Liberate Your Story Podcast

You see a story on TV or through your social media feed about someone who did something (or didn’t do something) that makes you say to yourself (or if you’re like me, you say it out loud) “What were they thinking?!” "How did they think THAT was ok?" "Where did common sense go?"

It’s those experiences with other humans that leave us wondering if we are from different planets that really mess with our sense of the world and how we can even survive living on the same planet together.

I started to take my question, “What were they thinking?” more seriously. Was this about education differences? Was it cultural, like which part of the United States you grow up in, I mean west coast and east coast can have very different experiences in life. Was it about their family life or the religion they were a part of, or not a part of? Was it about economics? This search for understanding why we could seemingly be in the same circumstances with someone else and yet produce very different outcomes was a new journey of exploration for me.

First, I had to look inward before I could look outward. What made me do the things I did?

I’ve talked in previous episodes about how our belief systems are so deeply a part of us that they function without us having to make the conscious decision to act on them. What we believe acts as a filter for our model of the world. We can’t act contrary to what we believe. It’s impossible. If they seem to be in conflict, with our actions and our beliefs, then what we call “beliefs” are likely only “professions of belief”. We will always operate from our actual beliefs. When we are self-aware, we can take that moment of conflict as an opportunity to recognize that I may need to dive deeper into my filter of beliefs if I’m wanting a different outcome in my life.

Like beliefs, we have another filter that is incredibly powerful. And this filter was the answer to my curiosity question, “what were they thinking?”.
It’s Values.

I think values have been misunderstood, and especially by me. A value is not what we like but rather what is important to us. What we value shapes and determines our decisions and our behaviors. And values are not just individual. They are social and communal. I have come to find values incredibly intriguing and fascinating. Our values will lead us to do great things in the world. And they can keep us very stuck. Like I said they are powerful.

When our values are misaligned with our actions and goals, we will find that “stuck” feeling. Maybe procrastination or frustration, blocks in our work or personal life, or simply that we aren’t getting the outcomes we are looking for. So if they are also social or communal, you can imagine then how a whole society holding the same values in life would also find blocks, or walls, of progression when the values aren’t in alignment with the professed goals of the collective society. You can also imagine that when two different societies share different values (what is important to them) they will find it nearly impossible to collaborate toward the same goals. And imagine once more if you, as an individual, share different values than the society you are a part of how frustrating it can be when you are moving forward towards a goal and they aren’t. Again, values are powerful.

Let’s go one level deeper here. What you value at your core forms your identity, who you are to your self and what you reflect to the world. Living in alignment with your core values will then create an identity that you can live confidently within. So once more, consider your collective society. When, as a collective, we have different values, then the identity of who we are can be up for debate, or at the least, we don’t all connect with its majority identity.

Is this sounding like our current state of living? Ya. At least in America, we are a hot mess of conflicting values. So what do we do about it? How do we live within the conflicts and misalignments?

On an individual level, we will want to want to intentionally discover what our values are and the meaning of those values. This is by far my favorite part of the work I do with my clients because it's beautifully liberating. It will allow a person to live in the flow of their identity instead of within the frustration and blocks they are used to. They can then make decisions and choices about jobs, relationships, and dreams with ease. Those decisions simply become an overflow of who they are. It begins to happen without them needing pivotal sit-down moments with their pros and cons list. They just get to move forward. Ease and flow.

It also allows their relationships to simplify. When you know what you value, you will also begin knowing what you need. For example, if I have a core value of safety but my partner has a core value of adventure, then what I might need from the relationship is a surety that the adventurous decisions or activities my partner wants me to join them on will have a safety net of sort. I can get to adventurous, but I will “need” assurances of safety along the way. Without understanding my core values, I would likely just keep saying “no, I won’t go there or do that” and miss out on something exciting, stretching, and even bonding. Understanding our values and how we can operate from them, can shift our opportunity for success to monumental levels. And I didn’t even use money as the example here!

As a collective society or community, polarization happens when we have a collision of differing values. So on an individual level, it's a conflict or frustration with decision-making. And in a community it's polarization, taking sides. We just can’t see how someone gets THERE. “What were they thinking?” I’m learning a lot of patience with my society and culture as I understand how my values are not the same as the values of others. I’ve even gone down the intriguing rabbit hole of spiral dynamics. One google search and you might just get lost there too. But as I learn from the psychology and sociology communities, we are born into a value system. This forms how we see the world, but it doesn’t mean we have to stay there. We can choose to value new things or change the hierarchy of our values. This will come with self-awareness and choice. The reward is that I understand myself better and how I sit within my communities value systems.

Let me also note here that values are not right or wrong. They are simply different. I may do a future episode on Spiral dynamics just so we can see better the impact our values have as a collective. In the meantime, the grace I offer myself and those that provoke the question “what were they thinking?” is that we are ALLOWED to see the world differently and interact in it differently. I’m no longer holding someone to expectations that are outside of their value systems, at least I hope. I am simply recognizing that we see life differently and act accordingly. For me, I choose to keep challenging my values so that I am able to operate at my fullest and highest potential. And so that I can remain in flow with my beliefs and behaviors.

In terms of liberation, having a different set of values than our closest community, family or religion can create a feeling of isolation or even shame. I would love to release you from that right now. It’s ok, it’s actually good, to outgrow the values of your younger years and experiences. With each new experience, each new human we meet, and each new vantage point of our world we see we SHOULD evolve in our Values. This is one of those small boxes I’ve talked about in previous episodes. You will not value what you did as a 10-year-old child. You’ve changed. You’ve lived.

My younger self valued holiness. I valued pleasing and glorifying a deity. I valued the rules that helped me achieve these things. If you would have marked me on the Value levels in spiral dynamics, I would have been at level 4, Rules and Hierarchy. But then my community grew to encompass the queer community. And this created a conflict between my values. The rules I valued said this wasn’t going to be ok. It wasn’t safe to color outside the lines. Shifting my values to be inclusive of all the people I met meant that I would struggle with the rules and hierarchy. I had a choice. I could choose to shift my values to more in alignment with my changing beliefs or I could remain in a perceived space of safety with my rules. Fortunately, I chose to shift. It happened internally prior to my external or lived experience of my values. But when it became external, it had a cost to the community that shared my previous value system. I both gained and lost relationships. I don’t regret any part of this, but I reflect on this with you because I want you to see how values become both individual and collective. It’s beautiful and challenging. But it is incredibly liberating when you are free to move in flow with your beliefs and your values. No more internal conflict.

Liberate your values and you liberate your story.