[00:00:00] What are your values? Do you know what your values are? A lot of people talk about values. It certainly become a buzzword in today's world, but not many people know what values truly are.
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Your values simply mean what's important to you. They're what motivate you. They're what demotivate you, and they're what you'll put energy and resources into. They're not necessarily what you like or what you enjoy doing. They're just important to you.
Here's an example. I had a client who was very meticulous about getting his paperwork done on time. And he said, I hate it. I hate doing my paperwork. I [00:01:00] hate filing it. It's the, it's my least favorite thing that I do in my business. And I said, yeah, but, but do you do it? And he said, yes, it is important to me.
So it was a value to him, but he didn't enjoy doing it. I don't enjoy doing my paperwork, but I do it because it's important. So a lot of people confuse their values with simply what they enjoy doing or with things that sound like they should be important. You know, for example, I was at a training many years ago and it was a business training event locally here.
And one of the things, one of the exercises that the trainer had us do was he had us list out our values. And I would say that of, I think there's about a hundred of us in the room, and I would, I would say probably like 95% of us wrote down, respect, integrity, honor, trust. Those are all good things. We can all agree [00:02:00] that those are good things and those sound really good, but the problem is that those probably weren't actually our value.
You see what most people miss in doing values work is that values are unconscious values are not conscious. They are unconscious filters and they help us to filter our reality. So what is a filter? Well, we have experiences. We experience things externally outside of us. Right now, you listening to this podcast is an external experience.
I'm not in your head. You are listening to me, and this is an external experience. The environment around you, wherever you are listening to this, whether you're driving your car or you're exercising, walking the dog, sitting on your couch, sitting at your desk, wherever you are, whatever is around you is an external experience.
So we take in that experience through the five senses, through our visual, through sound, smell, [00:03:00] taste, touch, and we take in about 40 million bits of information per second. Now, what's important to recognize here is that that number has some variance to it because. Some people save 40 million, some say 11 million, some say it's 60 million.
We, I just go with the average. So the average consensus right now is that we take in about 40 million bits of information per second. Now you can't consciously be aware of all of that, so you have to filter that information. So this information, it comes in through our five senses, and then it goes through a process of being filtered and through filtering the information we delete.
Information. We delete things that are not important to us. They're not relevant to our experience. It just gets deleted. Not important. Don't think about it ever again. We distort things. So you'll distort that experience. If it's something you haven't experienced before, you will distort it to be like something you have experienced [00:04:00] before so that you can understand it.
And then we generalize. We generalize based on what we've learned in the past. And generalization is one of the things that make the human mind so different from other animals. So for example, you know what a chair is, right? At some point when you were just learning words for things, you might have pointed to one and said, what's that?
What's up? What's that? And somebody, a parent grandparent, an authority figure of some kind said to you, that's a chair. And maybe you pointed to another one. And you said, what's that? What's up? What's that? And they said, that's also a chair. And very quickly you had the label chair. And from that point on, you knew whenever you saw a chair that it was a chair.
You didn't have to relearn it, you didn't have to ask, what is that? You knew it was a chair. You also learned what wasn't a chair, because at some point you would appoint it to something, maybe a table, and you said chair, and they said, no, no, no, no. That's, that's a [00:05:00] table. And now you had a brand new label for table.
So we have all of these labels in our minds that we can filter things under and say, well, that's a, that's a table, that's a desk, that's a lamp, that's a plant. You don't have to think about it. It just happens automatically. So we delete, we distort, we generalize all of that information coming to us. And we do that by running it through our filters.
And you have several filters. And these are, this is all happening unconscious, by the way, every second of every day. Now, your filters are your past experiences, your memories, the language you use. Values are a filter, and those aren't the only filters, but we're gonna talk about values today. So one of the things that we filter our experience through is through our values.
And then once we've deleted, we distorted, we generalized all of that information through our filters. Now we're left with about 126 bits of information. So we've gone from 40 million bits of [00:06:00] information to about 126. That's what you are consciously aware of. And then we break that 126 bits into groups of seven plus or minus two.
We store it away for future use, and that becomes an internal representation of the external event, and that is what we respond to. So anything that you're responding to, you're actually responding to what is in your head, how you have deleted, distorted, generalized information, and what you're left with after that.
Is what determines your state, how you feel about it, your physiology, your behavior, how you respond. So values then are a filter, and just like all of our filters, values are unconscious until we can become conscious of them. So if you are, like I was, if you're in a seminar and someone says, what are your values in business?
And you write out some nice sounding words, uh, chances are those aren't [00:07:00] really your values. In fact, I can often tell without knowing someone's business when I elicit their values and I take my clients through a very specific process of eliciting what their values are. And if I'm working with a client on their business or their relationships or any area of life for that matter, without knowing any other context, I can elicit their values and then very accurately predict what is going on in that area of life.
I can look at someone's business values and know if they're making money or not. If they are distracted a lot in their business, if they're floundering, if they're succeeding, I can tell you what's happening in someone's business based on their values. I can do the same in relationships. I can elicit someone's relationship values and tell them exactly what's going on in the relationship, whether it's working or not working, whether they're having a lot of conflict, whether things are going really well.
I can tell by their [00:08:00] values. So values are not just a bunch of nice sounding words that we like. They have true deep meaning, and that meaning has a resonance with us. Now, going back to that seminar I was in, the seminar trainer, he had his values listed on a giant banner, and I remember at the time thinking, wow, those are really good values.
Because I didn't know what I know now about values work and looking back, those are not the values of that business. Those are very nice sounding words, but they're not their true values, and I can tell that because of how the business is run and how the business is succeeding, those weren't truly their values.
So often people think that what they value is they think they value something, but their behavior tells a different story. And a behavior tells us everything we need to know. Now, often if we don't know what our [00:09:00] values are or if we don't know the values of the people around us, we assume that everybody values the same things.
Now, how many of you listening right now value, honesty? How many of you value honesty in your relationships? I'm gonna take a guess that a lot of, you're probably agreeing right now. But now let me ask you, are you honest in all of your relationships? How honest are you? Do you feel like it's safe to tell the truth in your relationships?
If you're not being honest with the relationships that you're in, then honesty is not really a value to you, or you're carrying a tremendous amount of guilt. The emotion guilt comes from violating our own values. So you're either, either honesty isn't really a value to you, which is okay. We're not making any moral judgements on values.
So either honesty isn't really a [00:10:00] value to you, or you are dealing with heavy amounts of guilt because you are in a position where you have been violating your own values and guilt is present to let you know that you're violating your values, that you can do something about it, you can course correct and you can change your behavior.
Now, let's say we know our values. Let's say you know what all of your values are. If you do not know the values of the people around you, you'll project onto them all of your values and think they value the same things they don't. Oof, that can be a tough pill to swallow. You know, my top relationship values in order of importance are loyalty.
Honesty, trust, open communication, and then respect. Those are my top five in order of importance. If someone breaks my top three, that is a deal breaker. There's no going back from [00:11:00] that. When someone violates your boundaries, your values, there's no going back. And by the way, boundaries are established by our values.
That's where boundaries come from. You have a value of something, there's a boundary around it. Now in knowing that it'd be very easy for me to assume that everyone around me values the same things. And I remember several years ago I got into a conflict with someone because they violated loyalty. And I was shocked because I thought, how could this person do that?
How could they break my loyalty like that? They broke my loyalty and they broke trust. And you know, as I think about it, they broke my, they broke honesty too. They broke my top three. So, and I just thought, how could they do that? And I remember saying to my husband, how could they do this to me? How could they do this?
How could this person sleep at night knowing what they did? And Greg [00:12:00] said to me, he said, oh, oh, you think that she has the same values as you? No, you wouldn't behave this way, and if you did, you wouldn't be able to sleep because you would've violated your values. She doesn't have the same values. Now, this isn't to say that she's right or wrong, or that I'm right or wrong, that my values are better, her values are better or worse, or mine are worse, or whatever.
This isn't about that. It's just that she didn't hold an importance. The same things that I did. That's why she was able to behave the way she did and carry on with life like nothing happened because it wasn't important to her. So if we're not conscious of our values and if we're not conscious of the values of those around us, we begin to, we begin to project onto them all of our values and think, well, how can you not think that that's important?
Open communication is my number four value. [00:13:00] That's very important to me. That's not important to everybody. Some people might have that as their number one value. Some people might think that, uh, respect should be higher up in the values hierarchy because it's more important to them. Respect is important to me, but it's not as important as the four above it.
Fun is important to me in relationships. I, my relationships need to be fun. I need to laugh in relationship with people, however, However, it's not in my top four or five values, so even though that's important to me, it's not the most important thing to me. Now in business, I have a whole different set of values for my business, and I have a different set of values for health and for spirituality.
Every aspect of your life has a different set of values, and these values together combined create your life values. So your life values have a different set of rules and hierarchies. And by the way, [00:14:00] values really do become our rules in life. They're the rules that govern our behavior. We all have rules that we live by, whether you're aware of them or you're not aware of them.
You might have heard the saying before, there's honor among thieves. Now, it's not that thieves have no values, they have different values than. The myself and, well, I assume that the people listening to this show now, people do tend to gravitate towards people who share similar values. So there's probably a lot of affinity between your values and the people you're closest to.
Something that was interesting to me today, I was talking to. A really close friend of mine and we were talking about our values and she said, well, I know your values, and she listed off my top four values in relationships. She knew them, and I was like, I was blown away. I didn't know that she knew that about me, [00:15:00] and I felt so honored that my friend knows me so well.
And cares about my values, that she knows my values. She could just rattle them off one by one and knew exactly what they were. And then I thought myself to myself. After that conversation, I thought to myself, do I know hers? And I could probably take a really good guess at a lot of them, but I don't actually know.
So I went back to her and I asked her, what are your values? I would like to know them so I can make sure that I uphold them and respect your values. So after this conversation with her today and feeling so seen and cared for, that she knows what my relationship values are. I now wanna know all, all the people who are close to me.
I wanna know what their relationship values are. I know the values of my clients because I work with my clients and I elicit their values and I help them sort through their own values. So that part I get. And [00:16:00] I know my business values and I look for partnerships who share the same values, and that's important to me.
By the way, if you are getting into any sort of business partnership or if you're already in a business partnership, it would be a great idea for you to have your business values elicited. Now, don't do them with just anyone. I would suggest either. Well, obviously, like I would be happy to do them for you.
Or seek out someone who is trained at a minimum, the master level in NLP neurolinguistic programming. So find a NLP master practitioner or trainer to take you through the values process, or you come talk to me and I'll help you with it. But if you're in any sort of business partnership, you need to get really clear on your values.
Several years ago, I was working with a group of people who were. Co-owners of a business that they wanted to franchise out and they couldn't agree on [00:17:00] anything. And so I was brought in in a consulting role to help them get really aligned and clear on their values so they could agree to the terms of these con terms and conditions of the franchise agreement they were creating.
And this is a really important thing to do, and not many people spend time doing this. So you have to get really clear on your values with your business partners. And then you decide what are the, what are the values that we're going to agree on? So each of you will have, let's say there's two of you in business, each of you will have your own set of values for business and what's important to you in that business.
But you also need to consider what do we want the values of this business to be? And then that has its own set of values. Now we go through a process of aligning your individual values with out of the business so that everyone's on the same page, but we don't stop there. Then we go to the next tier in the business.
So who's, if you have a team under you, who is that [00:18:00] next tier of management? And we get their values aligned with the business values, and then the team below them, we get them aligned with the business values. And imagine a business where all the ducks are in a row. All swimming towards the same destination, all working together in harmony.
That's a business where everyone is talking the same language. They're working towards the same goals and objectives. And you know, I always say it's like getting your ducks in a row, but, but what just came to mind for me is it's really like a Peloton. I'm not talking the Peloton in your house that's, you know, has the nice screen, the nice bike.
I have one. I love it. It's fabulous. But I mean, when you see professional riders out riding in a Peloton, they are so in sync and the momentum of the riders is pulling the ones behind them forward. So the ones in a peloton, if you've ever ridden in [00:19:00] one or if you have ever watched one, the riders who are at the front are doing the most work and they're pulling the ones behind them.
Are being pulled forward so they don't have to work as hard, and whoever's at the back of the Peloton isn't working as hard and they keep switching positions, right? So everybody gets a chance to take a break and everyone has to work the hardest for a while, and everyone gets the easiest role for a while and they keep rotating.
But how this relates to values is that they work together in sync. And if you watch them, they are cycling so closely together in that unit that they look like one. Unit riding together, and they really are a unit riding together in perfect sync and harmony. That's what you want for your teams and business.
That's what a values alignment will do for your business, and I've seen it happen over and over and over again, but it's not just business. Let's look at how this relates to your relationships. Imagine you and your partner with perfectly aligned [00:20:00] values and how. Beautiful. That relationship would be that now the two of you are working together in harmony towards the same common goals and purpose.
How amazing would that be? How would you like that for your relationship? So this is something I, I don't just do with my business clients. I do this with relationship clients as well, is aligning values so that both parties are moving the same direction. And then how about if you have kids? Getting your family values and getting your family unit all on board with the same values, that this is what we value in this family and all deciding on a common set of values that we're all gonna adopt and these are the values for our family.
How beautiful would that be? Now, here's a hint. If your values are not in alignment, you won't be achieving your goals and you'll have a lot of conflict in your life. So if you're not in [00:21:00] alignment, if your values are not in alignment with your relationships, you're dealing with a lot of conflict and issues.
If the values of your business are not in alignment, you're not achieving your goals, you're not going in the direction you want, you probably feel like you're spending your wheels and not getting anywhere, and you're probably not really making any money. Maybe you're making some money, but not the kind of money you want.
If your health values are not in alignment, then you're probably not healthy. So, In any area of your life, and you could do this now, just look at any aspect of your life if you're not living it the way you want, if you're not seeing the results you want in that area of your life, chances are your values are not aligned.
There's a misalignment or there's a conflict within your values system. And through doing this values alignment process, we can change it. We can get rid of the conflicts, we can realign your values. And then we set goals that you feel very compelled towards achieving, and it becomes easy to achieve those goals.
It's like suddenly you are at [00:22:00] the back of that Peloton and you are just catching that drag and you're getting pulled forward and you don't have to work as hard anymore. That's what a good values hierarchy will do for you. How would that be in life? You know, I'm liking this Peloton analogy. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep this one.
So in looking at your values, and I've done this with so many clients who've worked with another coach before, and here's a typical coaching process. The coach gives them a list of really good words, and they say, circle which ones are your values. And then they do that. And then they're like, I, they'll tell me, Terry, I already know my values in my business.
And I'll say, okay, tell me your values. And they go, oh, just a second. I just have to get them out of my book. If they're really your values, you don't have to look them up, you know them. So that's a clue. By the way, if you don't know, if I ask you what are your values, and you can't just rattle them off, um, you don't know [00:23:00] them and they're not truly your values.
So if you have to think about them now, maybe you're the kind of person who you did that kind of values process and you've told, so you've repeated them so many times that, that you know what they are. But do you know what they mean to you? Do you know what they're focus towards or away from? Because under each word, and if we go back to the chair, so remember the chair, you, you go, what's up?
What's up? What's that? And they say, that's a label. That's a chair. But the label, and we're gonna go a little deep here, that label chair is not the chair In an lp, we say the map is not the territory. So the label, the word chair, is not a chair. It represents a chair. So what is the chair then? Because if I say the word chair, I have a clear image in my mind of what that brings to mind.
I know what Chair is in my mind, but I don't know what chair is to you. So what does that meaning, and then we wanna go even deeper. What does that [00:24:00] meaning represent to you in terms of. The visual, the pictures, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the feelings and self-talk. What goes on behind the scenes.
When you think of that chair, now we're just talking about chairs here, so that's not, probably doesn't have that much juice for you, but what about money in relation to your business? When you think about money, what are the pictures that come to mind? The sounds, the feelings, the smells, the taste, the self-talk.
What goes on in the background when you think about money? Because if all six of those, the pictures, the sounds, the smells, the taste, the feelings, and the self-talk, if all six combined are not pointing in the direction you want to go in, you'll have conflict and you'll have problems with money. I will guarantee that 100%.
You know, I remember way, way back, way before I learned an lp, before I was into personal [00:25:00] development. In fact, this is one of the things that started my interest in personal development work. I was working in restaurants, I was a server, and I, I hated it. I really hated it. But at the time, I was also an actor so I could justify hating waiting tables because it was a means to an end while I pursued my art.
And I remember in the restaurant I worked in, there was one server. Who made more money in tips than any other server in the restaurant. His name was Robert. And if I made 150 a night on average, which I did, he made 300 a night on average. Now, I don't know about you, but I, I would like to double my money.
So I asked him one night, I said, what, what are you doing that's different? Why do you make 300? And I make 150? Because I didn't see him doing anything different. And he said to me that he had watched this DVD v, this movie called The Secret. Have you watched [00:26:00] The Secret? Or maybe you read the book, the Secret.
You've probably heard of The Secret at least. Well, I hadn't heard of it at this point. It was still pretty new. And he said, I watched this movie, and now when I'm coming into work, I tell myself, I'm making $300. I'm making $300. I'm making $300. And then he said, then I show up to work and I make $300. Well, I liked this.
I liked this because I didn't have to work any harder. I didn't have to do anything differently. I just had to tell myself, I'm making $300, and I would make $300. So I did it, and the next night, on the way into work, I told myself, I'm making $300. I'm making $300. I'm making $300. And guess how much I made?
I made $150. If you guessed one 50, you are correct. And I told Robert, I said, that didn't work. I did the thing and I didn't, I didn't make any [00:27:00] more money than I did the night before. And he said, oh Terry, you've gotta watch the dvd. I brought it for you. Here's a copy. Watch it. It'll change your life. So I went home and I watched it and I invested and I believed in it.
And I was like, okay, I got, I just gotta use the right affirmations and I'll get what I want in life. But it wasn't working. And I tried at night, after night, after night. And then finally I just thought, well, that, that's a bunch of bs. That stuff doesn't work. And, and at the time I thought all that mindset stuff, that's just garbage.
It doesn't work. And I threw it out, not the dvd, but I, you know, I threw it out of my mind metaphorically, because I didn't get it. I didn't understand what I was missing. And the problem was not the words. You see the words I was saying. I'm making $300. I'm making $300. That's just self-talk. That's only one of six.
What I didn't [00:28:00] understand at the time, and I wouldn't understand it till many years later when I was studying in lp, was that the pictures in my mind when I thought about money, the pictures were really clear. The pictures were my very sad looking bank account. The pictures were unpaid bills on the kitchen counter, and the strongest picture was when I was, I think about nine or 10 years old, and I was over at my dad's house.
My parents were divorced and I brought a friend over with me. My dad was at home. We were hanging out there after school and there was a letter on his kitchen table that said bankruptcy. And my friend saw it before I did, and she said, oh, Terry, is your dad bankrupt? And I looked at this pic, this not this picture.
I looked at this letter and saw that my dad was bankrupt. That was the strongest image I had in my [00:29:00] mind when I thought about money. So picture this. Here I am telling myself I'm making $300. I'm saying all the nice words, but the picture in the back of my mind is this really negative image of a bankruptcy letter.
And my own unpaid bills at home and my bank account balance, which was not looking pretty good. So that's a pretty negative image. Not only that, the feelings associated were deep shame. I mean, imagine being 10, 9, 10 years old and having your friend see that. So I felt a lot of shame attached to money. I felt anxiety with money.
I felt physically, I felt nauseous about money. The sounds, the sound in my head when I thought of money was my dad saying, rich people are greedy. You know, that's what he'd say. Rich people are greedy, you know? [00:30:00] And the smell was like this metallic smell like a, I think of like dirty metal. Like that, sort of like a rusty, dirty metal smell that was a smell of money and there was a taste in my mouth and the the taste was like, Copper, uh, like sort of a metallic, dirty metallic taste.
So, so far we have a very negative representation, a negative picture, negative sound, negative feelings, negative taste, negative smells. It did not matter what I said to myself. I could say to myself all day long, nice things about money, but the truth is I didn't believe a thing I was saying because unconsciously I believe money was a really awful thing.
Now, your unconscious mind is designed to be the goal getter, your conscious mind, the goal setter, your unconscious mind pursues what your conscious mind is thinking about, but your unconscious mind is also there to [00:31:00] protect you. So if I believed, and I did believe unconsciously, that money was this awful, dirty, nasty, smelly, gross thing, shameful thing.
Then my unconscious mind would protect me from that thing that makes me feel bad. It makes me have a bad taste and bad smells and bad feelings and all of that. Do you get it? Do you get what I'm saying? So this is why, by the way, this is why affirmations do not work unless you already believe the affirmation is true.
You cannot consciously change your beliefs. Beliefs are unconscious, just like values are unconscious. So all of that was shaping how I viewed money and so I could not get money in my life while having that internal representation of money. And it's when I learned this and I changed that internal representation, that money started to change for me [00:32:00] and my relationship to money changed and I started to get different results with money and different results in my business.
Now, maybe money is not an issue for you, but how about your relationships? I've worked with people who keep attracting the wrong relationships over and over, and they keep, they say to me like, why? Why do I keep getting into these relationships that don't work for me? Or why do I keep attracting these toxic people into my life?
Well, it's your value system. Your values are misaligned in relationships. And when I say relationships, I don't just mean romantic relationships. I mean your business relationships, your client relationships, your friendships, all the relationships that you have. Have values and you might have different values in your romantic relationship and you might have different values with your friendships, with business relationships.
So when we do values, we get really chunked down into detail, but you cannot change them consciously. And I often, when I work with clients and they'll say, well, I just, I'll just change it. And they just [00:33:00] wanna write a new word on the paper and I say, that doesn't work. Because values are unconscious. So we need to work with the unconscious mind to change your values.
If you could, if you could do your values consciously, you'd be like, okay, you know what, uh, in my business, money's important to me. Having great clients is important. Making sure they get awesome results. That's important to me. Uh, having integrity, that's important, and that would all be true, except it's not true.
We know it's not true because we see it in people's behavior. How many businesses do you see that have integrity somewhere written down on their mission statement or on their website as being one of their values? And then you hear about how the business operates and they're not operating in integrity, so it's not important to them.
They could say it all day long, they could put it on their walls. You know, lots of corporations like to have their values, like plastered all over the business, all over the place in the office. It doesn't mean that that's true. They just said it. [00:34:00] In fact, if you work for a company right now, do you know the values of the company?
This is something I do when I do values alignment in a corporate setting, is I'll ask a few people, do you know the values of this company without looking them up, without looking at the wall? What are the values? And they might get one or two, right? But most of the time they really have no idea. Without reading them, they don't know because they haven't adopted the values.
They're not their values. And I'll do that with people in high ranking positions in the company, and they're still like, oh, what are the values? What are the values? Maybe the ceo, the C-level, you know, the C-suite, they might know, but below them, they often don't know. They don't know. So values are unconscious.
They're not something you can decide consciously. They're not something you can just write down or pick nice words off a piece of paper. Values are deeply unconscious. And the way to elicit them to uncover them is through a process that works with the unconscious mind. Now, [00:35:00] I wish I could take you through that on this podcast, but that doesn't work cuz it's individual.
But if you're interested in learning what your values are, uh, book a consultation with me and we'll see if we can work together to uncover your values. And I'll put that link in the show notes. So the consultation is for us to just get to know each other, see if we're a good fit to work together going forward.
So that would be your first step if you're interested in doing this work. Now, I hope this helped you today, and I hoped this gave you a different perspective of what values are in your life and also your goals. If you're struggling to achieve goals in any aspect of life, this is a good indication as to why you're not achieving what you wanna achieve.
So if you found this episode valuable, please do me a favor and leave me a five star written review of the show. I would deeply appreciate it when it comes to my podcast. I value. Five star written reviews and I'll give you a shout out. How about this? I will give you a shout out on my social media and on the next episode if you write me a five star review.[00:36:00]
Not only that, but if you know someone who would benefit from this episode, please share it with them. Thank you so much for joining me today for listening to this episode, and I hope that you have a truly fantastic day. Bye for now.
