002: Values - Why they're so important and where they come from

In this episode we'll discuss why taking the time to define YOUR values (vs. the values that were instilled in you by family, church, society, media, etc.) is so critical for living your best life.

We'll also cover a list of things that don't define your value, even though our society teaches us they do.

Defining your true values and listing them in priority order is the first step in learning how to live your best life because one of the biggest keys to living a happy life is spending your time in ways that are aligned with your values!

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• Access the episode transcript here

  Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.

  Hi, welcome to the working mom happiness method Podcast. I'm Katy Blommer. This is episode two. And this is a values episode. So if you didn't listen to the introduction, which is episode one, just a quick update about the working mom happiness method, it has four modules. Those are values, goals, boundaries, and then tools for success. And there's a whole bunch of information and tools for success. And it's all gonna be here on the podcast. So we're basically right now starting by jumping into module one, which is values. And this is like just the first just the overview of values. So in the paid program, the working mom happiness method, this is the first week and the first set of videos is Module One all about values. And you if you didn't hear the introduction in episode one, what I'm talking about when I say the paid program is the working mom happiness method has many forms in which you can take it, you can take it here on the podcast for free, it takes a little bit longer, you don't get the accountability. But it's all here, which is amazing. And I'm so excited to share it in this format. But also, you can take it with a group or one on one. And you can find information on all of that on my website at women's best life university.com. So go check that out, click on the working mom happiness method under courses, you'll see all the info there if you are somebody who wants a little bit more accountability, if you want to do it in a group with the community feeling or if you want access to me, there's a little bit more on the homework end in that. But you're going to get some homework, even here doing it through the podcast. In fact, some of the podcast episodes, you I will let you know at the beginning of the episode, if that's the case, but some of them, you're even going to want to like take some notes. So you might want to be listening to it. Not while you're driving or not while you're out like walking or exercising. If you're if you do that with podcasts, you'll actually want to sit down and take some notes for some of them. But this one is fine to just listen through. Because this is just an overview. In the next episode, we'll get into some actual exercises to help you define your values that you'll want pen and paper to write some things down. So with all that explanation, let's just go ahead and jump into the values overview. So in this episode, today, what I want to cover is, what are values? And why am I starting with them? Where do our values come from the importance of aligning our values with our actions and the time we spend in life. Because remember, from episode one, one of the keys to living your happiest and best life is spending your time in ways that are aligned with your values, right. And that's actually kind of tricky. It's something we don't do. We don't get deliberate about and we need to start being deliberate about that to live your best life basically. And then we're going to talk about things that do not define our value, which is hugely important. So let's just go ahead and jump right into all of that. So let's start by talking about what are values. When I looked this up in the dictionary, there are three different definitions of values there is value equals worth so worth in a person's worth your worth your value your worth in this in this world in this life, right? You could think of things have a monetary value or worth right that's that's one definition of value. Another definition is a person's principles or standards of behavior. So your principles your standards of behavior so like your morals think you know that can be kind of interchange that word with values right can be linked to morals, and then the third option for his one's judgment of what's important in life, so what do you value in this life that you're living? For this program, we primarily focus on the first definition, which is your value, your value as a person. And I talked about this in episode one as well. But really, what I'm so passionate about, and the way that I want to change the world in is to change the way that society raises girls and women to believe that our value is based on how we look, and how our body looks, and how we serve all of those around us. Basically, putting ourselves last is is what society in the world has taught us, that's where our value comes from. And that could not be further from the truth, that is not correct at all, our value has nothing to do with the way we look. And it has nothing to do with putting everyone before us. In fact, we need to do exactly the opposite and put ourselves first. But that's a whole, I mean, that that's a huge part of what this program is all about is getting us there. But so so obviously, that definition of value, that is our worth is going to be a big part of this program. And we're gonna talk about that. Actually quite a bit more. In the next episode, I'm going to have you do an exercise that will help you understand how your value and your worth has nothing to do with those things that I just described. And then the other definition is that third definition we're going to focus on, which is one's judgment of what is important in life. So what do you value in this life, and we're going to help you get to a place where you are spending your time, more of your time in ways that are aligned with your values. Okay, I'll talk about that more in a minute. The definition of values that relates to somebody like morals, that's, that's awesome, we're not going to dive hugely into that here into what your morals or your beliefs are. There are some areas that we'll touch on that stuff. But that's not really what this program specifically is about. But obviously, well, obviously, if you're living out of alignment with your morals, right with which what is morally important to you. And that's going to be an issue for happiness in general. But that's something that you probably would want to work with a therapist on or something like that. So that's what we're talking about as when we think of values. That's what I want you to think of, as you go through this program, your value and your worth as a person and what you value, what is important to you in life. Okay. All right, and why are we starting with values? First, let's talk about that. I mean, at the highest level, learning what you truly value, and that you are valuable in life, outside of what you look like and serving everyone around you, because you are you are valuable in life outside of those things. Those things are the foundation for achieving balance in your life and maintaining healthy habits. And I know that might sound a little confusing, because you might not link those two things together. But the reality is that not putting yourself first is what has created this feeling of overwhelm and exhaustion, and not being able to maintain healthy habits. It's a it's a fear, or a guilt that comes with not putting yourself first and there are other things that play into there besides that, as well. And we'll get into all those don't worry, as we go through the program in future episodes, but that value, knowing what you value and how you want to spend your time and then valuing yourself enough to do those things to actually spend your time doing those things. That is the foundation for all of this. And that is where people go wrong when they set goals is they don't stop and pause to really think about what do I value and what do I want in this life. And I am worth taking the time, even if it upset someone that I care about, I am worth taking the time to achieve my goals and live a life that's aligned with my values. And that can be very scary. These are hard things I'm talking about. But we can also do hard things. Okay, so that's why we're starting here with values that is the very fundamental foundation. And it's okay, if you don't have that all figured out. Before you get out of module one, you can work on it simultaneously. But that's why we're starting here. And that lays the foundation for everything else we're going to do.

  Let's talk about now where do our values come from. And this is really important because for the majority of us, most of our values, were really sort of imprinted in our brain, right? The our, as our brain was forming and developing. So for those, you know, those formative years, where our brains developing the most, right from the time we're born up through until we're like seven or eight years old, and obviously it continues later than that, but that's kind of the most formative time for our brains. And so a lot of our values are really formed in our brain during that time in life. So if we think about what's going on in that time of our lives, right, our parents Right. So our parents are huge creators of what we think we value in life. School things that we learn about in school or hear about in school, you know, teachers, friends, kids in school, those all have an impact on values that we develop in our brain during that time in our lives, church. So if you grew up going to a church or part of a religion, obviously, that has a huge impact on what they teach you, you should and shouldn't value in life, and TV and movies, right things we see in TV, things we see in movies, those can influence us, media, any kind of media that you see magazines, social media, that kind of a thing. Whether or not you had it growing up, it's still influenced us now. Right? So, so what was most influential was when our brain was developing in those years, but our values can still be influenced by these other things, even now as as adults, that that is definitely a thing. And, and that exists, right. And so what's interesting here is, it's so critical and so important to figure out which of these things do you still value? Right? You're an adult, now you get to make your own decisions about your values. And I know that might sound like I'm stating the obvious, but I feel like there are so many of us, probably most of us, who still have values left over from these things that I just listed parents, church, school, friends, society, basically, we are living the way that society tells us to or that our parents think we should or that our church thinks we should. Only because that's what they think, and we're afraid to disappoint them. And maybe truly our values don't align with those things anymore. And in some areas, maybe they do, and that feels great to you. And that's awesome. But in some areas, maybe they don't. And I really want you to get very serious about questioning yourself on what are my true values? What do I really care about? Like, if I wasn't worried about disappointing my parents, or disappointing my church or my friends, or what I learned from school growing up? If I wasn't worried about hurting or disappointing any of those people, how would I truly live my life, right? That is so incredibly important, because you do get to make that decision, it actually is okay to disappoint all of those people. And I know that probably sounds terrifying, but it is okay, you get to live your life, on your terms, according to your values. So we really want to get deep on what values came from those places, I was saying when we were kids that were still holding on to that we actually don't align with anymore in our adult life. So really think about that, and which ones do we still align with. And that's awesome, too, because we want to be spending more of our time in those ways that align with those values. All right. And, and don't worry, we're gonna get into an exercise in the next episode that helps you really think about and define what those values truly are. Okay? All right. Now, I want to talk about what happens when our values don't align with where we're spending our time.

  And this is really, really important, because if you have been feeling completely exhausted, overwhelmed this underlying sort of low level of unhappiness, or maybe it's not a low level, maybe it's full on depression, right there, their ranges and spectrums for unhappiness. But if you've been feeling kind of anywhere in that spectrum, it is most likely because you're, you're not spending time, your time in ways that aligns with your values. So think about let's, let's do a couple of examples. Think about if you value your health, if you value being a healthy person, which I mean, let's be honest, I think I think everyone does, I think everyone value puts value on being healthy living a healthy life feeling good most days, right? Yet you're not spending any time or very little time on healthy habits. That is a recipe for feeling unhappy for feeling stressed, anxious, guilty, depressed, beating yourself up. And then and then not feeling great because you're not doing healthy habits like not feeling great physically and emotionally from lack of healthy habits. It's kind of like a recipe for just not feeling good, right? So that's, that's a one that almost everyone has in common if you are not currently spending your time in on those healthy habits but you you value being healthy, right? So that's a big one. Okay? What if you value quiet time to yourself, right? What if you value an hour to just chill or read a book or do whatever it is you like to do watch a show. But you never do that because your life from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed is based on doing things for other people. That's also an extremely common one. Especially for moms, especially for working moms. But really, for all mums and and for most just women, even if you're not a mom, that's a really common one. And that is a recipe for feeling that level of unhappiness that I was talking about. If you value that time with yourself, and you're not getting it at all, or maybe it's time going out with friends, and you're not getting bad, or you know, if you're more extroverted versus introverted, whatever, but if you're not getting that, you're not going to feel great. And I could come up with examples, we could go on and on and on, there are so many examples of not doing something you value, right, there's something in your life you value, but you're not spending your time on it. This creates stress, anxiety, depression, guilt, lots of negative feelings in our life. And that's another reason why this is the foundation of the program, why we start here, because we really want to get you spending more of your time aligned with your values. Okay? So that's, that's the importance of aligning your time with your values, because it's going to help to get rid of that low level of underlying unhappiness that we get in our adult lives that comes up as we start adulting. And once you start doing this, it's actually going to help keep a drive going within you to maintain those healthy habits, which is a huge part of feeling good and living your best life. Okay, more and talk more about that in later episodes.

  So, a few minutes ago, when I was kind of talking about what we think we value, versus what we actually value, right? So when we think back on all those things in our childhood that helped shape and form our values, and we're questioning ourselves will what, okay, here's what I think I value because my parents taught me and society taught me that I should value this, but something's a little off. So I want to question that. Well, what do I actually value? And how far away? How far off from that? Am I really one indicator you can use to find out? Okay, well, what do I what am I actually valuing right now? What am I in this in the last month? What am I actually valuing? And you can check that out? You can, it's an indicator, it can help you understand that based on where you're spending your time, and where you're spending your money, right. So if you were to go back for the last month, and take a look at like your credit card statement, or your debit statement, or your bank account and your expenses and what you've been spending money on right now, of course, like for most of us, like the bigger bills are going to be a house and a car or something that have sent groceries, that kind of a thing. But But what else? Are you spending your money on? Are you spending any money on healthy habits? Are you spending any money on yourself taking care of yourself? Or is it all based on taking care of other people, right? If you are spending the majority of your time and your money doing things for others, then you and you actually do value healthy habits and taking care of yourself or other things. These are just really common examples. So I like to use them, you know, then you're, you're out of sync, you're off. And so that's just a good way to look at it and think about what am I actually valuing right now versus where do I want to be with mom spending my time and where I'm spending my money. So that's just one thing you can go look at to kind of do like a little sanity check on how far off you are from spending your time and your money in ways that are aligned with what you actually value. And that can be a very scary thing. By the way, making a mindset shift to spend money on yourself is it's a terrifying thing for most of us. And I actually go a lot more into that in the budgeting video, which is Well, that'll it's a video in the paid program, but it'll be a podcast episode here. And it's quite a bit down the road and later on, but learning how to value yourself enough to spend money on yourself is critical. And it is the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset, which we're going to talk about in later episodes. But in order to truly the part of the process and the journey of truly learning how to love and value yourself is being willing to take that scary leap and spend money on yourself. And it is it was hard for me. No judgement. It's a hard thing. It's hard for a lot of us. But you can do hard things and it's time you deserve it. It's time to take care of yourself and value yourself. Okay? All right. So let's now just talk about things that do not define your value. Okay. And this is really important. So because it's one of the things that came up the most when I when I interviewed multiple busy working moms, as I was creating this program, we get our value and our worth all tied up in and I'm going to cover the most common things but there can be other things as well. So your value is not based on how clean your houses being a mom, your value is not based on being a mom. Your value is not based on being a wife. Your value is not based on how your body looks. And your value is not based on how well you do at your job at work, your productivity at work. None of those things give you value. Sorry, let me restate that. None of them Things define your value in this world. So now that is a little controversial, right? Because when I said your value is not based on being a mom, you might have been like, wait, but it is. So what I want to be clear on you do add value to your kids you do. That's that that is absolutely a factual statement. And one of the ways you add value in this world, is by being a mom and raising kids who are going to be healthy, mentally healthy members of society, right? That you certainly do add value in that way, there's no arguing or you you certainly there are ways you add value to your husbands or your wife's life, if you are a wife, right? There are ways you add value to your spouse's life.

  That is no doubt there. And however, if you were to not be married anymore, or not have a spouse or a committed significant other, right, if that went away, you would still absolutely add value in this world. Absolutely. Because there are many other ways you add value in this world. First and foremost, and most importantly, you are valuable just because you're a human being and you were born. And that is true. And that is hard for a lot of us to grasp. But that is true, you have value without any of these things that I just described, you just have value for being born. And your people love you and value you just because you exist just because you are and that's amazing. But if you were to not be a wife anymore, you would still have value in the world if you were to, and I know this is like a really sort of devastating thing to even think about. But if you were to lose your children, for whatever reason, you would still have value in this world. I mean, it would be a huge grieving process. And it's a really hard thing to even think about. But you would still have value in this world because your value is in you. Your value is not in what you do for your children. It's in you, and you have the ability to still go on in this life providing value. And this is a really important concept for us to accept and to believe. Because we especially moms, we can tie up our value and our worth within our kids and how they're doing and their failures feel like our failures, right? That's very, very real. And it's also just not the case, their failures or their failures, right. And it's important for us to let them experience and feel those feelings, we can't protect them from everything because they need to grow up to be adult humans who can handle hard feelings, right? We can't protect them from that. So that's huge. Let's talk about the clean house because I have a little story here. For my particular instance. And this has been the case with lots of women who I've coached as well. So society really places a lot of pressure on women to have like a super cute, super clean, perfect house, right? We know that that's not rocket science. We all know society, places pressure on that. So I really challenge you here to start to think about how, how much do you value having a clean house? Truly do you value outside of society? Or the pressure your parents put on you? Or whatever? Do you really need your house to be perfectly cleaned to have a happy life? And in reality, some people the answer is yes, some people cannot function. And it doesn't have anything to do with other what others think, or pressure from others, they just cannot function unless their space is clean. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as it's coming from a place of that's what I need to feel good versus I need that so I can so people won't judge me, right? That's not enough help mentally healthy place. But if you just truly need it, you feel better when it's that way, then that's fine. That's coming from mentally healthy place.

  I was definitely in the bucket of I actually don't need my house to be that clean to function. I mean, I can't live with it if it's disgusting. But I I'm fine with a little bit of clutter, I'm fine with not everything being picked up. It's totally fine with me. But I had a lot of stress and anxiety because I was working 60 hours a week, you know, with with two little kids, you know, all doing all the things. And I felt the need for my house to be like super clean because I was afraid of other people's judgments. It really was rooted entirely in other people's judgments as and as I've gone on my journey. And by the way, if you want to hear more about my journey, go listen to episode one. I talk all about it there in the introduction. But as I went on my journey to learn how to love and value myself, I came to realize that that was rooted in the judgment of others, and I let it go. And so sometimes my house is clean and sometimes it isn't, and it doesn't really stress me out that much anymore. So So play around with that, which side of that sort of line do you fall on? Is it the more mentally healthy version where you just truly need it to be clean and if so when you when you write your values, I want that to go at a decent priority and your values lists at a decent level of priority if it's important to you because that means you need to say no to other things so you can spend time cleaning and get it done. But if you don't value it that much that means it needs to come off that priority lists, and you need to just be okay with other people's judgment. And that's harder. And we're going to work on all the tools to do that as we go along. Okay? Your value is not linked to how your body looks. This can be one of the hardest ones because it is so ingrained in us by diet culture and the fitness industry, so much money is made off of you believing we're value is tied to the way your body looks. And the fact is, and we're gonna talk a lot more about this in a different episode all focused on this, but the fact is, bodies change over time. And over time, bodies change in a way that society defines as worse, they get worse and they get uglier, I'm holding up air quotes, because this is all society's definition that I totally don't agree with. But as you age, your body is going to change hands down, I don't care who you are, it's going to change and some bodies change in different ways than other bodies. But that is what human bodies do. They change with age, and they change over time. And the diet and fitness industry in the beauty industry make hundreds of billions of dollars a year literally over you believing that your worth is tied to the way your body looks as it ages. And as it changes and fluctuates with different seasons in your life and different stress levels, which is all normal and all part of being a healthy person. And, and so we have to stop believing that our value is linked to the way we look. Because number one, it just isn't your people are going to love you regardless of how you look. And if they don't, you should question whether or not they should be your people. And that's a hard reality. But it is true.

  But it just really has nothing to do with the way you look. And this is a hard and scary thing. And like I said, we're going to talk about the tools and talk about this in more detail as we go along. But start thinking about it. Now, as you you know, get ready to embark on this journey in this working mom happiness Method program. Your productivity at work, nope, does not have any linkage to your value. The corporate world especially specifically puts a lot of people a lot of pressure on people, especially if you are somebody who is like, known as somebody who just get stuff done. Right? People tend to you become the go to person, right. And you get a lot of praise. And you get monetary reward for that praise in different ways, promotions, verbal praise, awards, things like that, right? When you do all the work. And so that can make you start to tie your value and your worth doing all the work, right comes back from childhood where we all watched our moms do all the things while our dads kind of just, I mean, they went to work, then they came home and did what they wanted to do, essentially, while our moms did all the things. And I know that that's not the case for 100% of people. But for the majority, that is the case, that is what we watched. So then we thought, well, we have to do all the things for everybody all the time and do them perfectly. And we take that into work into the workplace we do. And if we can learn to dealing our value with our productivity at work, we can start to set boundaries and say no, and ironically, that actually makes us do our job better. It does. It leaves time for us to be more strategic thinkers, we come across as more confident when we say no. And we're going to talk about all this in the career development portion of the program. But it's a game changer. It's just terrifying. Okay, so these are all things that do not define our value. All right. So that's pretty much what I wanted to get you thinking about in this episode and cover as we get ready to jump into the next episode, where you're actually going to start to write out some of your values. So get excited, we're gonna go through some exercises on that, like I said, you're gonna want to be sitting in a place where you can write some stuff down this process. And these exercises have known to make people emotional. So you may want to just, you know, have a quiet space for yourself in case it does make you emotional, because we talked about some hard things in there to help you understand what you really value, but I think you'll get a lot of value out of it actually. So quick recap of the most important things from this episode. Really, you need to dive deep and understand what you truly value independent of what you learned growing up, okay, what do you actually value now and it's okay to disappoint those people that came from growing up. It's really as I promise, it's okay, it's hard, but it's okay. When your values don't align with how you're spending your time, you're going to feel bad overall, you are valuable just for being who you are. And it's so important to remember that that whole list of things that does not define your value, okay? There are so many things that society has us all intertwined with our value are just not sure they have nothing to do with our value. And we need to start to unwind that subconscious reprogramming. And I'll give you the tools to start doing that. And then just think about looking back at that, you know, looking at where you've been spending your money and how you've been spending your time and how far off or how aligned with it with what you think you truly value is it start thinking about that as we head into the next episode, okay. And, as always, please if you found any value out of this, please follow or subscribe to the podcast. Leave a good review, tell your friends about it. If you think they'd get value out of it because all those things, help it get seen by more people and my mission is to just help as many women as possible with this. So, thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you in the next episode

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