“I don’t feel like myself anymore.”
“I don’t know who I am”
“This isn’t what I pictured for my life.”
“I just want clarity.”
“I feel lost.”
These are pretty common statements on the other end of the Skype line when I’m coaching with women who are going through their Third-Life Alignment.
In my experience, these kinds of thoughts are symptomatic of one thing: a change in or a discordance with your core values. So, one of the first things I do with the women I coach with is to “mine” for their core values. It provides a perfect point for digging into where you’re feeling misaligned, because those feelings can usually be traced back to the ways in which your values are not being honoured.
Here are the questions I ask. If you’d like, pull out your journal and think of your own answers to these questions:
Describe a time when you felt amazing. What was it about your life at that time that was so wonderful? What were you doing? How were you feeling?
What are you most proud of? Why?
What has been your biggest disappointment? Why?
What drives you crazy?
If everyone had three rules they had to follow, what would they be?
I should always…
I should never…
What is the compliment / acknowledgement you most often hear about yourself?
What words describe you at your best?
What words describe you at less than your best?
Who are your role models, your inspirations? What about them do you admire?
From here, I usually come up with a list of values that I think are reflected in my clients’ responses, and then we have a conversation about how they resonate with her. Sometimes it can help to have someone else start the values-mining process; it can be hard to see the forest for the trees, proverbially, of how your values show up for you in this way.