🤸 Living in your values, Sahil Bloom’s 9 life systems & birthday celebrations

Hey — it’s Cristina & Jenni.

Each week, we share leadership reflections, resources, and laughs to help you excel in your role (+ have fun along the way).

As two tech leaders, we’re here to “lead in public” by sharing what we’re learning in our day-to-day roles, encouraging others to do the same, and learning and growing as leaders together.

Enjoy!

A big thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our survey last week - plugging it again as we’d love to hear from even more voices in our community. 🙏 

If you have 5 minutes to spare, tell us more about yourself and share any thoughts or feedback right here.

What we’re reflecting on this week

How often do you ask yourself: “What really matters to me? What do I deeply care about?”

A few months ago, I was asked these questions by my coach as I was navigating some work chaos and personal challenges.

It completely caught me off guard.

Although I answered her, she pushed me to go deeper, to dig into my core values and jot them down. She shared an exercise with me, inspired by Dr. John DeMartini, one of the foremost researchers in this space.

But before we dive into the exercise, let’s chat about why getting clear on our values and making a conscious effort to let them guide our day-to-day life, is important for leadership.

And since knowing ourselves is step one to being a great leader, understanding our values is like sharpening our inner compass. It's incredibly useful when:

• We're figuring out the type of relationships we want with our employer, coworkers, and what we expect from work.

• We're seeking inspiration and insights into where to channel our career energy and uncover our passions.

• We're setting our goals and looking for that extra push to achieve them.

• We’re building a toolkit that helps us bounce back when we hit a rough patch or when self-doubt tries to creep in.

And Brené Brown is a big fan of “living in our values” too.

She's all about lining up our actions, decisions, and behaviors with what we believe in - whether that means standing up for our beliefs, making tough choices based on values, or even challenging our biases and prejudices.

For example, "growth & development" is one of my core values. This helps me reframe tough challenges as opportunities to learn and keeps me focused on the achievable low-hanging fruit.

According to Brené, our values:

• Are part of our identity, serving as a compass for our lives.

• Give us direction and guide our behavior in different situations.

• Encourage authenticity, purpose, and integrity when we live in alignment with them.

So, how can we align our actions with our values and refine our inner compass?

Set aside 20-30 minutes for this 3-step exercise inspired by Dr. John DeMartini. We find it powerful because:

• It prompts an objective self-reflection based on your real life experiences, not just your perceptions or wishful thinking.

• It's useful when setting goals, feeling stuck, or just wanting to check in with your values (which can evolve over time!).

• It paves the way for you to lead with confidence, authenticity, and resilience, inspiring us and others to level up our game.

Step 1: Jot down 3 examples for each.

1. How do you spend your time?

2. How do you fill your intimate and personal space?

3. What energizes you most?

4. What do you spend your money on most?

5. Where are you most organized and ordered?

6. Where are you most disciplined and reliable?

7. What dominates your thoughts?

8. What do you think and/or visualize about?

9. What do you most often talk with yourself about?

10. What do you love to (and frequently) talk with other people about?

11. What inspires you and what's common to the people who inspire you?

12. What are the consistent and persistent goals you have that you're relentlessly making come true?

13. What you can't wait to learn, read about, and study most?

Step 2: Bring it all together to uncover what your values are.

Language is a key indicator for our values, and are clues if we're living in alignment with them.

1. Review your answers and jot down recurring, similar words, or synonyms. Tally these common words.

2. Rank these words from most to least frequent. Now we have your values, in priority order! Most common/repeats = Highest Values.

Step 3: Reflect.

• The higher a value sits on your list, the more you're naturally drawn to it. This is where you bring your A-game—discipline, reliability, and laser-like focus. It's where you're the most 'you.'

• The stuff lower down? Those are stepping stones to your top values, and you might find you're a bit less driven in these areas.

• Use these insights like a mirror to your daily life and your long-term goals.

• Take a minute to reflect. Does this ranking resonate with you? What's one thing you might do differently or more based on your values?

When you live in your values, you don't just level up your own game, you also inspire your team to reach their fullest potential.

You set the tone for the kind of leader you want to be and the kind of work culture you want to create - showing it’s about people, not just the work.

At the end of the day, the goal is not just to manage - we’re here to lead. We want to be a leader who not only understands themself but also brings others up along the way.

And that starts with living in our values.

So let's continue to leap towards that goal, and let’s do it together.

→ Reflect on your current challenges. How can you use your top values from the exercise to navigate these situations more effectively?

What we’re learning this week

• 🎙️ Podcast: Sahil Bloom - 9 systems to build a life you love - Sahil Bloom pairs up with Ali Abdaal to drop wisdom bombs left and right. Known as the maestro of 'system thinking,' Sahil unpacks his trusted systems for everything - from nurturing friendships and “life dinners” to building wealth and reducing friction in our lives.

• 🧵 Thread: Leadership coach, John Brewer, gives a mini-masterclass on how high performers can get clarity over their purpose & achieve success without sacrificing wellness - Spoiler alert: values are the secret sauce to help us direct our energy towards the right path!

• ✍️ Online values assessment from Dr. John Demartini - If you want more guidance for completing the core values exercise and identifying your unique hierarchy of values, you can use Dr. John Demartini’s online assessment. Happy discovering!

What we’re enjoying this week

Soaking up the sunshine, Aperol, pizza, and pasta of beautiful Italy. It’s our birthday week (our birthdays are 5 days apart 😲) so plenty of celebrations and things to be grateful for (including you!). 💜

This picture was taken in Cinque Terre specifically Vernazza - highly recommend!

That’s it for this week — thanks for reading.

See you next Thursday! 🤸‍♀️