Aligning Your Career with Your True Values
SUMMARY
Do you always feel like your plans for your life seem to go off track and everything is all about work? Do you feel the need to change who you truly are just to get ahead in your career? I know that a lot of people struggle with this, so this week I want to help you understand how you can start steering things back in the direction that you really want them to go.
When you do things in your life that are aligned with who you truly are, and what you truly value, things flow. However, that's not the case in most situations with the people that I get to work with.
Give yourself permission to take some time, sit down, and figure out what your true values are.
Well, that's it from me for another week.
Join me again next week as we continue this conversation and move to the next step. We will look at your vision, take those values that you have, and see how you can live out those values. We will discuss what you see three years from now and a year from now so that as we go through the rest of this month, we can put together your plan for the next leg of your journey.
Enjoy rediscovering your values. Do it in a judgment-free, guilt-free environment. Allow yourself to write them down without judging yourself and I look forward to working with you again next week.
I'll see you then.
TRANSCRIPT
Do you always feel like your plans for your life seem to go off track and everything is all about work? Do you feel the need to change who you truly are just to get ahead in your career? I know that a lot of people struggle with this, so this week I want to help you understand how you can start steering things back in the direction that you really want them to go.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation in the area of intention by helping you align your career with your values.
When you do things in your life that are aligned with who you truly are, and what you truly value, things flow. However, that's not the case in most situations with the people that I get to work with.
What tends to happen is people compartmentalise and say, "This is who I am outside of work, and this is who I am in my career." The problem with that is if those identities are different, then you're actually working against who you really are.
The second issue is comparison.
Comparing your results with other people is one thing, but comparing them to how you saw your life going and what it stands for can be a dream stealer. Conflicting values between what's truly important to you, and what you perceive you need to show as your values to get ahead in your career, can create a lot of resentment. A career that you were once excited about can make you feel disillusioned, disenfranchised, or disengaged, and you might end up just going through the motions. There is a better way to approach this: by making sure that you align what you do with who you are.
When you align them, you have a certainty and inner confidence in yourself—a conviction that you are actually, as we talked about last week, on "mission". You are doing what you are called to do. When you are congruent with who you truly are, you have inner peace, and from that inner peace comes greater productivity. It becomes much easier to keep your stress levels where they need to be, and it's simply more enjoyable to do what you do.
Personal values are those things that you believe are important to you, and they determine your priorities.
One of my greatest values is family so I need to make sure that what I do when serving you is done around my family. It wasn't that way in my corporate career and, indeed, my military career before that. Even though family was my greatest value, I was never home. That created a sense of internal turmoil for me, making me question whether I was doing the right thing, and it put me in a state of guilt and shame. From that came some very unresourceful behaviour.
So, what is it for you? What is it that you truly value that you are not actually feeling congruent with?
Your values become your personal GPS. They steer you in the direction that you want to go. When you go off track, you can sense that there's something not quite right. Your values influence all the decisions you make. It's like in a movie where there's a bomb to disarm, and they must choose the red wire or the green wire. One of those choices has catastrophic results if you get it wrong. Many decisions in your career and life have the potential to go wrong. Your values guide you so that you know which wire is the right one for you to cut and when.
Your values change over time. I remember years ago, all I wanted was a black 911 Porsche. I thought that if I had that Porsche, I would be successful. I don't want a Porsche anymore. It's not something that is truly important to me. Now, investing time with my grandkids and travelling takes priority. It's not just material things that change; your values change as well as you grow in your own confidence and personal power. I used to value people thinking I was good enough. I valued people's praise, getting those accolades, and being boosted and edified by others. While I'm okay with that happening today, it's no longer a high value for me. Making sure that I am serving others, helping them achieve what they could have in terms of lifestyle and the ability to get on with themselves and enjoy life better, is what I truly value in my work.
Things can change.
You might be in a position in your career where things are changing, and the things that you wanted before (like me, leaning the ladder of corporate success up against the wrong wall several times because I was chasing things through that) might have also changed for you. So, it’s okay to sit back and look at what has changed and then align what you are doing with that.
Comparison is not what we're going to do here. When you're living other people's values, you're living their life, not yours. Living someone else's life —not yours— is not fulfilling at all. We need you, just as you need me, to be who you are created to be so that together, collectively, we've got all the bases covered.
So, what is it that you truly value?
Your values determine your priorities. They determine where you put your time and money. Someone once said to me that if they were to look at your calendar and cheque book, they would know what your actual values are based on what's living out right now. The problem with that is the difference between your ideal values, the ones truly important to you, and your actual values. That's where conflict can arise. This whole area of intention is about shifting from being scattered to being planned. If you are using raw materials in your plan that take you off track with your values, you're not getting things done. That's why you are not committing to what you want to do and are distracted by things that are truly important to you.
I encourage you to take some time, sit down, and ask yourself, "What do I truly value?"
There's an exercise I do with my clients where we get really deep and achieve real clarity and understanding around what is truly valued by them. Then we can look at that and do a values check to see — in the way that their career is going and other areas of their life — if they are able to live out those values.
But for you right now, let's start at the beginning. Sit down and write out a list of the things you value. When you do this, I want you to use your logical brain. The challenge is that as you start writing that list, you might start feeling guilt, shame, and other emotions that will not serve you. You might also have some confusing internal dialogue. It's not an easy exercise, but it needs to happen.
Moving forward, we're going to look at your vision, what you see in the future—not just on a day-to-day basis. To do that, you need to have your values fresh in your mind, even revisiting ones you've lost, so you know exactly what you stand for and what your priorities are.
Give yourself permission to take some time, sit down, and figure out what your true values are.
Well, that's it from me for another week.
Join me again next week as we continue this conversation and move to the next step. We will look at your vision, take those values that you have, and see how you can live out those values. We will discuss what you see three years from now and a year from now so that as we go through the rest of this month, we can put together your plan for the next leg of your journey.
Enjoy rediscovering your values. Do it in a judgment-free, guilt-free environment. Allow yourself to write them down without judging yourself and I look forward to working with you again next week.
I'll see you then.
