Core Values, The Secret to a Life of Fulfillment

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. At the end of the day, it's not about what you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up, who you've made better. It's about what you've given back. Denzel Washington, Welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Andrea Johnson, Welcome to the show. Hey tch, I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much. I'm really excited about this one. There's so many things that we have in common that you know, we've been doing in our in our lives and our businesses. So I look forward to this conversation. What I'd love for you to do, though, is to take a bit of time and explain to the audience who you are and why you're doing what you're doing now and how you got to that point, kind of the story behind how much time do you have right now? My name is Andrew Johnson. I

1:32 am a transformational leadership coach and I help leaders become all that they can be. And I personally love to take people who are kind of disempowered and struggling and turn them into magnetic what I call magnetic leaders. We take the understanding of who they are as a person and help them kind of tap into that, help them understand how they communicate, tap into that, and then we help them live it out in ways that are like easy and gracious and kind and help them establish boundaries that are effective. I am a Maxwell certified disc consultant, speaker, trainer, and coach, so I am certified to use all of John Maxwell's materials and I have a conference coming up in the fall and live to lead. So it's all about leadership. And you know, we lead ourselves at first and other second. And so the work that I started doing on myself goes all the way back to my early twenty when I was twenty and I put myself in the hospital for Bolomian depression. So if you look at my bio, or if you look online or listen to any of my other interviews, you might hear that story from me. But I just really struggled with being able to fit into the world. You and I joked before we started recording that I am a definition of a non team player according to DISC, and we'll probably talk about DISC today, But you know, growing up in Southern evangelical culture, you're supposed to be a team player.

3:04 Women are supposed to be quiet, women are supposed to fit in. Women are supposed to women are not the leaders. And my in the Maxwell disc, I'm an ICD and I am literally it's called the leader. So when I took that and I saw, oh my goodness, that is some validation for the bossiness I was told about when I was a kid, and the opinions that I had, and the ability to just take charge of any situation, to get on a stage and talk whenever I need to, to take over a podcast episode and just keep going. It validated all of those things, and it helped me understand that I needed to embrace who I am. I spent almost twenty five years in higher education, administration, and operations.

3:46 Two of those two stints of those were schools of medicine here on the East Coast, and they're fabulous schools. But the more I got into it, the more I realized, this is not where I need to be am. I don't want to manage people. I'm not interested in the status quo. I'm interested in something new and different. I'm interested in how we do it better. And that's what got me interested, or that's what introduced me through a friend to the Maxwell Organization, and I said, you know what, this is what I want to do. And I tried doing it. And I don't know how many of your listeners are like this, but I tried doing it inside the organization I was currently working for, and at first they were like, yes, this sounds wonderful, and then it was like no, no, no, you're upset in the apple cart. You just make sure we do things the way we always have done them, and I just said, you know, that's enough. I need to be me.

4:36 So now I work with founders of their own businesses, CEOs, new management, people who just feel people who feel like they just have responsibility without authority. They are consistently compromising their own core values. They feel stifled or unsupported, maybe that unbalanced work life balance that we always talk about, or goodness gracious, I can't tell you how many people I have talked to who are bored because they're trying to fit in, and they have brains and they have the ability and the strengths to go do something bigger, but they just don't have the courage or even the know how. So I come alongside them and I help them, and I help them either stay in their organization and lead better, or I help them branch out and do their own thing. And how many times have you found what you observe because you really mainly focus in the business, how many times do you observe that what they are experiencing into business they take home with them and it's merely a reflection of home or vice versa. Yeah, it's many times. It's more of the vice versa.

5:44 I think they take what they've been conditioned with and they bring that into the business setting, and that's just kind of normal for us. Most of the time, people who are taking things home are not the ones that are interested in talking to me, because they've decided how they want to be the ones who are interested in being different and the ones who are interested in literally turning over the apple cart. They're the ones that come talk to me, okay, and you know it's fascinating you talk about the disc tests and we're going to talk a lot about that for people to understand when we talk about the D, I, S, C. And if they're more more aware of right, right and left Brian introvert, extrovert, how would you explain to them what the D, the I, the S and the C is.

6:30 I like to say, depending on who I'm talking to. I just had I did a podcast for physicians and I said, well, this is all data on a four quadrant graph with the x y axis. You know, my son is in geometry right now, so you know. But quite frankly, it is the spectrum, like you said, extroverted to introverted and people versus task And I say, people who are in that top left quadrant are very that's how it works, like, they're very extra and they're task oriented, and people in the lower left are introverted and task oriented, and the right are extroverted in people and the bottom right are introverted in people or reserved maybe we would say, and we all plot somewhere in that, and it's like a circle that we all have a little bit of all of them in us. It just depends on where you land on the spectrum. So understanding where you land helps you see the patterns with which you communicate or need people to communicate with you. And once we understand patterns, then we can help communicate with others. I grew up in Korea. I grew up in Soul, Korea. My parents were missionaries, and I went to an international school with kids from sixty five different countries. I am attuned to hearing other languages on a regular basis. Being in university medical centers and working in research and clinical research, I was very helpful even if I didn't speak Chinese. I knew what it was like for a Chinese person to try and speak English,

8:01 and I could hear things differently than other people could hear. So I use that as an example as well. I don't walk into a store where they only speak Spanish and try to speak English. I look for the Spanish I learned in tenth grade. You know, I mean, I just I look deep down, like where is it? Because I want to meet them where they are, and so when I explain DISC to people, and it's like learning other people's language, learning how to speak it. It's a lot easier than learning Spanish or French or Korean. And it gives you the opportunity to build bridges so that you can work together in ways that are productive well. And I want to update a little bit about that because it's really interesting.

8:41 As I was sharing with you before we actually started recording, I used to use a different type of personality evaluation and this is more of behavioral and analysis, but I used to use a personality one and I loved it because it talked about that core personality that we have, who we really are, talked about the social personality, who need to think we are or who we need to think to be, and then the conscious personality. And there are so many tests out there, and I can tell you that I have researched and research and researched. And what was interesting is that I went and I finally found this one, the DISC that you and I are both involved with, and I thought, you know, I'm going to try something interesting because most of the tests that I've heard from people, they only measure one You just get that one. You know, you're this, this is this, you're right brain, left brain, whatever. And so I went and I'm not going to name the individual, but I went to an extremely popular individual's website and they offered the personality test. So I took it and it came back and I looked at it and I thought, holy cow, this is my social personality. It hasn't gone into any of the others. And I think it's important for people to understand that we actually have those three different levels of behavior, those three different personalities. Would you like to explain to the folks what those three are and then we can talk about those a little bit more.

10:11 Yeah, we in the Maxwell Report uses like the mirrored self and the original self and that kind of stuff. I like to use the analogy of muscle groups. Right, do you work out at all? Oh? Yeah, okay, so when you were born, you had specific muscles, and as you grew, we each have muscles that just kind of naturally work for us. I have friends who look at my arms and say, oh, you have muscular arms, and I'm like, well, no, it's just because everything's hanging down and you can just see the muscles that are defined there. But we all have muscles that develop naturally in Some people are more muscular upper bodies, some are more My dad had like the car No Earl Lewis no No, who was an Earl Campbell, the running back, the famous running back. He had the Earl Campbell thighs, you know, I mean, And my mother had calves. So we all have different muscle groups that develop naturally on their own. And so it is with our quote personality and the way we behave. That's what we call our natural or our core self.

11:11 That is the muscles we're born with, and when we're under stress, that's what comes out, like when we get squeezed. And I even tell people this, it's like if you squeeze a jar, I mean a tube of toothpaste, you don't expect peanut butter to come out. So what happens is when you squeeze it, when you get under stressed and you get squeezed, whatever comes out. That's what that is. That's what's in yea and yeah, there you are. So that's the muscles that we're born with. But a lot of times we've worked on things because we've either been told we have deficiencies or we're told we're not good enough in a certain area, or it's a weakness. We have to work on our weaknesses, right, don't we And so we're told these things, or because of a job that we want to have, we develop certain skills. If we want to go into management, maybe we're more reserved, but we work on being more outgoing.

11:58 And so so that other picture, and that's the one that the disc actually really shows up for us, is the muscles that we've worked on. Those are the muscles. Like you watch a gymnast, male gymnast especially, you see this upper body and then this tiny lower body. It's because they have to have all this upper body strength. They've worked really hard on that upper body stuff. Now their natural muscles that they're born with might be a little different. So that's the muscles that we've worked on, and that's the muscles that we continue to work on. But what you called the social self is the muscles that we show up with today. A football player is going to show up with different muscles than a boxer or a sprinter, and so it may very well be that in my job as a manager, I would show up with a little bit more d a little bit more driver, a little bit more bossiness, if you will, or a little more bottom line to get people moving when I'm managing twenty people. So those are the muscles that show up in my job right now. If you were to take that and go home and sit down and take the disk in your home environment, different muscles are going to show up in that social self for sure, and maybe even in the ones you've worked on, because you're showing up differently in that environment. So that social self is very environmentally dependent. But other than that, you've got your muscles. You're born with, the muscles you work on and the muscles you show up with. Okay, And I love that explanation as I look at and of course I work. I did work in business

13:30 for quite a while, but I've been doing a little bit more personal stuff and so I look at it interestingly with the social personality. So I totally love your the way you've described it. When you get into that social personality, it's like, all right, here's who I have to be. You know, I'm going into this environment. This is who I need to be here, this is who I need to be. And what I've found is so many times and we hear this all all the time, that they're not really speaking their true voice. And I find that as people find themselves in certain situations, they will behave the way they think they need to behave. And it reminds me of how so often we are literally at the effect of our environment, or the effect of those imprints that happened as we were young children, all of those types of things. And yet you can consciously take control of that. And so as I look at that social that middle part there, I look at it from two perspectives. Either you are at cause and you literally are in control. So, for instance, I'm a high d and see so you know, very very strong oriented and so forth, and very detail oriented. I think that's why I went into dentistry. But my eye, my eye, which is really your social you know, you love to talk, you love to be with people, and so on and so forth, is in my core value is very low. And I looked at that and I found that if I went to events, I would kind

15:01 of just stand in the corner until I found someone that I could actually talk about something that was of interest to both of us, and all of a sudden, we just started talking, talking and talking, and I realized that I was able to create that social personality and my eye is higher there. And obviously I needed that if I'm doing podcasts and these type of things, but it was something that was created. So one of the things that I found with people who look at personality tests and behavioral evaluations and so forth, is they think that I can't change, and the reality is is that we can, and we can make changes, and we can make adjustments to change that so that we can literally be in control of what's going on. What I also love about the disc test that you use and that I use, which is the similar one, is the fact that it doesn't just identify that okay, you're either in the right quadrant or left up or down or whatever, but it actually goes in and does a combination things that is entirely different than what you most see. Do you want to explain how that works, how they take a combination of these things and say, you know what, because of this and this and what we see here, this is probably how you're going to want to communicate. This is probably how you want to be communicated with. What type of leader you are, where your values are, where your core values are, and so forth. Yeah, I mentioned earlier when we were talking about the X Y axis a spectrum, and if you think about a spectrum of all the way to the right is people oriented and

16:32 all the way to the left is task oriented, and you fall somewhere on that dotted line. You fall somewhere in there. It doesn't mean you have no people orientation skills. It means that you are much stronger in the task orientation skills. And so a lot of times when I work with d's who are extremely task oriented and don't have any I, you know, like a DC. You know, if we were working together and you had a desire to identify better with your patie and to make small talk, I would probably give you a game or a task that would help you gamify and like you said, figure out what the commonality is that you can talk about and something that interests both of you to in order to draw other people out and in order to look for look for clues in the way another person speaks, and then actually speak to those clues. So that's a way in which which when you're on that quote unquote continuum of the D or the I, it doesn't it doesn't matter that you're not really strong in the eye. You've actually figured out ways to tap into that, even though you don't have that inherently in you. And when you're looking at any of the others, it's the same way. And S is and we'll talk about that, I guess. But the S is very change of verse, right, So excuse me. The S is very change of verse, whereas the D change for change sake, right. And so when you're talking with an S in you need to make changes. You need to figure out ways that they can actually see the value

18:06 of it and see that you're not proposing change for change sake, because they are all about keeping the status quo. And so when you know where you fall in those areas, and a lot of times I'll actually give somebody a chart and we'll like plock them out in a circle so you can see where your own particular quote blob lands on that spectrum and you can see, oh, okay, like I joke about not having any S, the reality is that my S is just very negative. It's all the way in the I do. I don't mind change, I don't need the status cloth. But then I can relate to it in that way that takes out that whole idea of I'm only one or the other. Yes, And you know, I smile because again I get more into that personal coaching and so forth. I have for a while. And if you talk about S, I did a study and it was just my own personal studies, so there's no scientific basis behind it, folks. But what I found was that we can take a strength, and I believe that every one of our personalities, whether it's a disc whatever, is our strength. But if we allow it to go too far, it can then become a weakness. So for instance, a high D, holy cow, you better slow down a little bit, not be quick to offer your opinions. All the times I learned that with my kids that I needed to finally say, all right, kids, you want me to listen or you want my opinion, And most of the time they say, Dad, we just want you to listen. That okay. What I

19:37 found with an S A high S was these were the people who found themselves consistently staying in relationships that they shouldn't have stayed in. They were codependent and why because they really feared that type of change that would go on. Or you get a high E who is just friendly, you love being with them, and all of a sudden up and they won't stop talking because they've just gone. So it's interesting to understand, you know, where we sit with all of that, but also understand that we can take that strength and make it strong, or we can take that strength and maybe make it too little, go a little bit too far, and suddenly it becomes a weakness.

20:22 We call that shadow side, you know, we call that the shadow side of the Every one of our strengths has a shadow side. And in almost any personality test or any personal growth that you do, you're going to look at that whatever my strengths are, do I take them too far? I mean even that's that's what superheroes are, you know, and Marvel comics are made out of right. It's like something that is good that's taken too far. It's a superpower that's gone too much. In the Maxwell Report, we have something called a power disc that measures seven different leadership qualities and it shows you how developed you are on them. And not only does it give you ideas for how you communicate with others, how they need to communicate with you, but it also gives you an idea of where you might want to grow based on that power disc Now, we don't all need to be excellent in every leadership skill. The goal is to take our strengths and magnify them, then mitigate or augment around us, you know, find a team member.

21:23 Like I said, I'm not an S. Follow through is difficult for me. I'm an ICD. So I like to move and I'm going to move with detail and I'm going to do it right every time. But if I get bored with it, we're out right. So you know, I have, like this conference I'm putting together. I have a friend who has volunteered to help me, and she is a very HIGHS and she is extremely like. She will put the process together and she will make sure everything is followed through. So I've learned about myself. Detailing is not my thing, and it doesn't mean that I don't need to learn and processing or persistent. It doesn't mean I don't need to learn that, but I also need to learn that there are ways to build a team around that that make a difference, which actually helps to also kind of flip that shadow side back into the strength where it's supposed to where it benefits us, and it helps us to flourish.

22:15 Anything that we do too much is bad, right, too much? Even good food is bad. So yeah, yeah, well, and I smile when I have my dental practice. You know, it's like I made sure that my assistant and I actually told them this. I said, look, I'm not a talker. I'm going to get in there and because I'm very focused and so forth, I'm going to do the dentistry and I will be friendly and so forth. But you're the one that's going to develop the relationship with those patients. And so I always hired someone who had that ability, and it made such difference, and so I think I think that becomes important. You know, one of the things we have mentioned just basically is core values, and I know you enjoy talking about that. So could you share with the audience what are core value and how does an understanding of those core values really help us in our lives? Yeah, I thank you for asking. I started off just doing discwork with people, and I realized there was something deeper, and I've done my own I think, Doug, you and I are both old enough to remember a good old fashioned Franklin cubby or Franklin planner. Did you ever use a Franklin Planner. Okay, so this is my nineteen ninety five Franklin Planner sheet when Steve Covey took over and I read his book and I put together my governing values. My number my top one is freedom. But this is like the six hole binder and laminated with packing tape as we used to do. And it's lasted almost thirty years long.

23:42 This is older than my marriage. But one of the things that I kept coming back to was realizing there's more than just our behavior that matters. There is what's going on inside me that matters. And there's a lot of talk out there about business core values, and I make a distinction and say business core values are more aligned with, or more what I would call mission and vision, whereas our internal and personal core values are the principles and priorities that guide us and our actions. These are our foundational convictions that allow us to navigate hard things, to navigate complex things like all the winds that go through, in the waves that come over, and all the things that we have that challenge us, all the while keeping our identity and our authority at the forefront. These are our non negotiables, so you can't really see them.

24:34 They're not measurable, but when you've messed with one, you know it, right, it's like you know, it's like it's somebody. If you've reacted to something really strongly recently, there's probably a core value that's being dishonored. And I don't actually suggest that people align their core values with their business core values or their organization core values. I ask them to look at whether or not can be honored, because if I'm aligning something, I'm kind of taking on their core values. So what I do is I start with the disc I help people kind of tactilely and strategically see kind of how they're wired to do things, and then we look at why, and that's the why underneath it all. So they're not visible, but they are what I call reciprocal. If I have a core value, like my top one is freedom of thought, it's at twenty seven it said freedom from a job, right, but now it's like at fifty seven, I'm like no, no, no, no, no, it's much deeper than that. And because I can have a job, but don't tell me how to think, which is why I didn't want to stay in a large university setting, right, it's like they need things trains to run on time. But when I want to be able to think freely, when I want to be critical a critical thinker, and to break things apart and to understand them, I want you to be able to do the same thing. So I'm never going to tell you that you have to think the way I do, and I'm not gonna lie.

26:00 There are times when I feel very conflicted over that, because I want you to agree with me because one of my other core values is belonging. But at the same time, it's like, no, Andrea, It's important for them to figure it out on their own. And so when I work with my clients, I help them figure out what those non negotiables are for them. And when you layer those core values with the disc you can say, all right, this is who I am, this is how I communicate it. It is phenomenal to watch the metamorphosis in relationships, especially in families, relationships in teams. I've literally watched doctors and team leaders just completely change the way they communicate knowing these things are important. So, yeah, it's amazing. What are those seven core values? If you can list them out?

26:51 Oh, no, these are not so the seven power disc leadership qualities are not the core values yea user yours internally. So when I work with patients. When I work with patients, listen to me, I'm talking to a dentist. When I work with clients, we do a brain dump and we figure it out. I give them some ideas for some different words we can use. But they're things like respect and honesty and integrity, and for me it's authority and autonomy and authenticity and belonging. These are things that you cannot you know, they're not even a principle that you would want to live out. There's a difference between those. That's how we interact with the world. These are things that are inside us. They are They are the ones that give us the authority to lead, the ability to lead with conviction and passion, and the confidence to be ourselves. I walk through a process where not only do you brain dump, but it's a lot of times is what would five people that are close to me say about me? And then you kind of break those down and then you walk through where where in your life they're showing up and so things that matter to you. I mean, somebody who's a DC is probably going to have core values that are related to that probably going to be you know, things that might be attention to detail or doing things right the first time, or making sure that you have integrity of purpose. Those kinds of things are going to be more common for a DC for somebody like me as an I, they are very people related, right, It's like, first it's my thinking, but then it's belonging. Right.

28:23 I want to make sure that you feel like you belong in every conversation, and that I belong. And so if if I don't feel like I belong, or if I can make you belong because of the way you're treating me, then I'm going to reject. Right. So I mean it's those kinds of things and they are literally individual to each person. Well, and have you found that oftentimes as you're working specially you know, especially where you get into the business side, How many times have you found and discovered that whatever the environment, the culture, everything that's going on in a business is literally at odds with an individual leader's core values. And what happens when that occurs, Well, you have two choices. And if depending on the organization, I use myself as a good example, my organization a school of medicine needed things to be status quo. They needed things to run smoothly. They needed to not constantly have ideas coming out of ways we could do things better, or taking employees and promoting them into somebody else's department. After two years because I've helped them grow, They're like, why did you get rid of that person? Or what did you do? I'm like, I just did my job, and they're like, no, you didn't. So my core values of being able to think for myself and teaching others to think for themselves, being authentic, helping them be authentic, and belonging were at odds with the institution that I was serving in for the simple fact that I needed to be able to explore everything in here and they needed me to do what they

29:55 needed me to do to meet their mission and vision. It doesn't mean either one of us was bad, but there were times we had fights and it took me a while once I understood this is really the problem here and I'm not gonna lie. There were times I had like some bitterness, and even when I left, I had a little bitter, a little bit of bitterness, But part of that was me working through this idea Andrea, it was not a good fit for you. So when I have a client, and I've actually had one do this, when I have a client who realizes the institution in which they are serving is not whatever it is organization, small business, big business is not able to honor their core values depending on what they are, then they need to decide if they want to find another place to be. And there's nothing wrong with that. It also means that you can leave with integrity and to say I can't support you, know, it's like this is not I can't support the values, the mission and vision that you have. So I am going to take away this tension that we have in this relationship. I'm going to go find an organization where I can. And more and more organizations are putting out there what their mission envision is, which makes it easier for those of us looking for something that we can align with if you want to use that word, or where our core values can be honored to find someplace else. And a lot of times in a bigger organization, you can find a team where your core values can be honored, even if they don't align with or go along with the mission envision of the entire

31:26 organization. So I think there are ways to do that, but you just have to decide is this something that I can deal with or not. Mostly it's I just want my core values to be honored, and I want to honor yours well. And what's interesting is how you can use this to bring in people that and actually pre evaluate who is going to fit into the values of the company versus those who are not. And so often that sure, as you've experienced, people just higher high or hire and they never take the time to do that type of investigation because they don't have the tools. Right. They hire for skill, they don't hire for personality, and they don't hire for disposition. And when you don't when you because skills can be taught, right, everybody can learn something, right, So when you like, we even have if you want to do the disc, we have a benchmarking disc that you can use. If you've got four employees that are just really good examples of how you want to hire in this area, they all take the benchmarking and then you have one that is that is that's your benchmark, and then every applicant that like maybe makes it through the first phase or whatever, whoever you want to potentially hire, then you have them take the disk and see how they measure to that benchmark because a lot of times, and I'm one of those people, you walk in and really blow people away in an interview, and I've had staff members do this to me where they'd put me away in an interview and I thought I understood them, and I did not, and it was so rough. So, yeah, we, even

32:57 with the best intentions, we can do that. But yeah, having something that that gives you an idea of you can't ask people what their core values are. You can say these are ours. How can you work within that? How does this hit you that you know this is what we're going to do, This is we're going to expect you can lay all that out in an interview thoughts? Well, and what comes to my mind, and it's interesting the study that I was looking at where a company hired two salespeople and as you say, they just came across amazingly well. And after about six months to a year, one was just kicking it, I mean he was just amazing, and the other one was just failing and they couldn't figure it out. And finally they found someone to come in and did the disc and they discovered that the one that was kicking it, one of his main values was economic, and when they looked at the one that was not kicking it very well, his main value was something entirely different. The economics was way down on the scale. And so they realized that although they could both come up cross so well, the core values were really affecting their ability to accomplish what they needed to accomplish. Yeah, and so the Maxwell reports, there's quite a few of them, and one of them, the regular Adult Communication Report, does not give you an understanding of what your core values might be Career. The college and career one that my son at fifteen has taken, does it gives you an idea of what they might be. Now that's up

34:27 to you to determine. As we do with all disc reports, we look at them and they, like you said it earlier in our conversation, this is what you might be. This is how it might be for you. Yes, and then you get to decide how accurate that is. But for his there are some values that they look for in the questions and helping them see that. I was thrilled as a core values person, I was thrilled to see Oh my goodness, they're actually telling my son. You know, number one, this is how you learn these are the things that are important to you. And I can look at that and say, yeah, that's really those really are important him. So our normal report is thirty two pages, the college and career when it's forty two pages. So we'll until the summer. We got three three weeks of school left. Were waiting until the summer to really kind of walk through that with him so that he has a better understanding moving forward of why things upset him, why things are important to him. And when we do that, those two things why things upset me and what is important to me really just kind of help you move through the world in a way that is just much more peaceful and much more honest.

35:31 And it helps you to the thing about understanding your core values, Doug, is it helps you set your boundaries internally and not have to defend yourself all the time, you know, and just say, you know what, this is just a thing for me, this is this is non negotiable for me. I got to walk away and it's okay. And most most people, if they really care about you're gonna be like, oh, okay, you know. I mean, it's just like the door on the front of my house. Nobody walks in my door without me and inviting them or opening the door to them, you know. So, yeah, those things are important. And when we can see the differences, it's not just behavior. A lot of times, it's motivational quality. It's what's motive motivating us. And if economics is motivating me as a salesperson, I am going to kick it, that's right. Economics, Like for my son, I'm really struggling because economics is not one of his for sure, because I can't get him to Moti lawn even if I pay him, and so it's you know, it's like free time or freedom or something for him as well. But being able to figure out ways that motivate people, because even knowing that that gentleman was not motivated by economics, they probably could find something that would be motivating for him that would help him. And all the tests that we're talking about help us do that. Well. And you mentioned something and I kind of use the word awareness, but you know, so many times people just struggle with why am I doing this? Why am I doing that? Why do I get upset? So on? And so forth. And I think that this is one tool that I find so effective in being able to help someone to become aware of why they feel the way they do, why they get triggered,

37:05 why do they do all of these things? And I know that you talk a little bit about three levels of awareness, the abcs, would you share with the audience? Absolutely? And I need to come up with some kind of really cool graphic for this, but I haven't yet. I use an iceberg as my main example for it, but I call them my assumptions, beliefs, and conditioning. And as a woman who has gone through a lot of things in order to understand who I am, I have become very aware of the conditioning that I have that I've had since I was young, and some of it is external. And then we start taking it on for ourselves and build that iceberg so that everything floats well. But our assumptions, the levels of awareness, I call them, the assumptions, are our first one, the a's. These are the things that kind of everybody, it's out there, everybody bumps into them. We might not realize we have an assumption, but once we're aware of it, we say, oh okay, well, evidently that's that's an assumption that I have. I walked into the room, and this is where I believed to be true, right. But then the next level below that is the beliefs. It's like understanding. These are the things that I have either latched onto or been told all my life were true, and therefore they show up as assumptions. But the beliefs are kind of right at the waterline. Some of them are buried below. We don't always understand that we believe something. We talk in personal growth about the things we believe about ourselves. Those are the things that are right underneath the water line, you know. Like I was told when I was young, not everybody wants to hear my opinion, and so I too really stifled myself

38:37 and tried not to share my opinion. Now people invite me on their shows or pay me to give them an opinion, you know, because I've figured out a way to share that and in a way that is productive. But the conditioning, the Iceberg piece, that is all at the bottom. If you look at you know, if you just go Iceberg model on anything, you'll see it and it won't be the awareness situation. But those are the things that we just don't realize we have kind of allowed to build us up and put a foundation underneath everything that we believe all of our lives, and the older we are, the more conditioning we have unless we've really worked on it. There's a situation in my personal life right now that it's actually very positive, but with my husband it's a situation outside of our family, but it is. Again it's very positive. But when he told me about it, I immediately was like, no, I'm not doing that, and I didn't. I couldn't believe it. After all this time, I work on all my awareness and I do all this stuff. And so then the next day, like, I mean, I throat clothes just thinking about it.

39:40 This is how conditioning creeps up on us. I looked at him yesterday and I said, I need you to understand. I said, this is not something. Necessarily I can believe something else I can say I believe something, but evidently I am conditioned to think this is not okay, or I am conditioned to think that this is too emotionally overwhelming for me, even though it's very positive. And so right now, like if you're not watching this on video, I'm like holding my arms up saying this is my conditioning in front of me. I can't even see you, right, So we don't even realize sometimes how deep it goes and how important it is to understand because I want to do this thing that I've been requested or offered, but I have to work through this conditioning piece and understand it in myself before I'll be able to say yes, and because it would mean a lot to another person if I could do this. And so when we talk about awareness, especially in things like that, I don't know about you, and I don't know about your clients, but I personally kick myself over that stuff. Why didn't I know that or why didn't I see that in myself? And I always tell my clients we know what we know when we know it. We didn't know it five minutes ago, we know it now, But five minutes from now, you can kick yourself if you still pretend like you don't know it.

41:02 But right now, don't kick yourself. Right It's like we have to give ourselves the grace of understanding that we do have those things that we just are not aware of yet. And the process of personal growth is becoming aware of the things that we either want to celebrate or we want to change. Well, and when we start to discover that, how do we deconstruct it? How do we deconstruct all of those subconscious imprints And believe me, they come from everywhere, as you know, you know, whether it's family or friends, or school, or religion or whatever it is. And our reality, I mean, I've learned this, our reality of life is basically controlled by that. How do we deconstruct that so that we start to create an entirely different reality, a different way of life that really brings about such a higher level of joy and peace, happiness, love, all of those type of things. Well, the third big pieces to my business. The first is the core values understanding yourself. The second is the disc understanding how you communicate.

42:05 And the third is what I call my tenets of intentional Optimism. It's six tenants that I personally live by. It's the attitudes and mindsets that we embody to employ and live out those dreams and goals with excellence. And I like to tell people because when people hear deconstruct, they usually hear destruct. They don't hear deconstruct, they hear destruct. They hear I'm going to take a baseball bat to all of this and it's going to come crashing down. I'm like, no, that's not how it works. I've watched my son take apart drones and lego things and put them all back together and figure out. You know, I've watched him deconstruct, but he never does that to not use the pieces again. Right, So part of it is number one, shifting the way we see deconstruction. It's taking it apart, pulling the strings, taking the spaghetti noodles and laying them all out and saying where did this come from? I have done some pretty serious deconstructing in my spiritual life.

42:59 And my dad was a missionary and a pastor, and I told him, I said, yeah, I thought this. I thought this one thing. And he said, why would you think, ma' And I said, well, honestly, Dad, I thought I got it from you because as a kid, he was my spiritual leader. And then as an adult I kind of became my own and realized that I had these understandings or beliefs, and I somehow I just attributed everything that I had in my head to my dad. They said, I I've never told you that. I'm like, I know, I'm working on it, you know. But the piece I'd like to say there is I'd like for this to be a positive, professional, adjuctant way to move forward. And that's what the intentional optimism tenants do. It's being optimistic hopeful literally looking for hope and being confident and being proactive, trying to get out and like, if I'm aware of something, how can I work with it. The second is being present. It's not just being where your feet are, as Bob Goff says, it's being open and kind and generous and having a sense of wonder. I love watching my garden grow every spring. When those crocus come up out of the snow, I am thrilled to see them. And part of the wonder I have is that they keep coming up every year because I know what they've been through, right, and I know what it's like. The third is being energetic. It's being life focused. It's choosing to focus on things that bring life and excitement and joy rather than things that don't. It's being the fourth one is courageous.

44:22 This is a sense of leadership. This is adventure. It's the resilience that I talk about when we fall down and get back up and we build those muscles, those muscles that we've worked on for so long. You know, it's like figuring out how to get back up. Then the fifth one is being wise and dad. This one was the hardest one for me to embrace as something that I could pursue, because to me, wisdom is something that you just you're granted when you're eighty five or something. You know. It's like all the old ladies in my church had the wisdom, you know. Is we all have wisdom that we can cultivate right now, no matter how old you are. But it's really more a sense of respecting and using our words wisely and seeking to understand, as Steve Covey says, before being understood. And then the last one is doing it all with intention, having a sense of purpose. Working in a medical center, I wore heels and you could hear me walking down the hall and they would say. People would say to me, yeah, I know Andrew is coming. Like I don't wander, you know, I have a destination, I have a plan.

45:22 And all of everything we're talking about right now is this desire to grow. And if you don't have an intention to grow, you will not. That is it's just plain and simple. So when I talk about deconstruction with people, a lot of it is just saying, what am I aware of? What doesn't serve me anymore? And how can I move forward in a way that's going to make good use of all of these experiences that I have in my life, all the bad stuff, all of the good stuff, and my own strengths and my own personality. That can we move forward with that? So it's almost like a deconstruction reconstruction, you know, it's like a repurposing and reusing and only understanding who you really are and then being true to yourself. You're the one that you're going to be with no matter where you are, no matter how long you live. You're the only one that's going to always be there, and you need to make good friends with yourself.

46:16 Well. So as we get near the end, I'd love for you to share if you had one message with everything you have done, if you could just share a short message with the audience from your heart, what would that be? Please think for yourself, Please be willing to look inside and decide who you want to show up to be. It may be a scary process for you, but it's never a bad process. It's always a good process. Even if you have to get rid of some stuff, take it to goodwill. Whatever you need to do, you are worth it because you were put here for a purpose. You were created beautifully and if you don't show up as you, we won't have the beauty that is you to share with us. I love it. So I'm curious why do you like to do these podcasts? Well, partly I just love to talk, you know, But you can talk to people that I can't reach on my own podcasts because they may not come to my podcast, they may not come to one of my workshops. They may not come to a live that I do, or a chamber meeting that I do, or a conference that I do. But being on other people's podcasts gives me the opportunity to talk to more and more people. Because I believe in this message so strongly that I want other people to hear it. I want as many people in the world to hear it as possible. And I appreciate the privilege of being in other people's audiences all the time, being able to share this stuff. Oh that's great, And your main focus is on businesses, is that correct? Or do you do

47:50 a lot of personal stuff too. I don't do as much personal I started off thinking I wanted to be like a personal life coach, but I find that I function better and I give more or strategic input to people in more of a business setting and maybe that it overflows into their personal life. But I do a lot of work with teams. I love doing workshops with people. I like the give and take and the interaction with multiple people. I just know that about my personality and I think better. Pardon me, I think better and I do better in those situations. So I am the person who can come in and help your team figure out where they need to move people around, how they need to communicate better, and if you, as a leader, need to start with yourself, I'm your girl, all right.

48:32 How do these people find you? Well? I am the Intentional Optimist. So you can find my website, which is the Intentional Optimist dot com. You can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can find me on Facebook, but that's mostly personal. If you dm me on Instagram or LinkedIn, I'll dm you back. I'll message you back for sure. But if you go to my website, right above my head is a button and it says free Core Values exercise. If you want to get started on that, that is a one page downloadable that just kind of want she through the process, and if you need more help, at the bottom of that page is information on my digital course and how I do private coaching on that kind of thing. And on my website you'll find DISK assessments and debriefs and teamwork and then you can contact me for anything else you might need. Wonderful, Henrea, thanks so much for being on the show. This has been interesting, and you know, recently I have not focused much on business, but We've kind of got into this again because I'm so fascinated by the DISC test and how that can help businesses. And it really does. I mean I did work with small businesses and it was fascinating how taking that and helping the business owner to understand who he was, where his core values are, what was motivating him, all those type of things, How it made such a difference in how he was actually leading and managing his company or her company. Yeah, and you can do this in your family as well. And like I said, my son is taking his DISC and we're going to work on that together. My husband has his we know what our disc type is are and we're going to work on that this summer because he's our only son. He's

50:04 adopted, and we want to make sure that we do right by him, right want to We want to raise him well and give him all of the opportunity that he has within himself to become everything he can be. So it's not just for businesses. It can be for families and is very helpful. But yeah, well, and as you say, and I think this is so powerful, I've done this with a few kids. You know, they they come they're in high school, they're coming out of high school, trying to figure out what they want to study in college to be able to go in and look at some of those very specific tests that you mentioned and help them to understand where their values are, what their motivators are, and where their talents might be so that they can literally get involved in something in the school that actually is going to be fulfilling for them. And I've seen that happen with my own kids. In fact, I have two kids that studied entirely different things because they thought that that's what they should do, and out of school they have just completely done something totally different and had we look at the disc we would I started. I started as a nursing major and finally ended up as a business major with a concentration of music industry. And so I've used my business degree, but I started as a nursing major. I just couldn't. That's my authenticity. It's like I couldn't continue to it.

51:23 It just never would have worked. Yeah, and see, as parents, we can actually kind of get in there and help our children to not make some of the decisions that we've all made that we found later on we wish we hadn't so absolute. Anyway, thanks for being on the show, Andrea. This has been a great conversation. I appreciate it, and folks, thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed it and look forward to having you join us again. Sin