Values Q&A: How do your values guide your personal life?

Values Q&A: How do your values guide your personal life?

Tiffany: I'm your host, Tiffany Sauder. And this is Scared Confident.

This is about values. This is the second one. If you miss, last week, I talked about what the values were in my life and kind of how I've collected those over the last 20 plus years. And today we're going to talk about how they guide my personal decision-making when I think about values, I think about it guiding two things, your decision-making and your time, like what, what gets your energy and attention?

So the first one I'll talk through is demand excellence. Now I want to be sure this isn't misunderstood. I get, you know, my world isn't perfect. The people around me aren't perfect and excellence is. Probably elusive at the end of the day. But to me, it's less about the outcome of excellence and it's more about.

The effort of excellence. And I'll give you an example of this one for myself is it is really easy to get lazy and to tell myself I don't have time to take care of myself. And in particular, the discipline of working out, I am not naturally disciplined. It's just not a thing that. Is the thing that is easy to me and I wrestle and fight it every single week of my life and I can get really apathetic in it, but I know that excellence is something that I want to pursue.

And I know I feel better. My mind is better. I can show up better for the people around me and it doesn't have to be this like big, hairy, crazy elaborate thing. It can be a 20-minute run. That takes me, you know, it takes nothing at all. There are so many things I do for 20 minutes. I don't even recognize it. And so that is a place in my life where I would say it's hard for me to hang on to excellence when it becomes to the discipline of making this space for myself to have physical exercise.

It's not about this pursuit of this perfect body. It's about hanging on to the space and the discipline of knowing that my body moved in a way that it exerted energy in that feels good to me. It's more about that. The excellence of the effort and not this pursuit of excellence from like an outcome or like having to have this ideal size or thing or anything like that in my body.

It's more about the effort. The other place that it really shows up is I would say my parenting style. Somebody told me before I had kids that kids perform to your expectations. And that was like such a moment for me in that you can say things like, well, you know, it's the terrible twos or they're a toddler.

And so, you know, Fitz is what they throw or yeah. They're, you know, kind of in that tween stage or like, yeah, they're a teenager. It's like we can excuse away our kids, his behavior at their whole childhood. And then they're adults and they're expected to like behave and that can be a real struggle. Like some, he employs some of those people, right.

Where it's like, Behaving and like showing up in a way where there's people have expectations of you. I don't want that to be their story. And so I have really high expectations of my kids, his behavior from a really young age. And that is not to say that they have an excellent day every day, but I do want them to understand in the way that I guide them and teach them.

And. Inform like their hearts. And decision-making that, if that was a bad moment for you and you didn't show up well for your sibling or to me, or you didn't, you weren't responsible with some chores or tasks that you had. I want them to understand like you realize that's what you're practicing. You're practicing quitting.

You're practicing being a bully. You're practicing, not being what you want to be, what your full potential is to my kids. Like I tell them that. And so. I demand excellence of them in their attitude. I demand excellence from them in their effort. I demand excellence from them and them showing up in their talents and their gifts fully.

Cause that's what I want them to practice. So I know they're not perfect. I know that they're not going to be, you know, put to string together a perfect week, but I want that to be ingrained in them that your job is to step fully into your potential and your job as a young. You know, 12-year-old nine-year-old five-year-old is to know that you have a point of decision to, you know, take your sister's play over to the dishwasher, along with yours and beasts, do something kind for them, or to be very intentional about not doing that.

And that seems small, but I think in its own those little moments where we start to see our kids as characters developing, and if I want them to be generous in spirit and I want them. Just sort of lookout for others. If they're not practicing that in small ways in our home, they'll never grow up and be that sort of accidentally.

So those are some ways personally that demand excellence plays out for me. The other thing that I would say pursue family is definitely a sort of personal kind of sounding kind of value though. It definitely plays out in my professional life too. And again, this is one of those values. I think life has taught me.

That there are so many things in our lives, in our professional lives, in the world that wants to distract us from taking care of the most important thing, our marriages or relationships with our kids, like investment in that nuclear family, not just in our homes, but like in my extended family, too.

There are so many things that you can get invited to in the evenings and on weekends and just this constant busy-ness and my husband, he gets the credit in this he's. He's just naturally, I would say, just really invested in committed to family. And I admire that so much about him. Where I can be more naturally distracted by like the fun thing I got invited to, or I get to wear a really cool outfit.

Like, I'd be like, let's do that instead of like going to my mom and dad's house. I love my mom and dad's house, but you get the point. Like, I love the fancy flashy fast paced thing. And given. Left to my own devices. I would default to that probably more often than not. And I'm really thankful for Jr for him having a natural pursuit of family.

But as I've gotten older, I've really understood how precious that is. There were relationships aren't replaced by anyone else. And even in, for us again, this isn't for everybody and where we've chosen to live. We've had opportunities that would have moved us outside of where we live right now. And, and we, at least for us for right now, we're just really committed to like also living close to family.

So not the right decision for everybody. Not telling you, you need to move by your mom if you don't, if that's not the thing for you, but for us, that has been a way that we've put ourselves, I would say, in the path of family, more easily for us so that this idea of pursuing family can happen. More naturally, and we're sort of in community with one another.

Those are two ways that my values, I would say, just are really activated in my personal life. He has always, I would love to hear not only how this has helped you, but what you might be discovering about your own path to values. Or maybe some new applications of what you thought were very professional-oriented values, others maybe apply to your personal life. I'd love it. If you would text me (317) 350-8921.

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