Underneath the goals are the values... what are ours?
Our latest Community Coffee Hour focused on the values that drive our goals.
Formulating goals can be daunting for multiple reasons. Maybe we do not know exactly what we want. Maybe we do but it feels too big and we do not know where to start. Sometimes, even after overcoming the initial barrier and writing goals down, it is hard to get started.
Why does this even matter? Here are a few reasons:
⁉️ When things around us feel disorienting, hard, or scary, it is harder for us to know what to do next. Connecting with ourselves through our values and what matters to us helps us feel grounded.
💼 Career development does not happen in a vacuum. Our choices are shaped by who we are and what our lives are like.
🧭 Our values are a compass. At each step, they help us identify what we want and need. Designing your life and career with intention requires that you know what matters to you at each step.
During our discussion, we completed a values reflection exercise that led us to several takeaways:
- We often judge ourselves as we start exploring what our values are, and that is why sometimes giving your mind less time to overthink and compare helps us follow our intuition.
- Even then, it can be hard to trim our list of the things we care about. In fact, where we are at determines what that list looks like based on what is top of mind. That does not mean we do not care about other themes or values. But we need to meet ourselves where we are at.
- Once we identify a set of values, we see themes starting to come up. This is valuable information about the direction that you feel pulled towards. It is less about the label or the word and more about the theme. It is less about family or friendship, and more about community. Less about professional growth or education, and more about expansion.
- There are different ways of further exploring these values: current versus aspirational, intrinsic versus external.
Assessing how closely aligned we are in our decision-making and behavior is not clear cut: it is a continuum. You may see some of your top values reflected in your daily life or some of them not as present as you would like. However wide the gap is gives us powerful information on what you can do next.
See you at our next Community Coffee Hour!
