Episode 285: Uncover Your Core Values | GET LIFTED
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If today's podcast had a subtitle it would be: What if you actually started embodying the inspirational quotes & memes you share on social media? (Juicy, right?) We're unpacking desired values (how you want to show up) vs. embodied values (how you actually show up) and how to find alignment between these two. Erin teaches a game-changing exercise to help you uncover your personal core values so you can use them as a discernment tool to realign your priorities in your life.
Connect with Erin on Instagram here to submit questions for future episodes.
Resources Mentioned:
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Related episodes:
283: What Does It Mean to “Be in Your Energy”? | GET LIFTED
281: How to Stop Struggling with Indecision | GET LIFTED
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Erin Holt [00:00:02]:
I'm Erin Holt, and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast, where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions, and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience, and because of that, I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model, they're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do, and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect, so I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school in mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same.
Erin Holt [00:00:45]:
This show is for you if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. You'll get things here that you won't get other places. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review and share, because you never know whose life you might change. And of course, keep coming back for more. Now give me the mic so I can take it away. Hello, my friends, my colleagues, my pals, my partners, my listeners. Hello out there. We're back with another Get Lifted Thursday.
Erin Holt [00:01:26]:
We took a break from the podcast last week just because we all needed a break last week, but here we are today, and I'm going to talk to you about desired values versus embodied values. This is a concept that was brought up. I was taking a class with Africa Brooke, and she tucked into this concept a little bit, and I've been thinking about it a lot and thought it would make for a really good conversation starter for Get Lifted Thursday. The subtitle for this episode is what if you started embodying the inspirational quotes and memes that you share? OOH, kind of juicy. Before we get into it, I want to shout out some listener love. This is from Kara Goss, who says this is her favorite functional health pod. She's an RD, and she says, I'm always looking to expand my knowledge and grow in new areas for my clients. Erin's podcast helps me do just that.
Erin Holt [00:02:14]:
Erin does more than simply provide information. She also provides application and action items to implement into your lifestyle. She explains topics so eloquently and is one of my top sources for health info. Thank you, Erin. Thank you, Kara. I love reading reviews. They light me up. I know a lot of you all have been really digging these Get Lifted Thursday episodes.
Erin Holt [00:02:35]:
You're in my DMs a lot to tell me about that. Love that. The biggest thank you. The biggest thank you, though, is to share this podcast, to write a written review to share with your friends. I super appreciate that so, so much. And especially because this is officially the 6th year of our podcast. This is our 6th anniversary.
Erin Holt [00:02:53]:
We have been podcasting now for six years, which is pretty wild. And I was talking to a mentor of mine this week, and we were saying that as long as we stay learning, and as long as we are working on ourselves and we are growing and expanding as human beings, as business owners, as practitioners, we'll always have something to say. So I'm hoping that that continues to be true for this podcast. So let's get into values. Values is a really big thing that we don't spend enough time considering. I think I could take this conversation so many different places, but I want to start by talking about core values. I first did a core values exercise, I think it was 2020, so maybe almost four years ago. It was definitely a game changer for me, so much so that I've made it part of my other programs like the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy and Manifest Your Health.
Erin Holt [00:03:50]:
It's a big one. So I was first introduced, I always give credit where credit is due, I was first introduced to this by Dr. T. Williams. I signed up for a course with him called The Foundations of Social Justice. And he was really clear right out of the get go that you do not have to accept everything I say as truth. He was the teacher, he was the expert on the subject matter.
Erin Holt [00:04:11]:
We were all there to learn from him. And he was saying, you do not need to accept everything that I say or anyone says as truth. You have to run everything through your own filters. But we can't really do that unless we know what our filters are. It's like the Carl Jung quote, the world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you something. Africa Brooke also said is when you don't know what you stand for, you are at the mercy of the external world. So instead of letting the world tell you who you are, why don't you reclaim and refine your own narrative? And so I believe that one of the ways to do this is to really get familiar with and deeply understand what our individual core values are because they might look different than somebody else. And having and understanding your own strong core values allows you to use discernment.
Erin Holt [00:05:15]:
These core values get to serve as a filter. They help you prioritize things. They help you hone in on your sacred yes, your sacred no. So let me talk you through exactly how to find your core values. I'll talk you through a core values exercise that you can implement as soon as you want. If you've never done it before, and even if you have, I think we should keep coming back to these annually or at least every other year to kind of renegotiate with ourselves. Like, is this where I still stand? Is this how I'm still operating? Where am I at with my core values? Am I still making decisions based on my core values? Do my core values need to shift, change? And, and by the way, when I first did this in that program with Dr. T.
Erin Holt [00:05:58]:
Williams, I was like, oh, cool, this is a great exercise. It will probably take me like 25, 30 minutes. It took me two weeks. Okay, so give yourself plenty of space and time to actually do this. If you want to do it well. And if you don't feel like doing it well, I would say don't even bother because this is something that you really need to get into. It requires your attention and your intention and your capacity. So you want to start by googling "core values list."
Erin Holt [00:06:25]:
There's a ton on the internet. They're pretty robust. You want to have a list of like, maybe 50 words that you're working from that you're starting with. And then you read through all of the words and you choose, I don't know, about ten or twelve that really resonate with you. And you write those down on a piece of paper, ten to twelve words. And for each of these, you want to write down the definition of the word. So, like, kind of the classic textbook definition of what the word actually means, but then also your definition. So integrity is one of my core values.
Erin Holt [00:07:07]:
So the definition of integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, moral uprightness, the state of being whole and undivided. My definition, my working definition of integrity, what integrity means to me, is do my actions align with my words? Do I live my life as a testament to the words that I say, to what I teach, to what I talk about, to the way that I advise people? Integrity, to me, feels like strong spine, open heart. So that's what I mean. Write down the textbook definition and then also write down what the word actually feels like and means to you. What's the relationship that you have with this word, with this value. And then based on this list, you want to reduce your list by half looking at this, because we need to eventually get it down to just two or three core values. So starting from this list of maybe ten to twelve, see if you can bring it down to five or six. What are your core values? We're trying to drill in closer and closer and closer.
Erin Holt [00:08:16]:
So based on these five or six, the next step is to describe why this value is important to you. Think about ways that you see these values play out in your life or in other people's lives, maybe people that you're inspired by. You can even describe a time in your life when you had the opportunity to express this value and how that made you feel when you expressed this value. So you can start to see why this is not actually a 25 minutes practice. I really wanted to sit with this to give it space. I would do one part and then I kind of walked away and I would come back to it. I really thought through this quite a lot and journaled on this quite a lot. And then from there you want to boil it down to, like I said, two or three for myself.
Erin Holt [00:09:10]:
I'm not going to lie, I stretched it to like three to four because having two core values is really hard. But you do want to boil it down, because if everything is a core value, then nothing is really a priority. If you have twelve core values, that's not really an effective filtering or discernment system. And that's what we're actually trying to do with this practice and with this exercise. And then from there, you get to ask yourself, am I actually living my life according to these core values? And if you're not sure, just look at your life, your current reality, the results in your life right now. They will show you what it is that you actually value. Not what you say you want to value, not what you would like to value in the future, but what you are actually valuing right now. Because we put our time and our attention and our energy into what we value and where we prioritize those things.
Erin Holt [00:10:10]:
Our time, attention and energy is where we get results. So your results, your current reality will show you what you are actually valuing, what you are actually prioritizing. And so that brings us to desired values versus embodied values because they are two different things. And this is what we would call inner work, which many of us know can be a little confronting. So the next part of this might be a little uncomfortable. And by the way, I know that I said that I first did the core values exercise with Dr. T. Williams so I am, but this whole thing is not the exact practice that I did four years ago or three years ago maybe. I am combining different parts. So something that I learned through him, a core values experience that I learned through my trainings at Stanford, and then of course, like I said, this desired value versus embodied value, I learned through Africa Brooke so I'm kind of mashing a bunch of them together to create and map out more of a process for you to take yourself through.
Erin Holt [00:11:52]:
Okay, so a desired value is a value that you want to have. It's a value that you aspire to.
Erin Holt [00:12:32]:
You want to be this. You want to be somebody with this value, but you're just not there yet. An embodied value is a value that you already live by, whether that's consciously or unconsciously, whether you're making conscious choices based on this value, or you're just making choices not even realizing you're making choices based off of this value. The reason values are so valuable or important is because we make decisions based off of our values. Values inform what we say yes to and what we say no to. Values inform what we speak, what we say, and what we don't say. Values inform what we agree to and what we don't agree to. So you might say, for example, that you value self care.
Erin Holt [00:13:22]:
You might give advice based on this. You might share about the importance of self care on social media or in other places in spaces that you occupy. You might tell others, oh, the importance of, like, you got to fill up your cup first. You got to take care of yourself first. But what you actually embody is self sacrifice. What you actually do, how you actually live your life. The choices that you actually make are consistently prioritizing other people's needs over and above your own. So that's the difference between desired or even aspirational value and an embodied value.
Erin Holt [00:14:03]:
Who do you want to be versus who are you actually actively being day by day by day by day? Now, I lowkey joke about sharing memes on social media, but I think it's actually something to look at because the things that you share are important. They are representative of your aspirational identity, who you want to be. This is the desire on your heart. And I think about this, it's almost like a safe way to test it out. It's a way to dip your toe into the shallow end of the pool. Like, if I post this, what's the reaction that I get? What's the reaction that I receive? Is it actually safe for me to value this? It's a low stakes way to test drive this value out in the real world. All right, let me share an example. This is a little bit of, like, a vulnerable share because it's about me, but it paints a picture.
Erin Holt [00:15:00]:
I think it's a good example to paint a picture of what I'm talking about. Now, I don't post things. I don't share things. I don't really talk about things that I'm not actively practicing and actively doing. Why, it's that integrity piece that's my core value. So that's just, like, kind of how I live my life. But I wanted to share this. I really, really wanted to share this, but I didn't because I was scared.
Erin Holt [00:15:26]:
So I follow this account, Gala Darling, and she sometimes posts what she calls slightly intolerant affirmations, which is obviously very funny. But one of the things she shared was, I won't apologize for having bigger dreams than you. And I was like, I cannot tell you how much I wanted to click the Share button on that one. I wanted to just send it off into the ethers. I saved it. I saved it. It's still in my Instagram saved posts, but I haven't publicly shared it. So this is a desired versus an embodied value of mine.
Erin Holt [00:16:04]:
I desire like, I want to be really unapologetic about my ambition. Even like this time last year, I even wrote it in my journal. I will no longer be available for relationships with people who make me feel like I have to apologize for my ambition. I wrote it down, and I know nobody can make you feel any certain way, but it's my journal. I get to say whatever I want, right? So I wrote this down. That's how much I was committed to this. But even still a year out, I sometimes find myself editing in this department. Sometimes I find myself being a little bit shy or apologetic about my dreams, because my dreams are really, really big.
Erin Holt [00:16:47]:
They are massive, and I tell myself a story that people won't understand or if I share about them, they will judge me in some way, or I will lose people for having dreams that are too big. Right? These are all the internal stories. So because of that, I didn't share it. But I was very attracted to that because that is a desired value. I want to get to a point where I can just be very unapologetic about my dreams and my desires and all of that, but I'm not quite there yet. I'm not fully embodying that. So that is the difference between desired and embodied. And I do think that looking at the things that we save and the things that we write in private or things that we want to share or things that we do share, that's a good way to showcase our desired values.
Erin Holt [00:17:40]:
And my question to you is, what if you went all in on who you really want to be? What would that look like? What if you started embodying the memes that you shared? What if you started believing the inspirational quotes that you love so much and that you share? What if you started living your life as a testament to those words. What if you started taking the advice that you give to other people? What would that look like? And would that take you closer from your desired value into your embodied value? So maybe I'll leave you with a couple of pieces of homework today, if you're up for the challenge. One is to really tuck into that core values exercise and just to look at what are your values look like right now and how much of them are actually embodied, how much of them are actually the ways that you live your life, versus how much of them are things that you aspire to be, things that you desire to embody. And then another potentially fun challenge is to go through your Instagram, let's say, and look at the last few inspirational memes or quotes that you either saved or shared, and pick one of them and then go live out whatever that message was. Go live that message out today in real life with other people in public. What would that look like and how if you do it, how does that make you feel? All right, that's all I've got to share today. Hopefully this shifts something for you in a positive and profound way. That is my hope and my intention for you.
Erin Holt [00:19:28]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.
