Your Schedule Starts With Your Values
Are you walking your talk?
Last year I had a flash of insight into what it means to live authentically. Living in alignment isn’t necessarily something you do or don’t do. It’s actually a daily practice.
It really comes down to being intentional. It might sound a little tricky, but in this episode we really break down some of the steps you can take toward living a more intentional life.
What I’m asking you to do in my latest podcast episode is the reflective work that will get you out of the life you feel expected to live, and into the one that is actually true to you. I'm asking you to walk your talk. Get started by listening in here
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full Show Notes …
Hey, risers. Welcome to Empathy Rising.
Today is gonna be a pretty existential episode. I promise that I did not take peyote or like ashwagandha before I wrote this outline, but you may not. You may believe that I did 'cause we're going there. So I hope that you guys can be following along with me, but I'm just soul-searching right now. I'm soul searching about, I. My business and my life and doing a lot of spirituality.
For the first time in my life, which I'm younger, I, I'm, I'm a millennial, whatever, but really for the first time of, in my lifetime, I stepped out of. The rat race and I think a lot of us had the same experience. And it was involuntary for the most part. Like it, it, it was stopped for us, the rat race out there, the societal, I'm just cracking up 'cause I'm just talking about these like esoteric concepts, but like the societal track that everybody's moving on that's quite fast-paced.
The rat race, it was stopped and so. It was an opportunity for a lot of us to just pull our heads out of the sand and look around and be like, wow, I've been a cog in the machine, so to speak. Like I've been functioning in this system and just almost blindly just doing blindly, doing blindly striving, blindly achieving not enough being.
At all by any means, not enough being, I really just started to look around. Literally, it was almost like a slowmo kind of experience, almost like an out-of-body kind of experience, and I was like the observer. Like I had come out of the situation and I was observing and I just was like, why isn't this our life all the time? And how come we are not doing this all the time? And who am I without these roles that I play of the mom who drives the kids to school every day at seven 30, or the mom who sits in the damn pickup line for an hour and a half every day to take them home?
I know I bitch about that pickup line a lot. You guys have heard me talk about that a ton, but it's annoys me. It's like a complete waste of an hour and a half of my day. To just go sit there and park and wait for my kid to come outta school. I think it's asinine, but so without these roles that I play, without these things that I do, because it's just what you're supposed to do. Who am I and, and what is my purpose? If it's not to be a chauffeur and if it's not to do these things right. Whose roles were these to begin with? Somebody out there, they right the proverbial, they say they do, they designed it this way. I'm just, I keep laughing because it's just so not the way that I normally talk on here, but seriously, like these are the things that we're going through my mind.
And so who am I? Whose roles are they? Why the hell am I abiding by someone else's roles? Why am I like doing what somebody else says I'm supposed to be doing? Is this a choice of mine? Am I choosing this? And ultimately, yes, I am. But. Why am I choosing this kind of thing? Like I know people who step out of this voluntarily, like it's not involuntary, it's very voluntary.
They choose this. We all have heard the stories of the people who sold all their stuff and moved into an RV or who are like unschooling their kids or some of these like really cool things that I think are interesting. And there was another experience. It wasn't this like playing tag experience, but there was another one where.
It just hit me out of the blue. If I work virtually and the kids go to school virtually, why am I in rural Alabama right now? And like, why am I not in Bali? why am I not on a beach in Bali? Why am I not in Thailand or Europe or anywhere? If I, if all I need is a laptop and an internet connection and a time zone converter, and now that's all my kids need for school too, then what the heck are we doing here? And it became really clear that Josh's job is the reason that we're here. So this led to some discussions and even some arguments. And so we're really talking about these things. Of the fact that you are a government employee and we are at the whims of the US government, that makes a difference in how we live our life. And it's always been clear, right? It's always been the truth. That's always been true.
So, This is the kind of stuff that we're gonna dive into today, is the fact that you spend your time the way that you spend your time really boils down to the things that you value, because unbeknownst to you intentionally or not right, head down blindly or head up and wide-eyed or not, you've prioritize the things that you value.
And so, If you're prioritizing what your value, you're spending time on what you value, and if you are out of touch with your values, then what are you, you are out of alignment and so that's what we're gonna talk about. The slow-living movement has been around for a long time. It actually originated as the slow eating and the slow cooking movement in Italy, like La Dolce Vita-type stuff. And so we've known about that for a while, there has been people who have said, I do not want to live this fast. I do not want to, to be in the rat race. We see this with people living off the grid. We see this with people selling their stuff and moving into an RV or whatever. There's other cultures like Latin cultures and things that this is more of their way of life with siesta and things like that. A slower pace, a slower way of life. So this movement has been growing, but I think. All of us now are looking for life to slow down a bit. All of us are craving more autonomy, more authenticity, more organicness, organic, whatever that verb or that noun is more organic and more of an organic aspect to our lives. And I think that this comes down to having boundaries on what we say yes to and what we allow into our lives.
This is what's gonna have us. They give us a sense of peace and a sense of ease. This is what I think humanity is calling out for, is a sense of peace and ease, and ultimately to have a sense of cultivation and a sense of intention around our lives, like to stop walking blindly with our heads down and the shuffle the people chain together.
This is the, the image that pops in my head is like, The cog in the machine, right? We're all part like functioning in this system. That has been set up for us, and I think all of us are, are really craving more intention in our lives. More ability to say the, yes, this is what I want, or no, this isn't what I want. Why are we spending our time doing certain things? Is it because that's how we want to spend our time? Or is that how we're expected to spend our time? Who says we need to be spending our time this way? The fact that my kid, when we were doing virtual school, was doing two and a half hours of school a day and done, granted, this is first grade, so I know it's different, but first grade, two hours of school a day, and she was done. Who says that we have to spend our time with her in school? Seven and a half hours a day? Can she not get as effective of an education in a shorter amount of time? I don't know, but these are things that I was just thinking about, whose expectations are these? Then we get into the way the system is set up and blah, all that stuff that I don't really wanna talk about. I, I don't really wanna get too far into that, but expectations, what shoulds are we spending our time according to whose shoulds are we spending our time? According to. Our time is our, our most valuable asset. We can always make more money. We can always make more whatever, but we cannot make more time.
So I've always talked about slow marketing, right? Thinking back like this, slow eating movement, slow whatever, like slow marketing is a movement of itself, and I've always talked about that on here, and slow business building I've talked about on here, but there's almost this crossover now, and these have been fundamental principles of mine in my business life, but there's now this crossover from slow business into slow living, making intentional choices with your time, your effort, your energy. So life really feels the way that you want it to feel. And the thing I wanna point out there is that I didn't say that life looks the way you want it to look. Because again, that's outward. That's an outward experience, an outward perception, and an outward expectation that it looks the way you want it to look. When we turn it into feel, life feels the way we want it to feel. That's inward, that's ownership. So I think that's a huge distinction there. And something that I am really paying attention to is, this is not about outward appearances, this is about inner experiences, you know, but it just wants me to make me ask myself, and you and everybody these questions of, do you wake up every day feeling the way that you wanna feel?
And, and knowing deep down that your choices and your boundaries are contributing to these feelings, are you activate actively cultivating? Are you tending to your life? Are you tending to the life that you want to live? Are you caring for it? Are you nurturing it? It isn't just gonna happen. And I think that's clear is, you know, we are at the mercy of, and I don't really like that word, but. It's what's coming to me. We're at the mercy of the system. We're at the mercy of the establishment.
It's getting heavy and it's getting big, and I don't want it to, but I want us to start asking these questions because I said it a little bit earlier, but when you live out of accordance to your values, when you live divorced or disconnected from your values, When you're not thoughtful or intentional, when you're doing what you should be doing according to someone else's shoulds or some other system, this is the very definition of being unaligned.
This is a conversation that you probably have with your clients on a weekly, if not a daily basis. What is alignment? What is authenticity? But I just want us to look at ourselves and ask if we're actually doing this for ourselves. Are we walking our talk? Or are we just talking a good game?
I wasn't walking my talk as well as I could have, and, and that's why I ended up burnt out at the last, at the end of last year. But I think the other thing, I don't want to sound like radical, right? Like, like it makes me nervous. Those people who sell all their stuff and move into an RV and just abandon the system, that makes me nervous. Are you sure you wanna do that? I think. The approach that I am trying to embrace, and I think what makes more sense for me personally is a practice. A practice of being intentional. Just like we could have a yoga practice or a meditation practice, an intentional practice and a practice is something that we get better at each day. That we improve upon, right? It's not something that we're masters of immediately. There's a lot of things that get in the way of intentional living, of slow living, of authentic living, the peer pressure, and you know, social media, and these things don't help this. I saw a statistic the other day about iGen, which made me chuckle. iGen, which is the generation of people born between 1995 and 2012, so like right before my kids were born, I don't know what my kids' generation is called. I don't, maybe you guys do. I don't. But iGen, 1995 to 2012 has, is facing the biggest mental health crisis of, of all time, of any other generation. So we know how, like social media, any internet, and we know the downsides of some of this technology.
But the peer pressure comparisonitis, this idea of keeping up with the Joneses, I really think that is something that. Makes it difficult to practice intentional living. That makes it difficult to step out of the rat race. Like so-and-so just got this brand new shiny truck, or look at, they just bought a vacation home or whatever.
We're seeing we're, we're inundated with this it, so it's like, how do we keep up? How do we measure up? So now we're talking about things like worth. Right now we're talking about worthiness and I feel like it all. Comes down to values, boundaries, and discipline. And I've been talking about those three concepts for a few weeks now, but when your values and your authentic identity are at the core of what you do, this is when decisions are easier, right?
This is when goals are easier, this is when growth is easier, and this is when. I think you have those experiences where you step out of the moment and you're an observer and you're like, okay, this is what I want. This is what it's supposed to feel like. This is what life's life is. For me, when I say suppose like for me, this is what life is supposed to be.
Everybody's experience that that's gonna be different, but that's what authenticity is true to you. True to you. True to me. True to that person over there. True to that person. Over there, it's all gonna look different. But when we're in alignment with this, when we're living accordance to these values, that's, I think that's, that's the magic, that's the only like way I could explain.
Explain it is like that's the magic and it takes. Practice. It is a practice, an active living practice to to be there more often than not. So if thoughtful, intentional living is a practice, right? So then how do we start, how do we get started on this practice? And I don't think it will surprise you to know that I think this process is a marriage between reflection and action.
We need both if we want to move forward. And if we wanna move forward without making a mess, I've talked about this concept of the two types of people that I tend to work with. The people that I tend to work with fall in two camps. One is the researcher. They're people who gather knowledge, gather knowledge, gather knowledge. They are like experts in their knowing about a topic, but they rarely have done the topic. Or even tried the topic. So that's one person that I tend to work with. The other person that I tend to work with. It's more of the quick start. More of somebody who like jumps in and they start doing a lot, but they're not necessarily doing a lot that makes a lot of sense. They're really just doing a lot that kind of makes a mess and I think that it's really easy to get stuck in one of these two places, stuck in too much, doing not enough intention and stuck in too much thoughtfulness, not enough action. So there really needs to be a marriage of the two and needs to be, a combination of the two. And no matter which camp you're in, you're coming out of your comfort zone a little bit. The researcher is coming outta the comfort zone to take action. The quick start is coming out of their comfort zone to pause a bit before they jump in. So in this sense, in the sense of an intentional living practice, the first step has to be becoming conscious of your values.
It has to be reflection. So some of these questions that I asked above about roles and expectations, maybe break out a journal and really go through them and answer, see what comes up, what roles am I playing in my life that I'm actively aware of, actively participating in, and which roles am I doing because I expected to.
So really explore those. Do you enjoy them? Do you wanna keep them around? If not, how can you get rid of them? How can you cross them off? How can you outsource them? How can you, whatever. So taking a look at some of these roles, some of these expectations. The other thing I think is keeping a list of values and a list of what it feels like if it's inauthentic, maybe an authentic. This feels good. This feels bad. This feels right. This feels wrong. Another thing that I think can be really valuable is to track your triggers. We tell our clients to do this a lot. Are you doing this? Are you tracking? What makes you feel out of alignment? How do you know you're out of alignment? Is it anxiety? Is it, um, you're exhausted? Is it lack of energy? What does out of alignment feel like for you? Tracking what brings you to that? I know that one of mine is very loud places, very loud places, very loud noises. Even when my kids get like real ramped up and they get loud, that is an immediate trigger for me of just overwhelm and I, I gotta get outta there.
So what are some things that are in competition with your values and the way you want to feel in your life? So basically, I really am asking you to do the reflective work that we know about. But we rarely probably do. I'm asking you to walk your talk, and then the next step comes carving space out for the embodiment of these values.
That's your new identity, living your values, putting your values in place, embodying your values. That's a new identity, right? So make sure that each of the things that you've said was important to you is in fact represented in the way that you spend your time. Are you prioritizing what is valuable to you?
Are you intentionally making choices to pursue and elevate and highlight what is valuable to you? The thing to think about here is it does not have to be hours and hours. Maybe it can be just five minutes to start, just like with a meditation practice. A lot of times the first time you meditate, you're not sitting down for two hours of transcendental work.
You're maybe sitting down and trying to quiet your mind for three minutes or five minutes. I think the same notion can be implied to being intentional. Can you be intentionally present? Can you be intentionally active in your life? Whatever that means to you. Can you be intentional for five minutes? For 30 minutes, for half a day for a day, can you live intentionally for a whole day?
I don't think I could. Right now, there's gonna be things that I get sucked into. I pick up my phone and 30 minutes goes by or whatever. So I don't know if I could be completely, actively, intentionally present for an entire day. I think I could for 30 minutes for sure. So, Make this a practice. Now, I know for a lot of you listening that cultivating this intentional lifestyle does mean having multiple income streams.
It means being able to shrink that caseload. It means money coming from multiple places, feeling secure and stable financially, and also maybe one of your values is wealth. And there's nothing wrong with that. It can be easy though, as we've talked about this whole episode, to get up and call, uh, to get caught up in roles, to get caught up in expectations, the shoulds, all of those things in your lifestyle.
All right guys. It's been really fun to get vulnerable with you, to share some inside peaks today to get very existential with you, and then we'll be back with some more tasky and how-to episodes coming up soon. But I think that this has been a fun series and just a, a new perspective and a new outlook here on the podcast.
So thanks for following along and listening to me, and I'll be back with you next week. Until then, keep on rising.
