Why Personal Values Matter In Your Business

 

Hey sister! Let me as you a few questions… Are you aligned with your personal values? Are you doing more of what you love and less of what you don’t? Are you multi-passionate and feel like you have to do all. the. things? Deanna Frances is the podcast host of “Lean into Curiosity” where she shares practical tools to help curious and creative women get out of their own way to move their ideas forward. She encourages her listeners to take messy, imperfect action! Let’s get ready to dive in, get messy, and have fun with Deanna!

 

Deanna, before we dive into our exciting topic today, will you please share with us a little bit about your business and your mission?

 

My podcast, which is now turning into a business, is called “Lean into Curiosity” and my mission is to help creative and curious women get out of their own way and take the messy, imperfect action. Through that, I want to help them figure out what they like to do and what lights them up. My personal mission and goal in life is to do more of what I love and less of what I don’t so that’s what I want for other people as well!

 

That really is the goal! I think everyone wants to do what we love and do less of what we don’t love! Also, shout out to your podcast! I absolutely love it!

 

What made you so passionate about educating others on personal values?

I love this question! I lived out of alignment with my own personal values for years and I couldn’t figure out why I had this off-balanced feeling. Part of what I teach others to do now is to search internally and find out where you feel annoyed in your body. Is it in your stomach, do your shoulders tense up, does your face get all flustered? These are the types of feelings you get when you’re living out of alignment with your personal values! This can happen when you’re making decisions just because society says that’s what you “should”. I worked at a job longer than I really wanted to because I felt that’s what I “should” be doing. Once I figured out what my own personal values were and started living in alignment with them, I realized decision making got so much easier. It was night and day and I really want that kind of freedom for other people. What’s funny is that I don’t think a lot of people talk about how to figure out what your personal values are and the why behind it. So often you hear, “Figure out what your values are! Make decisions based on your values!” … but like how do you do that? That’s essentially what I want to help people figure out!

 

I’m so glad you brought this up because I think being entrepreneurs or mompreneurs, we are exposed to so much information on social media! We are being pulled into so many different directions with different people telling us what we “should” be doing. I don’t know how many times your message has resonated with me about feeling off-balance. We are told so many different things about what we need to do to be successful but then you have to really examine how you feel about that!

 

 

 

Why do you think it is so important for women and mompreneurs to choose and define their personal values?    

I think it’s THE most important thing to do in any endeavor whether you’re making a major life decision or a major business decision because it goes back to that feeling and how you want to feel. I think the importance of choosing your values is that it gives you this map and you really get to figure out what your intuition is whispering to you. Like you mentioned earlier, we have so much outside noise and we’ve kind of pushed away from our intuition. By being in alignment with your values and choosing them and then giving them your own definition helps you to understand what they really mean to you. By doing that, you’re really getting in tune with your intuition and starting to get back to what we, as humans, have internally with us 24/7! It’s so amazing that we have this compass guiding us and with that, we’re able to make decisions that will bring us more joy and more fulfillment!

 

I’m so glad you said that! Now, anything I do in my business or if I’m exposed to any ideas, that’s the first question I ask myself… “Will this bring me joy?” ‘I’ll be honest, in the beginning, I wasn’t asking myself that and I was just spinning my wheels and tearing my hair out! I’m sure there’s a lot of mompreneurs out there that feel the same way!

 

How do you think values play a role in creating a business?

Well, to touch on what you just said, having values helps you to make sure that you’re not spinning your wheels and not pulling out your hair! This is about doing something on purpose. I was just like you! I’ve created two businesses outside of what I’m doing now, and I was just following this road map of a digital marketing funnel and creating these various things. Don’t get me wrong, those things are amazing, and you need them in business but at that time they didn’t feel right. By having your values in mind with every idea you’re exploring and every decision you’re making for your business you can make more informed decisions in my opinion. You will be going towards the things that light you up and away from the things that drag you down. You can really lose momentum when you’re working on things that aren’t exciting. I’m sure everyone can relate to this, but when you’re doing this that don’t bring you joy, you just feel like the energy being sucked out of you! There is an analogy of doing work that makes you have shackles on, or we can do work where we take the shackles off. The reason we’re creating businesses is so we have freedom and so we are excited about getting up and working every day! I think that that’s why it’s so important to make decisions based on the values.

 

That’s so important to release those shackles because I’ll tell you, what once I released those shackles a plethora of ideas and opportunities just come flowing in. Once you unshackle yourself you are more receptive to receive more joy in your life. Would you agree with that?  

 

Yes absolutely! I think it’s just this release of negative energy is what opens up this new channel too. We’ve all heard the saying, “What you what you focus on expands”. So, really, I’m not saying anything new to anybody but actually applying it and figuring out the “how” can get kind of challenging.

 

 

 

Can you give an example of one of your values along with how you defined it and aligned it to your life and business?   

Absolutely! Personal development is extremely important to me. I chose a bunch of words that were similar to personal development like, “spiritual growth”, “learning”, “community”, things like that, and I embedded those into my definition of what personal development means for me. Within personal development I am creating a community with my podcast, “Lean into Curiosity” and I’m learning from like-minded people like you and your audience and we’re learning together and growing. I apply that by asking myself, “Is this going to help me grow? Am I learning from this? Does this feel good for me when I talk to this person? What am I able to share with them so we can kind of grow and learn together?”. For me, personal development is so many different words thrown into it but that’s what’s great about this method. You can create your own definition for your value, so my definition is going to be different than someone else’s and that’s totally fine!

 

What do you suggest we can do today or this week to choose and define our values? 

Well, that was a perfect segue for this guide I have been working on which I’m so excited about! I’ve been working on for about a year and I put it to the side because it didn’t feel right six months ago. Now, I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been cooped up in the house trying to figure out my next move in life, but I circled back to creating this guide and I just put it up on my website. It’s a free download via PDF and it is a guide walking through every single step on how to choose, define, and align your personal values. I give a list of words and have you circle about 10 words, then we go back, overlap words, combine words, and then create your definition! I think every single human being on the planet needs to figure out their personal values. Plus, It’s fun! So make sure you head on over to my website and get that guide!

 

If someone not feeling aligned with their business or their life right now, what is the best advice you can give them?

I would say one of two things; either sit still or get moving! You can also do a combination of the two. You can sit still for an hour and then go moving but really the key is to listen to your internal compass and quiet outside noise. We all love social media I mean, that’s how we’re creating businesses, but turn off the social media just for an hour and see what comes up. Or, put your phone away and go for a walk and see what comes up for you! That’s my tangible advice today is to take an hour to yourself, whatever that looks like for you and listen to your internal compass.

 

I deal with this all the time because I’m on social media and I’m teaching on social media, so I feel like it’s in my face all the time! Even though we have personal values and were aligned, it’s normal to separate from that alignment once in a while. At the end of every week, I do my best to not look at Facebook or Instagram and not be in my emails because I want to realign myself with what brings me joy and to be with my family. That way, on Mondays, I’m refreshed and I’m ready to go and tackle my business! As you said, I go back to my values and I’m realigned over the weekend. I personally do that on a weekly basis! Another quick tip is that I always tell everybody is to not have any notifications turned on your phone. They just drive you crazy! The only notifications I have one are my text messages because you know, if your mother texts you, you better text her back, right?!

 

I agree with that! I actually always on “silent mode”. Something else I wanted to touch on that I thought of a few minutes ago and I don’t want it to slip through the cracks is that we are being targeted by algorithms on social media. We are almost backed into a corner and pigeonholed with what we think about when we are on social media. The only way to disconnect from that is to take time to yourself for however long you need. We all know we’ll even be thinking something or talking to somebody and our phone not even near us and then the next time we open up our social media, we’re getting sponsored ads on it! This really is something we need to think about! It’s like a casino and the addiction that gambling can have! There are algorithms that are forcing us to think a certain way and do things a certain way.

 

That is so true so true! Thank you SO much, Deanna this was awesome such a wealth of information and SO inspiring! I want to make sure everyone knows where we can connect with you on social media. Deanna is on Instagram @leanintocuriosity and her website is where you can find that awesome guide and more info is http://www.leanintocuriosity.com Thanks for being with us today, Deanna!

 

 

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