Aligning with Your Values

Nov 8, 2016

Core Values | www.nalumana.com

 

“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.

 

If you would like, send me your responses (at jessie(at)nalumana(dot)com) and I’ll come up with a list of core values for your consideration.  I’d be happy to help you explore how these resonate with you and how they’re showing up – or not showing up – in your life.

The Becoming Podcast has been on a short hiatus while I focus on writing my book, but oh what a comeback episode I have for you!

This month, I spoke to Toko-pa Turner, who many of you may know as the unofficial patron saint of many of my circles and gatherings because of the sheer number of times I’ve quoted from the wisdom of her book, Belonging.

Toko-pa is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. Blending the mystical teachings of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreams, she founded The Dream School in 2001, from which thousands of students have graduated. She is the author of the award-winning book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, which explores the themes of exile and belonging through the lens of dreams, mythology, and nature. This book has resonated for readers worldwide, and has been translated into 10 different languages so far. Her work focuses on the relationship between psyche and nature, and how to follow our inner wisdom to meet with the social, psychological, and ecological challenges of our time.

Here’s some of what Toko-pa and I talk about in this episode:

> The dream that changed Toko-pa’s life, causing her to question her career and, ultimately, her identity

> How we can court our dreams to support us during times of radical transformation – and the reasons so many of us have a hard time remembering and working with what shows up in our dreamscape

> Toko-pa’s perspective on the message of Belonging after the divisiveness our society has experienced in the years since it was published

> What happened for both Toko-pa and I when we fell out of belonging from the ideologies of the “wellness world”

> How to build community when you’re under-resourced

> “The Big Lie” when it comes to belonging, and how we can reclaim a sense of belonging to the greater family of things, as Mary Oliver so famously wrote

Listen to the episode on iTunes

 

Show Notes

Toko-pa’s Website

Belonging:  Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa’s book

The David Abram video about animism mentioned in the interview

Toko-pa’s self-guided program, Dream Drops

Companion, the program that accompanies Belonging

 

Also, while you’re at it, if you enjoy The Becoming Podcast, I would be so grateful if you would rate and review, and even subscribe to it on iTunes.  That goes a long way to helping more and more people find and benefit from hearing these interviews!  Thank you so much!