediate family and you still feel the pull from the past values that came from the extended family. So that would be another example of consciously shifting your values and distinguishing in your family value and have that happen in a values evolution. Now lastly, and this is the topic of this mindset Monday, it is values conflict. So what does that look like? This is typically when one of your values conflicts with another one of your values and when these values are high in priority in your life, there's going to be a breakdown of some sort. Especially if they're both in the top five or top three, then there's going to be some sort of breakdown. So one time I had, I actually had two clients like this. I had my gym and I was coaching clients in the gym, training them at the time. And I had one physician client and that physician client. I had more than one physician client, but I had one physician client who was female and on maternity leave and another who was referred by her. Same kind of situation. They're both physicians and they were both on maternity leave. And throughout that span of time that they were on maternity leave, they regularly came in and took care of themselves. They got their workouts in, we coached their body, we coached their mind, we coached their best habits. And they did this for that entire maternity leave. But then as soon as the maternity leave was done, they wouldn't. They knew they weren't going to come back. They weren't coming back. It was just for that span of time. And the reason was, is that their time was so stretched between their working hours and between having young children that their self care went to the bottom of the list. Maybe not the bottom of the list, but certainly behind their career and their family, so specifically their children and specifically their patients. So the value ended up being that their self care was easier to prioritize when they had a nanny at home and they were on maternity leave. So they didn't have to be at the practice or in the hospital the way they would ordinarily have to be. But as soon as that maternity leave was done and the time was stretched and the work or the career came back into the picture, then the top two became the career or patients and their own children and their own personal care and their own personal workouts, even though they knew they were getting amazing things from it, went to the back burner. So much so that even if they built a home gym, even if they had their own home exercise training plan, they still would not have been as consistent or have done the training that they would have done on that maternity leave simply because the demand was so high. And the importance in their life, the values of their career and the value of their children simply would outdo the value of their own health. And some of you might be able to relate with this because you'll find that things in your life are, you know, in one sense, you kind of know intellectually that you're supposed to have health as a really high value. And you know intellectually that if something happened to your health that everything would fall apart. But yet your values are dictating that. Your values are showing you that they are far more important, like your family, your career. And you're seeing that with your actions. So an example, another example of this where there's a values conflict is the person who really loves to stay at home, but also really cares about family, and they intend to go and travel to see family, they intend to go to the visit, but ultimately they never show up to the wedding or they never actually make the trip for Christmas. And it's not that they don't want to, they actually have those intentions to do it. It's simply that they have a conflict in values, their want to be at home. And that value of home life is much stronger than the value of seeing the people or being in the social environment. And it doesn't mean that they don't want to see the people or travel. It doesn't mean that that other value is not important. It just might mean that one is overcoming the other because one is more important. So these are just examples that hopefully you can see in your life that when you're struggling with something, there's something that you're valuing more than something else that is often the problem. And then the conflict or the lack of alignment comes in. When you know you want one thing, you know you want the other thing, but something just isn't jiving. And it might just simply be an old habit, an old value that was there, and you keep prioritizing with that old value, but now it just doesn't work for your life anymore. I saw this a number of times in Covid where clients, different people and clients and friends would tell me that they didn't have to host Thanksgiving anymore, and they were relieved. They love family. It's a high on their values list. But entertaining others wasn't as high as it used to be on their values list, and it had changed. And the only reason I say list is because we actually can have priority. When a value moves up the chain, then it's going to shift everything else. And if your number one priority, your number one value in life is, is your spouse, your marriage or your family, then that changes everything else. And if your number one value in life is your own personal health and hosting Thanksgiving doesn't align with that anymore, then Covid gave some people an easy out that they just really were welcoming. And then they never really wanted to host it again, but it gave them the opportunity to have the out. But there was simply a values conflict. Their health, their relaxation, their want to connect with people and not just do all of the hosting and all of the creating and all of the entertaining, which they don't get to connect with their family when they're doing all of those things. Those values were just higher than entertaining. So take a look at this in your life. Take a look at do you know what your values are? And if you don't, I can easily send you a little exercise that we do. It's an old YouTube video, not that old, but a few years old that I made for my clients. And you can go through an exercise that creates your values. It only takes about 20 or 30 minutes. And then you'll have, you'll come away with practice, probably five or six key values that you can then adjust to create the priority in terms of the order of priority for your values. And you can see then clearly if there's been a values disruption somewhere in your life. You used to value one thing and now you value something else, but it never really got the attention it deserved. And then you'll actually make conscious choices and create your own values evolution so that the outside world isn't just dictating what you're going to find important. You are creating what you really want for your best life. And that's what we're all about. You creating, giving you the tools, the skills and the practice to be able to create the life that you want to live. And then when a values conflict comes up, because it will, you will have the knowledge, you'll have the awareness and have the skills to be able to see what's going on and make the adjustments fairly seamlessly so you can keep going and progressing towards whatever matters to you in your life. So that is values conflict in a nutshell. I hope that serves you. And you can see something in your life that maybe is, is showing up in a different way just by hearing some of the stories and hearing some of the definitions, the distinctions of these different values scenario, the values disruption, the values evolution, and the values conflict. And use it, use it bloody well use it to serve your life. Do not just listen in and consume. Actually take this information and apply it. When you apply the information that I deliver and actually make a change in your life or try to tweak something or do something differently that hasn't worked in the past, to try something new, that action, that's what creates mastery. And that's what we're looking for, is being able to really master ourselves in order to be the master of our own life, have the choices that we want to have in our life, in lives, instead of believing or being subjected to everything that else that's going on in the world. And if there's something that we really want to rely on right now, and it's ourselves and each other, not just what's happening in the world to create the life we want, we rely on ourselves and each other to create the life that we want. So kick off your week powerfully. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. If you're listening to this on a Monday. If you're listening to this on another day of the week, just keep going. Kick this week's butt by creating whatever you want. Just revel in the beauty of being alive and and being able to create the days and the weeks and the life that you really want. So much love to you. Keep going. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To learn more about our Empowered Leadership coaching for business, our custom online physical training plans, and of course the Empowered Team Group coaching, head to www.theempowered.ca empowered learn more. That's www.theempowered.ca Empowered Learn.