This week on the Life, Styled podcast we will be talking about identity and personality - the things that make you you. But there is something bigger that I think should be talked about first when discussing who we are as people. This is something that took me a long time to actually articulate, even though they were within me all along. What am I talking about? Your core values.
Core values are the things that above anything else you believe in. They are at the heart of everything in your life. You see them in every choice you make, every goal you set and every dream you achieve. In order to effectively set goals and reach for your dreams it is important to have a clear idea of what those values are. Once you know your core values you will be able to make sure you do everything in your power to maintain and uplift them.
To give you an idea of where to start, I thought I would tell you my 5 core values and a little about why they are important to me. Then come back this weekend and compare what you learned about me today from my values with what you learn in Friday's Podcast and Saturday's blog post about my identity and personality. You'll see that a lot of these line up!
Seek New Knowledge Everyday: Hello, Kayla's inner nerd speaking here! One of my most critical beliefs is "if you aren't learning you aren't growing, and if you aren't growing you aren't living." I am a constant learner. I loved school growing up. If it wouldn't bankrupt me I would probably have ten bachelors degrees by now. I never want to end up in a place where I feel I have all of the knowledge I need or want. When I sat down to come up with my core values this one was the easiest to articulate because I'd been saying similar things almost every day for my entire life. Knowledge is power and everyone has the ability to obtain it.
Maintain and Grow Positive Relationships: This one will come as a surprise to nobody after this weekends posts. I am a mega extrovert. I love people and I love love. I came up with the wording of this value at a time where I wasn't living up to it. I love people, especially my people (you'll learn more about them this weekend too!), but I was doing a shitty job at showing it and maintaining my relationships. I also hadn't built many strong friendships outside of college and that needed to change with my college friends scattered across the country. I realized how important relationships were to me and never looked back. Now I make sure to actively engage in my relationships every day.
CREATE: What????? Creating is one of MY core values? I bet you didn't guess that based on the new website and podcast I launched just in the last 3 months did ya? And the fact that I teach theatre to children for a living has NOTHING to do with creating, right? Are you seeing how natural your core values should come to you? None of these should come to a surprise to anyone knows me. I've been a creative person my whole life. It has been one of the few constants in my journey to becoming the person I'm meant to be.
Share My Gifts with Those Who Need Them: If you are reading this blog post, I hope you are one of those people. This is the teacher in me speaking 100%. I love sharing my knowledge and passion and experience with others. I have been uplifted by so many incredible teachers and mentors in my life and it is so important to me that I pay that forward. We all are uniquely blessed by the universe with gifts to share with the world. I believe that we must share them.
Take Care of my Physical, Mental and Spiritual Health: Now I'll be honest, this one hasn't always been a core value to me. If it was I don't think I would have gotten to the weight I'm at, had the mental health setback my first year of university that I did, or spent too much time ignoring the spiritual and intuitive gifts I have had my whole life. This value came from a lot of introspection and, honestly, failures. How am I supposed to show up to learn, in my relationships, to create or to teach if I am not my best self? How does being anything less than my best, most healthy self benefit me or anyone in my life? It doesn't. I have to make a commitment to work on my health, in all forms, every single day. It isn't easy at all, but this year I have put a lot of energy into it and I am getting better every single day.
I want to challenge you to think of what at least three of your core values are. What are the things that are most important to your life? What are the things you hope you live out every day? What is ever present in your life that maybe you haven't noticed before? Really take some time to look through your life and choices so you can identify these values and then be more intentional about them.
xo,
Kayla
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