Finding Your Why | Discover Your CORE Values

Melanie Mishler: 00:01

Welcome to the Magnetic Creator podcast. I'm your host, Melanie Mishler, and each week we have intimate conversations about the things that matter most in life. My superpower is helping you remember who you truly are. A powerful, magical creator. I give you proven tools to help you get unstuck and manifest a life that sets your heart on fucking fire. Are you ready? Let's go. Hello, friend, and welcome back. Today is...

bring in Northern California. It is so, so pretty outside. But of course, without fail, that means that all of my neighbors are outside mowing their lawns, blowing. I'm pretty sure one of my neighbors is power washing his deck. And this noise has been going on all day. So I was going to wait to record, but I think it's just going to keep going. So here we go. Today, I want to chat about the power of establishing your core value.

And I think this is a game changer because once we get clarity on our values, it makes everything in life so much easier. Everything from making decisions about how to spend our time and our money to reducing conflict so much more. And here's the thing, most of us probably have an idea or we think we know what our values are, right? Like I bet if I showed you a piece of paper with a list of values, you would probably easily pick out a bunch.

things like honesty, integrity, things like that, right? But here's the thing, defining our core values, like the ones that we live every day by and the ones that guide our life, it goes way beyond just selecting some obvious words from a list. It's about deeply understanding what's important to you and letting those principles guide your life. And here's the thing, it's totally different for every single person and that's okay.

And I find it interesting that the more I work with women, the more I notice that it's actually pretty rare for us to have these clearly defined for ourselves. And not knowing these can lead to indecision, confusion, and just kind of overall lack of satisfaction with life. And I know that was definitely the case for me for most of my adult life because I thought I knew what I valued, but I hadn't really done that deep work.

Melanie Mishler: 02:26

of defining it and living by it until a few years ago when I was working with my coach. And so as always, I'll share a personal example because I guess it seems like my life is an abundance of examples. So I use myself as an example because I know if I can figure this out, anyone can figure it out. Anyway, this all came about for me a few years ago when I was working with my coach and we were talking about things that irritate me. And there's a lot.

But at the time, the thing that was irritating me was my husband. And I don't mean this in a mean way, because any of you who know me, you know that I love Andy, but you probably also know that we are complete opposites. I mean, polar polar opposites. And in many areas of our life, this is great because we complement each other. So for instance, in running a business,

It's great that we're opposites, but in other areas, our differences can kind of rub up against each other and they can be irritating and it can create a lot of conflict for us. And one of the many ways that we're different is Andy is a rule follower. Like he is a rule follower to the T. He was born and raised in Michigan. He is a good Midwestern boy who follows the rules no matter what. And I, on the other hand,

tend to be a rule bender. And I blame this on going to Catholic school for 12 years and just having all of these very, very strict rules imposed on me. They were rules that I didn't feel that they were right. They didn't make sense to me. Many of them I didn't agree with, but I was urged constantly to follow these external rules that didn't match what I felt was right for myself. And so most of my life since then, I have just kind of been a rule bender.

And when we got together, this was an area that constantly brought us irritation and conflict because Andy sees following the rules as doing the right thing. And I just don't have that same kind of tie to morality with rules. So I was in a session with my coach and we were again talking about how irritated I was with Andy and with this conflict we were having. And I was able to uncover.

Melanie Mishler: 04:49

that the reason this was so irritating for me was because one of my values is freedom. Like I value the freedom to choose what's right for myself, what's right for my body. And I choose this freedom to do this without the interference from society or my husband or anyone else's opinion. And this value of freedom was something that was guiding many of my decisions.

and also guiding a lot of my rule -bending, right? But Andy didn't have that same value. So once I was able to get really clear on this, it made, it almost like instantly made our fights about rule -following non -existent. In fact, I think now we just kind of laugh about it because I'll be like, you're such a rule follower and I'm just not, and that's totally okay. Another one of the values that I discovered when I was doing this work with my coach was

Like I really value experiences with others. And since I'm such an introvert, before I had this clarity, I would sometimes struggle to connect with my friends or really dive into experiences like traveling with friends or going out to dinner with friends. But now it's really easy for me to just say yes to anything that connects me with the people that I care about. It makes that decision very easy for me. Okay, so those are just a quick...

couple of examples from my personal life and what I uncovered when I started to really dive into what my core values were. But how do you come up with your core values? I always recommend just starting off with a common list of values. And you can find this on the internet, or if you're on my website, I'll have one attached to this podcast. So you can download it there. But start by just going through that list and circling all the things that are important to you.

And what you'll notice when you do this is that a lot of them are very similar. For instance, you might circle creativity and curiosity, and you can see how those can be closely tied together. The same thing is if you circle like honesty and integrity or family and relationships. Those can all go really closely together. So,

Melanie Mishler: 07:06

What I want you to do is consolidate all your values that you circle into groups or buckets or something like that. And then really ask yourself, what does this value or what does this group of values mean to me? How do they guide me towards the kind of person I want to be or how I want to live my life? And then another way to uncover values is to reflect on moments when you had a strong emotional reaction or a time when maybe you thought,

this is something I really want to fight for. And I don't mean fight physically, I mean metaphorically. But a lot of times when we have this strong emotional reaction, it's because our values are being challenged or threatened. So that's another really good way to uncover them. And the last thing is to remember that your values will change over time. So if you've done this work in the past, I always recommend kind of revisiting it every year.

to see if things have evolved for you or how they might have changed for you. Okay, I urge you to take some time to get really clear on your core values, but don't just keep these in your mind. Like don't just make a list in your mind because what happens is we're so busy that it's really common for us to forget the things that are important to us. And I know that sounds funny, but it's so true. So instead of just making a list in your head, I urge you to come up with a list of your core values.

and then define them, write them down with a definition for what they mean in your life. And I'll give you another example from mine. For instance, one of my values, like I said, is connection, connection with others. Now, if I just stated this alone, it's pretty vague. It doesn't really help me get any clear direction with my life. But I went a step further and defined it and

said what it means to me. So what I wrote down was connection is being authentically present with others in the world around me, sharing and or experiencing meaningful moments, even if they are micro moments or painful moments. And I hope you can see that by having this clearly defined, it makes decisions about how I want to spend my time a lot easier because again, being an introvert, it's really easy for me to isolate myself.

Melanie Mishler: 09:29

But having this value of connection with others to be top of mind, it's a lot easier for me to reach out to friends or say yes to any kind of experience with friends when my default would typically be, maybe next week or maybe next time, because that's just how my default is as an introvert. Okay, so I hope this all makes sense. And once you have your core, like four to seven values clearly defined, write them down and then have them posted on a sheet.

some place where you can see them often. I have mine written down and they're posted on my bathroom mirror. They're also posted in my office, like right in front of me in my office. Also, when I open up my laptop, I have a little sticky note that's taped down so it doesn't fall off that has all my values. And it's really helpful to keep these at top of mind all the time. And let me tell you that since I've been doing this, decision -making is easier.

Conflicts with my husband, conflicts with the people around me are decreased. And I just, the overall satisfaction of my life has increased because I know I'm living from my values. I'm living from things that are really, really important to me. Okay, friend, I hope you will take this on and I hope that it's as powerful for you as it was for me. And until next time, enjoy the spring.