In this video, I want to cover a process that isn't really something that I think most people do. I just kind of recently did this myself, but it has really helped me.
Basically this is a core identity worksheet, and just declaring your personal values so that it helps you run your business better and helps you pursue the opportunities that you know are more in alignment with who you really are.
I can share this worksheet with you if you're a member, or you can just create one yourself. It's pretty easy and you'll understand by the time you go through it. You'll kind of get the idea of looking at it here in this video, and I've made some notes throughout as well.
The purpose of the sheet is to define my purpose and things that I'm really after personally, so that it can affect (influence) my business decisions, basically so that I have a high level view to walk my talk, be accountable, and be the cause of my own growth, be transparent to others and also what I'm going to say yes and no to.
For example, if I don't do this kind of thing or I'm not clear about personal values, I may attract opportunities that conflict with my core values and it's always gonna cause some personal dissonance. And, I'm most likely not going to do the work as well as I could if it did fit my core values.
So that's why.
It's not so much the end results on the worksheet that you end up with.
It's the process of doing this.
So what you do is just create some columns.
What I do well, passions, what I love, what excites me, what I value, and what drains me.
I just added the last column because it's more like what to look out for, and things to work on.
So, I'll just kinda blast through this real quick.
I feel like I have good ideas, good visionary. I think I'm pretty good about seeing the big picture.
I'm fairly analytical and, you know, I pay attention to details.
As far as career goes, I work well with WordPress, writing, planning, building, testing.
I like solving problems, keeping organized and clearing clutter. So, these things may be like if I'm looking for work, the type of roles that I may fall into, passions, living my values. I love spending time with my kids and my wife, creating good work and a clear vision, and sharing what works with folks.
I love exercising and getting out and riding my mountain bike and just being outside. These are the things that I really am passionate about. I love God, my family, my wife, kids, outdoors, animals, nature. I love being in the flow and teaching. I love art and getting results and helping others.
I get excited about going mountain biking and surfing.
I get excited about seeing results and getting paid well for getting results, and accomplishing goals.
Snowboarding! Can't tell you how much I enjoy and love snowboarding.
So again, just write down what excites you because what's going to happen is you're going to combine all these, and it's not so much the one or two things that you do or love or like, that you're gonna pursue for business, but it's kind of a combination of all the things that is what makes you unique.
So, you may share some values that I share, others may share no values that I share. You may like doing something completely different than I like to do. And that's okay. This worksheet exercise is something that you do so that then when you go out and you're engaging with folks, you are going to be pursuing the things that energize you and motivate you, rather than pursuing things that have the opposite effect on you.
For example, I know we all worry. It's draining for me. I'm more of an introvert so I tend to not really enjoy being around crowds, groups of peoples or parties. It's not that I don't appreciate getting together with folks, I just really don't like to be in loud places or drinking, partying, things like that. So I kind of avoid those situations.
I don't like to debate with people on politics and I guess getting too hung up on office politics, things like that. I really don't appreciate people that are in it for themselves or, you know, just small talk, chitchat, things like worrying about the baseball game or football game stats, or who's done what. I think for myself it's draining. I know a lot of people like to talk about that, but I'd rather get out and be riding my bike or doing things like that.
It's kind of draining to be undervalued. Like if you put a lot of effort into a project or helping somebody and they just sort of treat it like it's something that is just expected. It helps to give people credit for what they're doing, their work.
Same thing, illogical arguments or liars, manipulative people, people that are just vague about their agendas. I catch on to that stuff real quick and it is real draining for me. So I do try to avoid those kind of people.
I don't like busyness. This is another reason why I have another lesson on doing calendaring is because I don't want to be busy. You want your day to be filled with things that are energizing. You're not just running around just for the sake of being busy and juggling too many roles.
Social status is another one. I know that we are all trying to get there. I wouldn't want to to be impoverished or poor or not have a home to live in. But sometimes it gets a little bit out of control as far as just acquiring too many material things to prove your status on the social hierarchy. It’s just kind of amusing to me.
I also just don't appreciate people that are hellbent on putting us in our place.
So, I wouldn't really want to focus too much in this area, but it's good to yin yang. Know what you do well, are passionate about, what you love, what excites you, what you value, and then also be aware of what drains you so that when those things start to pop up, you can manage the stress and avoid it. Again, you don't want to focus on the negative, you want to focus on the positive, but without negative, there is no positive. So keep that in mind.
Now the second thing I've done on this sheet is create a tab for mental models.
So here I just kind of capture things that I've learned, or I am learning. I have a lot and I have things kind of everywhere, but since I've started this sheet, I'll be bringing more of them into here.
A couple that I learned recently were cognitive bias and cognitive dissonance. I've heard these terms before, but I never really looked up exactly what they were.
And this one really kind of brought some awareness to me because it is a bias, and I captured my my personal interpretation. You can find the full definition on Wikipedia, but it's basically when you become irrational because of what other people are doing. So it's like, if everyone else is making poor decisions (you know the 5 to 20 other people all around you), and that's who you hang out with all the time, most likely you're going to make poor decisions too.
So, my personal interpretation, just be careful who you hang out with in your environment as it affects and influences how you make your choices, whether you want to believe it does or not.
And then dissonance is like the source of most of our internal conflicts. And that comes from doing things that conflict with our core values because we think it's going to solve our problem or allow us to fit in.
Then this was another mental model that I learned from another author, and it was a three E’s.
Which are ego, expectation, and entitlement.
So the interpretation there is when dealing with yourself and others, just realize that everyone's operating with one or more of these in any given scenario.
The Ego of this person, is their sense of esteem or self-importance.
Expectations, are their belief that something's gonna happen or be the case in the future.
Entitlement is our belief that we are inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment, which usually isn't the absolute truth.
I also have some quotes on here that I've picked up.
These are quotes that inspire me in some way.
Again, you put what you want on your sheet. For me, these are just things that I've picked up that have kind of helped me get to like, you know, more awareness or just realizing new truth.
Like, this is a good Buddhist quote…
If you live in the past, you'll experience depression. If you live in the future, you'll experience anxiety. If you focus on the moment, you'll experience joy and happiness.
And truth is, most of us do this. We all tell stories over and over in our heads about people, things that have been done to us or things that have happened.
We're worried about stuff that might happen or could happen and moments pass and we are constantly living in the past or the future and actually just missing the moment being present.
Assumptions can get us into trouble.
So just stop making assumptions.
Stop guessing or expecting things are a certain way.
Or another good quote is…
Be, do, have.
Not - do, have, be.
For me, this is similar to find your passions and focus on doing those. Help others first. And love that it brings you joy and accept money without guilt so you can support your growth.
Not like, get everything that you think you need first before you can go out into the world and start doing good. You know, just be good first and then other things are gonna come to you.
Value has no limit. Trading, time for money is linear.
That's pretty self-explanatory. Creating stuff that's valuable for the world is going to get you a lot further than just focusing on how many hours you can put in and logging on the time sheet to collect a paycheck.
That mentality, I think is going out the door.
Another one is…
Don't change what you do. Change your audience.
If you're always trying to convince people, or reinvent yourself and learn new things to convince people to hire us, or buy our products - it's not going to work out and it's just gonna drain you. So stick to what you do and, find the right people and just be authentic.
Here is another …
The strength of the pack is the wolf. And the strength of the wolf is the pack.
For me, this just means that we all need each other. I'm kind of an introverted person, but alone I can't succeed or thrive. I need other people. But then on the other hand, we can't all be so codependent that we don't go out into the world and, and don’t grow or don’t learn from our own experiences.
It's like each of us have to endure our own suffering. Nobody else is gonna do that for you. Your group, your friends, your pack, whatever it is, those people are not going to suffer for you. So you need to learn how to be strong and independent on your own, so that you can be valuable to others.
And, last quote on here for that I think this ties in really well to everything that I’m talking about in this course since I focus a lot on planning and that is just…
Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.
That was by Dwight Eisenhower and I thought this was a great quote because when you're planning, you always start with the defining of the things that are really unexpected. And most of the time it's not really going to happen the way you are planning.
The process of planning is just a the creation of a strategy, and strategies are also just guesses. They're hypothesis, so you have to test them, experiment, and then you can kind of get feedback and data on what you're doing and adjust your strategies that you create in your plans.
As you move along, just realize that things are always going to change. Things are most likely not going to work out exactly the way you expect or plan them to. But if you don’t plan, you just end up in an open loop and you never really get anything done. Plans are never accurate, but it's the act and practice of planning that gives us our focus and our results.
So, it's just like having this spreadsheet. I wouldn't expect to hand this to you and just have you understand me or know everything about me, or I wouldn't expect that none of the negative stuff is not going to happen, or the positive stuff is all going to just be exactly the way I want it.
It's the act of doing this, the intrinsic value I get from it.
It's not really like I have to look at this and go, oh, okay… which one am I gonna pick today to deal with this situation? It's more like, okay, this inspired me. I'm gonna capture it. Let me create a personal interpretation of it. Maybe make a note on how to use it on my, in my life. And then study it.
So every once in a while, I just will come back to this, refer to it, make sure it's still in alignment with my current state. If I need to change it or adjust it or add something new, that's what I do.
This is something that can help you with your business because you'll get a better idea of what you're after and then by niching down, narrowing down your focus, especially with things like what you do well and your passions, it's going to just help you get more focused rather than thinking that everybody is a customer or that you want to reach everybody, you want to have millions of customers or everybody is your audience, that type of thing.
So the more niched down, more narrow and focused that you get, the more you understand what you're about, the more you're going to be able to find and attract the individuals that you want in your network, in your group, and then serve them well rather than trying to please people that have conflicting points of view all the time.
That's not to say that you don't need to learn how to deal with conflicting points of view. It's just to say that when you have a business or a product and you're trying to serve others, you want to put your energy into serving them and not put all your energy into pleasing negative people.
I think that's it for now. Let me know if you have any questions or comments about this and I would be glad to discuss it with you inside the course. See you there!
