TCC Podcast #349: Living Your Values with Michelle Pollack

The people and stuff we mentioned on the  show:

The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Michelle’s website 
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  At some point in your business or life you’ve probably thought a bit about your values. What’s really important to you as a human, as a copywriter, maybe as a parent or a friend or a sibling, or any of the other roles that you fill in your life. What’s really important? Some of the stuff isn’t easy to figure out, it takes time and deep thinking, and that’s why we invited our guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to join us, that’s Michelle Pollack, and Michelle is a leadership and mindset coach for executives. We asked her about figuring out our values, setting the right goals and dealing with the inner critic that won’t leave us alone, and her answers are directly applicable to your business and success.

Kira Hug:  But first, this episode is brought to you by the P7 Client Attraction Pipeline, which is our client acquisition system. And anytime we survey our community of lovely copywriters, we ask you what do you want? And you say, I need help finding clients, I need a prospecting system. So we put it together and we continue to improve and add to it so that it works for copywriters based on what’s happening in the marketplace today. And inside the Pipeline Prospecting System we have over 21 pitching templates, so there’s different styles you can use, different templates you can pull from based on what works for you. There are also different tools and pitch tracking templates that you can pull from so that you…

It’s really easy to start pitching tomorrow and you don’t have to reinvent everything from scratch. And there are also a ton of other templates and tools and resources inside the system that other copywriters have used to find new clients. So, we wanted to make it really easy for you to just get up and running and find those clients, especially during weird recession times like right now, where it feels a little tricky. And so if you are looking for something like that, you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/p7.

Okay, let’s kick off our episode with Michelle. How did you end up as an executive coach slash leadership coach slash mindset coach? How did you get here?

Michelle Pollack:  So I ended up where I am because I felt like crap about myself for a really long time. I thought I was going to be an actress. I went to school for acting, I was convinced I was going to be a star. In eighth grade I told everybody in my class that we were moving to Manhattan for my career. My mom got all sorts of phone calls from people, “Joanne, you’re moving to New York City?” She was like, “No.” I think I was testing out early iterations of manifestation, they didn’t work.

But that was it, I was tunnel visioned. And then I got to New York City. I mean, I did some performing after college in Chicago. I went to Northwestern, I did all the shows. And then I moved to New York and I did… I auditioned, I did some summer theater and I was on the track and I was at a callback for a national tour of Annie Get Your Gun, and I was cartwheeling across the room at the callback and I was like, “Oh my God, I don’t want to cartwheel across the stage eight shows a week, this is not how I want to spend my life, I don’t want to leave New York City to do that.”

So, I had this total crisis of identity. I had no idea what I did want to do, I just knew I didn’t want to do that anymore. So, I went and I worked, first I did some interning in film and then I went and got into theater, into the producing side of things. I worked for the producers of Rent and Avenue Q, I helped to put La bohème on Broadway with Baz Lerman, and Avenue Q on Broadway. And then I ended up moving out to LA and I got into TV and I worked on shows like The Unit and The New Adventures of Old Christine with Julia Louis Dreyfus, and I worked on Without a Trace.

I had this very glamorous looking life that people were like, oh my gosh, that’s so sexy. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so unhappy.” I was just like, I did not feel good inside. I was like, “I have all the boxes checked of all the things that I’m supposed to be doing with my life, and is this all there is? Because if it is, this isn’t what I feel like I signed up for.” So I just kind of started searching, I was on this constant quest to figure out what it was that was going to make me feel better about myself. I was surrounded by all these incredible people, I had friends that were on TV, I had friends that were on Broadway, I had friends that were crushing it as corporate lawyers, I had friends that were starting their own businesses.

And I just was like, “There must be something decent about me because all these people like me.” Can you imagine thinking that about yourself? I mean, there must be something decent about me. But that was genuinely how I felt. I was like, “Well, I’m really lucky, I’m surrounded by all these incredible people.” And I knew that that was a terrible way to think, I just didn’t know how to stop thinking that. And I also had this constant feeling of, there’s got to be something more than this. There’s got to be something more than this for me. And, I feel like I know deep down that I’m capable of way more than this, like there’s more for me out there.

So I just started, I went… I took an interior design class, I got certified as a yoga teacher, and this was all while I had a full-time job at CBS. And I just started exploring, and at a certain point I was like, “You know what? I can’t feel this way anymore. I need somebody to help me.” And I went and I started therapy. And through the work I did with my therapist, so I actually had some disordered eating issues, which she helped me to really overcome through mindset work, and I was able to… I mean, we all know it’s never about the food, it has nothing to do with the food. And it was very, very largely connected to the way I was feeling about myself and what I did and my kind of meh ness about life in general.

And she really helped me to change the way I thought about my body, about myself, about food, and it was all through shifting neural pathways in my brain. She taught me how to do that. And I was like, I had always thought, this is just the way I am. This is just the way I think. And all of a sudden it wasn’t just the way I was and it wasn’t just the way I thought. And so it started me on this journey of like, well, I want to know more about this. I want to understand this. And I would like everybody in the world to know that that’s not just the way you are and it’s not just the way you think. So I started just exploring more and more personal development work.

While I was at CBS, I kept getting this like, “You should be a life coach. You should be a life coach.” And I was like, “What the hell is a life coach? That is such a [censored 00:07:55] idea.” And then lo and behold, six or seven years later I decided I was going to become a life coach. I did more and more work and I loved what I was finding, and after taking some time off to be home with my kids and feeling ready to head back into work, I dipped my toe back in entertainment. And I was like, “This isn’t it. This is not it. I was right the first time around.” I wasn’t feeling the sense of what I now can identify as fulfillment, in my day-to-day life.

So I decided to look into coaching, the idea of coaching, and as soon as I set foot, well, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but after the first day of my first class I was like, “This is it. This is my thing. I’m in.” I signed up for the whole thing, I did the entire program and that’s it, I haven’t looked back. And really, there was this whole part of me in that time where I was exploring that had all these ideas about different things that I wanted to do that I thought I could do, and then I just would shut myself down, I never even tried.

I had like 30 million entrepreneurial ideas. I really wanted the freedom of my own career, my own business, but I just was convinced I couldn’t. And then through the process of initially therapy and then the work I did and then ultimately training to be a coach, I realized that that was just not true and how much I was in my own way and how often we as human beings get in our own way. It has been so gratifying to work with other people, to push that aside or learn to retrain the way they think about things and help them to achieve multitudes of different things.

Rob Marsh:  So I want to dive into this idea of the, is this all there is feeling. Because well, it’s very common. My guess is, almost everybody feels it at some point in time, we’ve probably got people listening that are feeling it right now. Do you have some advice, some first steps to start to take? If I’m feeling that right now or if they’re feeling that right now, how do we start to step ourselves out of that and find deeper meaning?

Michelle Pollack:  Such a great question.

Rob Marsh:  This is probably too big of a question to answer in a full hour, but I want you to do your best.

Michelle Pollack:  I can give you… We can start.

Rob Marsh:  Let’s do it.

Michelle Pollack:  I just mentioned that idea of what I ultimately identified as fulfillment, and I think that’s what’s usually lacking for people when they have that sense of, is this all there is? They haven’t been able to tap into what is really most important to them, and to me, that starts with identifying your values. So that’s a huge part of what I do in the work that I do, is discovering what your values are, where you’re actually living them in your life and where you’re not. And usually that chasm exists in the place where you’re not actually living into your values.

And so we start to explore there and we start to explore, if you start to look at, what would it look like if I actually was living my value of courage or my value of integrity or my value of adventure or my value of fun? I think a lot of people dismiss those values, and if you’re somebody that adventure is really important and you’re not acknowledging that in your life, you’re going to feel like, is this all there is? So it’s really doing some work to identify what your core values are and how you operate from those values in living your life. Look at that, not the whole hour.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. Podcast over. We can end it right there.

Kira Hug:  And I also wonder if it’s as easy as just knowing in that moment. You said you took your first class, coaching class, and you just knew, is it because you had already identified your values prior to that?

Michelle Pollack:  No.

Kira Hug:  Or is it really just a gut feeling when you find the right thing and you just should keep looking until you have that feeling?

Michelle Pollack:  That’s such a good question, Kira. Here’s the thing that I’ll say, I think that for me there was… I think we all have a calling in our life, I do believe that everybody has a calling in their life of some sort, but it doesn’t mean that it has to be what you do for your work. So for me, it ended up being what I chose to do for my work and what I knew was going to bring me fulfillment on a consistent basis. But I think there are people who can just like what they do.

I’m not a big believer in going to work and being miserable. So it doesn’t have to be your passion and what you’re meant to do, but I don’t believe that anybody should be stuck doing something that absolutely makes them miserable. And you could be miserable because you hate the work, you could be miserable because you hate your boss, you could be miserable because you hate your co-workers, it could be any multiple multitudes of things. But for me, that feeling of this is my thing, I felt… You know that feeling when you feel totally and completely alive? That is an indication. And I didn’t know this at the time, but that is an indication that you are living inside of your values.

That feeling of, this is what life is about, is an indication that in that moment you’re living. So that’s one of the things I do with clients is we talk about a peak experience. Sometimes what I’ll do is talk about one big peak experience, but then for some people it’s how you feel on a sunny day on your porch with a glass of wine and a good book or at a dinner party with friends. It doesn’t have to be this momentous occasion in your life that indicates and points you towards the direction of what is fulfilling to you.

But I think for me in that moment, I had a sense I was feeling fulfilled in a way that I hadn’t felt in a really long time in entertainment. I had moments of it, I had like little bursts of it, but I also had a lot of moments of, what am I doing with my life? And it was more of what am I doing? And I’m not saying that we don’t have, everybody has those moments, even if you are in love with what you do. I’m not one of these people who believes that you should only be doing what you love a hundred percent of the time.

Any job you have is going to require some of the stuff that’s hard. For me, that’s marketing, it’s my Achilles heel. But if I want to do what I’m doing, and that’s why your values are so important because if I go back to what’s most important to me and I let that guide my actions, then I don’t get stopped by the thing that’s hard. I kind of went on a tangent. Sorry.

Rob Marsh:  Good tangent. Good tangent. So while we’re talking about values, again, I have the sense that most of us have an idea of what our values are. It’s like, oh, my family’s important to me, or maybe my religious background or spirituality or work. Do you have a process? Or can you maybe give us some examples of how we can dial that in really specifically and really say, okay, these five things are the five things that I’m living for and I want more of this.

Michelle Pollack:  I’ll tell you the exact process I take my clients through. We start with just what comes up for you when you hear… So we don’t start with just picking five, we start with a big long list of all the things that are important to you, all the things that you feel bring you fulfillment in your life. And I say fulfillment rather than happiness because as an example, someone’s value of family might be fulfilled by taking care of a dying parent, that’s not going to bring you happiness, but it is going to be fulfilling for you because that’s how you want to show up for your family in your life. Fulfillment can have happiness as a part of it, but I don’t think it’s… You’re not always just happy or joyful when you are feeling fulfilled in your life.

Rob Marsh:  I apologize for jumping in, but it feels to me like, along with fulfillment, then it’s almost avoiding what would be the negatives, right? Because if I don’t show up for my parents who I’ve got to take care of, I’m going to feel really bad about that, which is definitely not happiness, not fulfillment. So there’s kind of like that opposite thing there.

Michelle Pollack:  Yes. So a lot of times when I go through this exercise that I’m going to share with you, what we’ll find is, three of the five are going pretty well in someone’s life, they’re in that, they’re showing up for themselves and fulfilling that value in a very strong way, and two are real low and that’s what you’re speaking to. They’re, they’re not honoring that value in any way, and it’s really having an impact on them. So first I start by just asking, “When I say to you values…” Like you just said, it’s spirituality, family, those are two that come to mind for you, and people just talk about what that word means to them, what values means to them. Then I say, “Okay, besides food, shelter, clothes on your back and your health, what is imperative to you to live a fulfilling life? What is absolutely necessary?”

So for me, connection is one of them, connection is imperative for me. I’m not a person who can sit in a room by myself for weeks on end, I would lose my mind and I would be miserable. And so we go through that, we start to think about that. And these are not easy questions, this is a long process, usually this exercise takes a good 45 minutes to an hour when we first go through it. Then I’ll ask other questions like, I talked about peak experiences, so to think about a time in your life where you just felt completely lit up, you felt like this is what life is about. And, I like to ask for both a big experience, something that feels more major, and some smaller experiences, and get a mix of those and see… And so they start to point towards certain things that are important to you.

I just added a question because I just read a great book by Pooja Lakshmin, who is a therapist who wrote a book called Real Self-Care, and it’s brilliant. And she also values as a big tenant of hers, and we do all the same exercises except this one, so she says, “If you were going to have a dinner party and you had $200 to spend and it was for your birthday, a birthday party, not just a dinner party, and you had $200 to spend, what is going to be important to you about that party? And what is it going to look like? How are you going to do it? Does it matter? Is it about having a lot of people and doing it low key? Is it about… What is important to you?” And that also is indicative and points towards certain values. I loved that question, I thought it was such a good one.

Kira Hug:  It’s a great question.

Michelle Pollack:  So I’ve now added that to my… Thank you Pooja Lakshmin. So when I do it with clients, sometimes, a lot of times, there’s things that are hidden, words they don’t actually say that I pull out. And sometimes when people are struggling, I’ll say, “What’s important to you to instill in your children? What’s most important to you in your relationships with your partner or with your friends?” It just depends, some people just flow and some people struggle a little bit more. And then we go through that list and they pull out what they feel are the most important, the top five things that are just non-negotiables in their life, to help them discover. So I have them define each word because your definition of connection and my definition of connection are not one and the same necessarily, right? Your definition of integrity and mine.

Brene Brown has a great list of values, and that’s usually what I use to just take a look at to make sure if there’s a word that I’m having trouble identifying, I can find it on the list. There’s a whole bunch of lists of values out there. So if somebody wants to do this by themselves, they can just Google the list of values and they’ll be able to print it up. So I ask them to define their values, and then I ask them, how much on a scale of one to 10, do they feel they’re living that value in their life? And then I ask them to define what it looks like at a 10. If you’re living your life at a 10 in that value, what does it look like? And that value is being honored. It’s being honored by you, it’s being honored by those around you.

And that’s a big one, because it’s not imperative that everybody that we’re friends with or that we are in a relationship with, has the same values as us. But if we’re in a close relationship with somebody, it’s pretty important that they honor ours, which is where conflict comes into play and boundaries come into play and things like that. So we look at that and they talk about what it looks like at a 10, and then I ask them why they gave it the rating they gave it. So we get to see the gap between a 10 and where it is now, and we talk about what’s in the way and then that guides us towards what we’re going to be working on together.

Kira Hug:  What would you say to people like me, and of course we worked together already, but I was looking at my list of values and it’s grown over time. So you said ideally it’s five, I think I counted eight, I’m at eight values. But also it seems really hard to be able to embody and lean into eight values in a day or a week. And so it also kind of stresses me out, so what should I do?

Michelle Pollack:  So Kira, do you feel like, when you say your list has grown, do all of the things that started on that list still feel equally as important to you as the new ones that you’re adding?

Kira Hug:  Yes.

Michelle Pollack:  Because in different seasons of our lives, first of all, our values can shift. I have clients that I’ve worked with for several years and we always revisit it because sometimes it’s just, a value falls off or it’s just less important in that season of your life. Here’s the thing, you could have as many as you want that are important to you, but you have to be able to look… Sometimes the more you have, the more they might bump up against each other in making decisions. And I like to think of values as a great compass for helping you choose the direction that you’re going to go.

This whole idea of balance is just [censored 00:23:33] to me. Intentional living is really what I think people want to do and they’re calling it balance. So when you’re looking at trying to do that, you might have two values that bump, and then you just have to be able to say, okay, these two values bump, which one is going to be most important to me right now? You’re not going to always be able to honor eight values, most likely, sometimes you might. But when you come into a situation where they’re conflicting with each other, it’s about choosing which one you are going to be more committed to in that moment or that circumstance.

Rob Marsh:  I want to know what Kira’s eight values are, but I’m not going to ask her to share them here. Maybe when we do some commentary on this podcast or something like that.

Kira Hug:  I’ll share them later. I’ll share them later.

Rob Marsh:  I’m really curious. Okay, so now we’ve got the values, we’ve kind of locked in on our five-ish values, now we have to live them. And that starts to be the… I mean, you started talking about values bumping up against each other, but it’s not just against other values, it’s against what other people need from our time, what work requires us to do. So can you just share a little bit about, how do we actually implement them so that we are true to our values and not having that disconnect that brings us back to the, is this all there is? And I’m a total failure.

Michelle Pollack:  So I would tell you that before your values bump up against people wanting your time and work and all your priorities in your life, the first thing your values are probably going to bump up against when you look at what’s not working, is yourself.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, for sure.

Michelle Pollack:  It’s going to be your own internal chatter. It’s going to be that inner critic voice, the voice of self-doubt and sometimes imposter complex that it’s going to bump up against before it bumps up against external. Because usually, this is kind of true and kind of not. Often, part of what you’re bumping up against in the external world is a lack of boundaries, is a lack of being truly communicative and clear about what you need and want to thrive. And yeah, you might come into a work situation where you do end up being clear and communicative, and you are trying to honor your values, and they don’t care.

And then you have a choice to make. But at least you’ve been truest to yourself and your needs, and then you get to make a choice. I’m either choosing to stay in this job knowing full well that it’s not aligned with what I want and who I want to be in the world, but I am, I’m going to stay here for X, Y, and Z reasons for now, and I’m going to decide to do something about it down the line. Or, this isn’t going to work for me because now I know very clearly that this is not aligned with how I want to live my life and I’m going to create a plan to get out. But most of the time it’s getting to that place that’s actually the hard part, not that place itself.

Kira Hug:  So let’s talk about the inner critic and all the voices in our heads. What do those sound like? How can we identify those voices?

Michelle Pollack:  So that inner critic voice is really… It comes from our safety instinct, which is from like our cavemen days when we were either running from saber-tooth tigers or hunting for food and then worried that another group of people were going to take our food, it threw us into fight or flight. And we were literally… The safety instinct was there to keep us alive. And while we have evolved as human beings, our brains have not evolved at all. So we still have that caveman brain that throws us into fight or flight all the time, whenever our safety instinct kicks in and senses any sort of danger. And today, that danger could be failure, it could be that person’s going to be mad at me, it could be, what if I never get another job in my life? It could be, I don’t like how I look and people aren’t going to like me because I don’t like how I… Or whatever. There’s 50 million things I should do.

Those are all thoughts that are generated by our safety instinct and they are there to keep us safe. Unfortunately, they’re also there to hold us back, they all come out of a place of fear. So the inner critic could sound anything like, the really obvious one when you’re really nasty to yourself, judgmental, rude, anything you wouldn’t say to anybody that you care about, but you say to yourself, that’s inner critic. It can also look like binary thinking, like black and white thinking. It’s always this way, it’s never this way, that’s often that inner critic voice. What if? What if it doesn’t work? What if I never make money? What if, you know, the long list of what ifs? I’m not ready. This is a big one, especially for women, it often sends us back to school in times that we don’t actually need to go back to school. Women love to say things like, I’ll be ready after I get this degree. And so there’s a lot of, I’m not ready, I’m not good enough or I’m too much.

There’s also, I think I mentioned the voice of shoulds. Like, you should do this, you should be doing that, that’s an inner critic. There’s also that voice of reason that’s like, are you being practical? Is this really practical? And there is a way, it’s not like you just throw all that out the window, but there’s a difference between the inner critic voice and a curious voice of getting clear about what’s actually possible versus that’s never going to work.

So, if you wanted to write a book and you wanted to try and publish a book, your inner critic might say, you don’t have time, plus you’re not good enough, and how are you ever going to get an agent? And the discerning voice who’s like, okay, let’s see how this is possible, let’s see if there’s a way, what you might need to do in order to make this happen. So, it’s not like everything is just a yes, but there is a difference between just putting yourself down all the time or telling yourself you can’t and that curiosity around, let’s see if this is something that really might be a possibility for me in my life. And the answer sometimes might still be no. But you’ve at least explored and looked at all the different perspectives and looked at all the different angles and you’re not just going straight to, well, this is everything that’s going to go wrong, so don’t even bother to try.

Rob Marsh:  I think for me, sometimes the inner critic shows up as an inner slug. It’s more like, you’re so tired, Rob, go take a nap. Don’t worry, that’s going to take too much energy.

Michelle Pollack:  Totally.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. So when that voice shows up, let’s talk a little bit about discipline, because to me, this is really where the rubber hits the road. Just because something’s in the calendar doesn’t mean that it’s going to get done. Just because I’ve decided it’s important to me doesn’t mean it’s going to get done. There’s this discipline muscle that we need to build over time, and it is maybe the hardest of all muscles to build when it comes right down to it. Can you maybe give us some ideas on how we fight against that inner slug?

Michelle Pollack:  This ties back to your values. So what’s most important to you? I mean, this is a big conversation.

Rob Marsh:  For sure.

Michelle Pollack:  I mean, I’m not sure… I don’t always know that I feel discipline is the answer, it’s more about discovering what’s in the way. If it’s really important to you, what’s getting in the way? There’s something more going on for you than just, I’m too tired, I don’t want to. I mean, we all do have a little bit of an inner brat, like that five year old that goes like, I don’t wanna. But, if I were coaching you, I would pull it apart with you, Rob. I would say to you, okay, well let’s look at this, are you really too tired? Because you might be, there might actually be a need for some rest here. Are you needing to create some space in your life? And, how important is this? Because if everything’s important, nothing’s important, right? So, how many things are you making important, and where does this fall on that scale of importance?

And if it is really important to you and that voice is coming up, then I would dive into that voice with you and find out. I would say to you, what’s it avoiding? What are you avoiding by not taking on that thing? Is there something you’re afraid of? It’s probably deeper, and what we’re looking at here is avoidance. And the truth is, most of us have several of these inner critics. I also refer to them as saboteurs because they sabotage you, right? So, there’s one usually that’s judgmental in some way. But then some people have a people pleaser. Some people have an avoider. Some people are perfectionists. Some people are super controlling. Some people are hypervigilant. Some people are hyper-rational. Some people are hyper-achievers. Some people are victims. And nobody is all of those things, don’t worry, you’re not all of them.

But we all have those things to tap into… And sometimes they’ll gang up, like the judgemental one will gang up with the people pleaser and the avoider, and they just like, they’ll pull you out of the thing that you want to be doing. And so it’s really about, this is a practice, really, the first step is starting to have awareness around that voice. And I do a whole exercise which I learned from Tara Mohr who wrote Playing Big, she’s phenomenal, and that book is phenomenal, about creating a character around your inner critic so that it starts to separate you, so you’re not hearing it as your voice so much, so that you start to see it from an outside perspective.

I just worked with someone who identified their inner critic as Trump. And it was a woman, and she was like, “Oh my God, it’s Trump.” And since that session, her inner critic is just taking a backseat. Because every time she hears it she hears it from Trump and she’s like, “Well, I don’t care what you have to say. You’re an idiot.” And not everybody has that much ease in disconnecting, but there is a humor that can come with identifying that inner critic as a character. And when you stop hearing it as your voice and identifying it as you directing yourself in a certain way, it allows you to take it more with a grain of salt.

Kira Hug:  All right. Let’s get into it. Rob, do you want to kick it off?

Rob Marsh:  Yes, I do want to kick it off. So a couple of things really jumped out at me, starting with our discussion around that feeling, is this all there is? And this is not something new. We’ve heard it from other people that we’ve interviewed on the podcast or people that we’ve talked to, and sometimes we’ve even felt it ourselves, where you get to this point where you feel like you should be successful. And Michelle talked about how she was at the top of her game, she was working with big names and stars and making good money, and yet not feeling the kind of fulfillment that you expect to feel when you get there.

And it just kind of begs the question, what is fulfillment? What does that even mean to us in our roles as copywriters, my role as a dad or a husband, those kinds of things? And it’s not the kind of question that we can answer in a 30-minute discussion even. It takes a lot of thought, a lot of work, which clearly Michelle’s explaining, is important to do.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, no. I mean, this whole process of figuring out your values and then recalibrating is, it can really be business changing. And if we’re thinking about business, it can be life-changing. It’s definitely helped open my eyes up to just figuring out why I might feel like, just frustrated or asking that same question, is this all there is? Because I haven’t paid attention to my values, I haven’t even articulated them in the past. I really didn’t articulate them until I started working with Michelle and she forced me to do it. But now that I know what my values are and I know how to use them as a tool to help with decision-making and to help with thinking about opportunities and problem-solving, it’s really just, it is a tool. And I love tools, this is a great one. It’s something that we can all pull from.

And yes, you can work with someone like Michelle, it really helps to have that accountability so she can call you out if you’re not doing it or if you get stuck, it helps to have that person. But you also don’t necessarily need to have that person if you want to get started today and sit down and rank your values and then also figure out, are you actually tapping into that value? And a scale of one to 10, how much are you living those values and keeping a close eye on that?

Rob Marsh:  As we were talking, you mentioned, and you mentioned again that you worked with Michelle to figure out your values. I’m curious if you’ll share some of those with me and our listeners. What are some of those values? Those baseline foundational things.

Kira Hug:  They’re probably not that surprising to anyone who knows me. So I have eight, which is also not surprising that I had a really hard time sticking with five. I would like to get it down to seven, that feels like a sweet spot. So I’ll run through them and I’d love to hear your thoughts, Rob, on these. Number one, and this is in no particular order, but fun, that’s important.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, it makes sense.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, it makes sense. Being seen-

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, I see that.

Kira Hug:  … and understood, as a human. That’s really important to me, if I am misunderstood I feel very frustrated. Truth, courage, authenticity, serenity, which is a fun one.

Rob Marsh:  I think you should cut that one out. Get down to seven right there.

Kira Hug:  I don’t need serenity. Growth. Rob, you probably don’t want me to cut that one out. And the last one is wealth, and you probably also don’t want me to cut that one out.

Rob Marsh:  As long as we’re partners, those last two are… They definitely affect how you and I work together, but-

Kira Hug:  You don’t care if I’m-

Rob Marsh:  … that’s a good list.

Kira Hug:  You don’t care if I’m fun as long as I am helping you grow the bus