Leadership and Core Values: Jeannie Moravits Smith Template on How to Show Up

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

You’re welcome. Thanks for coming on again. So we’re going to continue on because those that haven’t listened to episode one obviously give it a listen. Again, it’s episode 117. You can find it on YouTube. You can find it on all podcast services. You can find it easily. Find it by going to Give A Heck and going into the podcast portal. So we’re going to continue on with the flow of conversation, which was in regards to all the great things that you do for people in regards to relationships and how to control their feelings and thoughts. So the first question I have for you is you help leaders use their energy to lead. What exactly is energy leadership? And what can one do in the culture of a company that lives in an old style of leadership that is fractured and does not work? So what is energy leadership and what can one do to help those that are stuck in old leadership patterns?

So energy leadership is a way of controlling or taking charge of your mind, your thoughts, your energy in a manner that is more supportive of your own actions and those of others. So I went to a coaching through a coaching program, it’s called IPAC and graduated in 2017. And part of the program is you learn their Energy Leadership Index is an assessment they have. And through a course of different assessments, you become a certified Elimp master Practitioner of this Energy Leadership Index. And so there are seven different levels of energy, and the two most bottom levels are catabolic or in not so scientific terms, negative. And the top seven are anabolic. And the opposite of negative would be positive. And the goal is to really start taking charge of the thoughts and feelings that enter your mind. And I have come up with what I call pause. So you take what’s coming your way, whether it be a comment for someone, a directive from a leader, bad news, and you pause it for a second. What’s happening to me? What core values are being compromised? What am I feeling? Embrace those feelings. Pinpoint exactly what’s going on. So, for example, somebody said something to me. My core value of respect is being compromised. So what am I going to do? I’ve identified, I’m angry. My core value of respect is being compromised. How do I want to respond to this? Versus react? So pause, pinpoint, and pivot so that you’re not reacting in a manner that you can’t reverse. You want to be able to respond versus react. So it’s a systematic process of taking in the data, understanding that you don’t have to fight or flight, which is the furthest in your brain stem, where the information goes to negative information goes, so that we have to run from it. Fight, scream, yell, and you actually bring it back up to your frontal cortex and say, hold on a minute, I’ve been through this before. I felt this before. This is how I’m going to respond, this way versus react. And then you do. And once you’ve practiced this more and more and more, it becomes so much more natural for you to be able to respond in a manner that’s super supportive for everyone involved and most importantly, yourself. And I always tell people, you know, those times that you wish you could have reversed that and not let that person hear that what you said, or not let them see how you responded in a negative or like a dramatic or whatever it is, and you can’t reverse it. You can never reverse the way that you left somebody feeling. But if you can proactively manage it, you don’t have to worry about reversing it.

Well, that’s so true. I think about the fact that I get challenged all the time from people. How do you do that? How are you able to think on the fly? Well, I practice and I learn from my mistakes, which I don’t call things mistakes. For people that know me. I call them life lessons. I automatically think, oh, what did I do with that person? Why did they respond? And I’ve had the courage over the years to go and ask somebody, hey, you responded this way, or Last time I seen you, I may have said something that offended you. If I did, I apologize. Can we talk about it? And sometimes you find out it had nothing to do with you. They have something else on their mind. But you open up that dialogue, that conversation, and you become a person that now with that experience, whether they say, well, yeah, you did this and this and that, and you offended me, now you’re going to think to yourself, I’d better be a better wordsmith. I’d better be a person that communicates and says things in a different fashion and critically think about it on the fly and literally it’s a skill in my opinion, it’s a skill. It’s not something you’re just born with and raised up with. It’s something that you have to practice. So I appreciate what you’re saying. That inside voice, that’s saying you want to throw chop somebody or you want to come unglued on them isn’t the answer. Prime example is last night I went to a National Hockey League game with a friend of mine, and he was having a difficult night and his response to the circumstances of what were going on weren’t because he’s practiced critical thinking. He had reactionary thinking. Like you were talking about where people just want to react. They don’t percolate inside of their head going, okay, what’s going to happen if I say that now? Sometimes you intentionally want that reaction, but is the fall out or what’s going to happen to that reaction really worth it? And you can train yourself to that to happen in a split second. And I honestly believe in that. So I love what you talked about and what you’ve created with the pause, right. And the core value, respect, compromise your anger. Are you angry? Do you respond versus react? And sometimes the best response is no response. Walk away and just nod your head. And if you don’t have the ability to come up with a great response at that point, maybe you will the next time you meet that person. Or maybe you can reach out to that person via phone call, video or text and say, hey, I need to communicate with you. When we left each other earlier today or last week, things weren’t right. And I’d love to discuss this. Are you interested? Right, that’s being a bigger person than to say, well, I had to respond. They were asking me a question or they were acting this way. No, you don’t. You can always delay it, in my opinion. I don’t know if you agree with that or not.

Yeah. When you first said no response and walk away, I got a little like, hold on, because some people would argue with me that no response is a response. So it depends on what it is. So I guess it’s going to be situational. If you’re involved in a situation like you said, I came back and communicated to them, hey, this is what happened. And that’s really what I think is best. And I’m a believer that the sooner or the closer to the situation, the better, because it’s still fresh in people’s minds. So I don’t like to be one who doesn’t respond but in certain things, because now I’m going through a list of things that I remember in my life and I’m like, you know what? No response is a response to my ex husband, it’s better just to not. So I think taking the time, you mentioned something about responding immediately, and I’ve coached a lot of people on this. No one expects any immediate response ever. We think we do, and we put those guidelines on ourselves like we work. So I remember now, I’m going to date myself, but I had a BlackBerry, and so they called them crackberries because people were on them constantly. And the same thing with the iPhone and our phones today. But back then, you’d be like, oh, my boss wrote me. I got to respond. Hold on. I got to respond. Nobody expects an immediate response, a reasonable response, but not immediate. So buy yourself a little bit of time. I was coaching someone yesterday about public speaking, and he was admiring Obama. I asked him to tell me who his favorite public speaker, who he admires the most, and he brought up Obama. And so there’s certain styles of people, styles of presentations where you say, so Dwight asks me a question, and I say, that’s a really good question. And then I respond, that wasn’t a forever pause, but it buys yourself some time to pull that data in. Pause, pinpoint, identify what’s going on, how you want to respond, what you want to say, and then pivot your response in a manner that makes sense to the crowd, makes sense to your audience, makes sense to your boss, make sense to yourself. So the problem and you brought it up is when people just lash out. They say things, whatever is on their mind, and you don’t have to do that. And I’m not saying pause for three minutes. I’m saying just give yourself a couple of seconds. And even in I’ve coached a lot of people on interviewing, 10 on 101, and a lot of people have just been promoted or transferred or their bosses hired them at new businesses, and they never really here they are a couple of decades into their career, but they’ve never really had to interview, like, really interview. So we walk through that like a mock interviewing process, and I say, you know what? Hold on. Pause, even tell your interviewer, give me a second. Let me think about that. That’s a really good question. And then you say your answer, and it actually when people have done that in an interview, they’ve almost always got the job because it shows who’s interviewing you, that you’re not going to just be flapping your trap off left and right. You’re actually going to have calculated responses to questions.

Yeah. And that’s fair. That’s exactly what a person needs to do, stop and pause. So I will add, when I say no response, it doesn’t mean I just walk away. I will tell somebody, and I do use that phrase. I may have mentioned it last time we had our first podcast. I say to people quite often, that’s a great question, but at this point in time. I need to think about it. Can I get back to you? Or I’ll say to him right now, I don’t have the headspace for that. I use that a lot. Right now. I’ve got something else going on in my mind and I’m not quite present with you and what you’re saying. And I don’t want to give a reactionary response. Can we get back to this? Can we revisit this? So I will say that to me so I don’t just walk away when I don’t just say to people no response. I don’t do that. So I don’t want my listeners that know me know that’s not true because I’ve talked about this before.

Let me clarify that I love what you just said, and you did say it when we talked last time, is I’m not in the right head space. Give me a minute. And I love that because you’re actually sharing your emotions and your feelings with the other person and like, you know what, I’m going to come back with the right answer. It’s like when I was working for other CEOs and they’d ask me something and I’d say, well, I don’t know, but give me until tomorrow at twelve and I’d go do all the research and get my homework done and come back with raw data that made a difference rather than just guess. And so I think that that’s a very same type of thing.

I agree with what you were saying too. And I think we’ve talked about this for nobody deserves, nobody on this planet deserves an immediate response to a text, to an email, to a phone call, voicemail message. Yes. Older generations like my parents. It’s like my dad finally doesn’t bug me about anymore. I left a message for you yesterday. Why didn’t you call? You calling me back today? Well, because I’m busy, dad. And it wasn’t a 911 situation. And I had other things that needed to be addressed that were higher on my energy level, that required my energy than responding to you. And it took me years to get that through to my parents that I’m not going to like. They’re the type that has to answer the phone, has to answer it’s like they’re jonesing. We can be sitting there having meals even in their eighty s and they got to pick up the phone. Why don’t you let it go to voicemail? What happens if it’s important? Well, it’ll be important ten minutes from now. It’s not going to change. Let them leave a voicemail message. Well I can’t do that. I don’t do that to you. Well that’s your choice not to answer, right? If you want to answer my phone call, great. If not, great. It’s not the end of the world. But we live in a society today that’s so reactionary. That figures if somebody like my one daughter, she’s told us numerous times and she suffers with some emotional challenges and emotional issues and some mental quandaries in regards to response. So she literally, you can text her, you might not hear from her for days. That’s who she is. Accept it. Quit bitching about it to her. Quit giving her a hard time. People do it. And initially I did. I’m not telling people I’m perfect. I am a work in project till the last day. I take my breath. I’m always not perfect. Sometimes I react. Still. Sometimes I shouldn’t. But I always look at circumstances and try to say, well, what did I do wrong? Why did they leave that way? Or maybe they left and I didn’t pick up on queues, on physical or tonality or different queues. And it comes to me hours later when I actually analyze that conversation and I’m cognizant of what my relationship was or what my role was in that conversation. So we’re all works and project. This isn’t going to be perfect, right? But the key is, though, is, are you working on being the best version of you for others? Because nobody has the right to constantly fan the flames of somebody’s, an emotional or mental state. We just don’t, in my opinion, anyway.

Well, having the awareness of different ways that would serve yourself and others and then working on techniques to build that skill is really just key to progressing and advancing and being a deeper, more connected human. And you mentioned earlier, and I think it was before you actually started the recording, about dignity and treating people, in my opinion. Do you treat people with dignity and respect, like everyone? Because that’s what they deserve and that really just helps them feel valued, is that you’re treating them fairly and with dignity and respect. And it seems so simple, but I remember working in organizations and I knew the janitor and his family. Just treat people nice, be kind, be a better human.

Exactly. And sometimes the biggest problem I see, and I’ve heard this from my kids now, as they’re older adults, they get what I used to say to them. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you have the right to let it out. Right. It doesn’t have that filter. Because when you talk about dignity and respect, leave somebody with a little bit of dignity, even if they said the most asinine stupid thing and you know it to be wrong. How about you pause? Look at their body language, listen to their tonality, quickly pause yourself. Or you get to a point where you don’t even have to pause. You just know, I don’t need to open my mouth and remove all doubt. I don’t need to be the winner in this conversation. I don’t need to be the champion. I don’t need to be the person that’s right. Maybe that person just needs to have that win to have their dignity, and then later on you can communicate with them again. I’ve done this before. Hey, the other day, you mentioned this or we talked about this and you weren’t in the right frame of mind, I could tell. But now I’m talking to you. Whether it’s face to face video call or on the phone, I can tell you’re in a great head space, you’re in a better head space. And I think it’s something we need to discuss and ask permission. Is it okay to discuss it? No, I’m not ready for it. Okay, great. Let me know when it is. And then don’t bring it up again, ever. If they don’t ever come back to you and say, hey, I’m in the right head space, then all you’re doing is badgering somebody. All you’re doing is poking the bear. Like I told my kids, is not the right thing to do since they were little kids. Nobody has the right to poke the bear and create somebody mental and emotional or even physical strife. You don’t have that responsibility or that right now. If what happened was that traumatizing that you need to talk to them about it and they don’t want to talk about it, maybe you’re not on the same season of life and you just move on.

Yeah, right. Because what you need or you think you need right now may have not even be on their radar. So respect where they’re at and what they can talk about at the time. I love that.

Absolutely. So you talked about sorry if I pronounce it right. So catabolic and anabolic energy, and you mentioned the fact of negative and positive. I’d really like to discuss that more, if you wouldn’t mind, and what can be done to control this in a person’s mind. I know you talked about pause and different things, but can we get into more specifics of those two things? Share whatever you would like to share about it, if you could, please.

Sure. So having the knowledge and awareness one of the different energy levels is key understanding what happens to you. So, for example, the assessment that I use to determine where people show up at a given time, when they’re taking the assessment at a given time of their life, there’s two separate reports that I get, two different separate charts. And one of them is about how the individual who just took the assessment shows up on a regular basis with their friends. When Jeannie and Dwight are talking and she’s fully comfortable, there’s no stress. We’re just fully present and everything seems to be going well. Then the comparative chart talks about what happens to you when you are under stress. And that’s what I was talking about, the fight or flight reactionary. Reaction to certain things that come your way under stress. So now, knowing the two different ways that you show up in your life, I’ve worked with people to figure out how to bump those levels up so that you’re living more in an anabolic state of mind, more positive. Thinking, reframing things that come your way so that you can see you said it earlier. The opportunity in situations when you might see it as a failure. Actually looking at the opportunities there and not being playing a victim or having to fight your way through life. Realizing that living more in a sense of abundance and being positive, more positive. And there’s a program that I’m actually working in right now, and it’s a lot of people have probably heard of it, positive Intelligence, and it’s about Saboteurs and Sages. And Saboteurs are very similar to the program that I went through would be the catabolic thoughts. And Sage is very much the anabolic thoughts. So I consider myself most of my life glass half full. And even when I would have had an opportunity to have a lawsuit or something because I was the victim, I chose. That’s not how I want to go. I would rather don’t want to spend my time doing those type of things. So I tend to be more of the positive or anabolic person. So I’m sure you have a lot more questions, specific about, well, you’re choosing.

The positive, the negative. Like, I get people that will say, I’m going to sue this person or I’m going to go after this person, or oh my goodness. And I just had this conversation with my son about a topic, and I said, well, so what are you hoping to achieve? Okay, I understand where you’re coming from. I’m very understanding and empathetic. I get where your feelings are. And you say you want to do it this way. What are you trying to achieve? What is your end result? Well, I want this, this and that. Do you believe you’ll get that if you do that? Or what do you think will be the response that you’re going to get from that other individual? Or that let’s say it’s a group of people? What are you going to get by sending that message or confronting them or somebody over? This thing is a piece of junk and you paid $70 for it, and you’re going to come on glued on customer service and and is it worth your energy for $70? Now? Maybe it is for you. Maybe you can deal with it in a calm, collective manner. But if you’re somebody that I’m talking to and you’re telling me about this, and I can see your angst and I can see your body triggers and I listen to your tonality, it’s like, nah, I don’t think so. It’s not worth $70. So I put a value on my personal being higher than monetary, right? How am I going to feel? Not everything can be about money. And I know our world is developed that way, but I like how you talked about reframing. We have to reframe things. And that’s what I was trying to try to educate and teach my clients, my kids, even as adults. And I work on me too, listeners, people watching. I constantly work on it because sometimes I’ll think to myself, you’re up to about an hour ago. Why were you? You should have checked yourself out. You should have reframed that. Now you felt like garbage the last hour. You didn’t really accomplish anything. You would have been better off just to get up and go and time yourself out, which I think I’ve talked to you about it before. I work on that all the time, too, and timing myself out so that I reframe my thought process so that I never have ever bad days. I haven’t had a bad day in years, and people laugh at me. That’s impossible. No, it’s not. It is something that the choice is yours.

How are you going to show up today? This is funny, but last night and you’re going to laugh because I’m in Southern California, in San Diego, and you know darn well it’s not that cold here, but we are very cold because it’s been like 39 in the morning and 52 midday and maybe even 60. So the house has been so cold, right. For us. For us. I know the rest of the country, there’s a comparison here. But last night I said, so if I die tomorrow, I wanted to be warm tonight. I’m turning the heater on. I’ll figure out how to pay for it. Because of our electrical bills in Southern California, have the gas, someone told me, went up 300%. And the electrical, they’ve added two new fees to get the electricity to you, even if you have solar. And so you can say, okay, well, now everybody’s paying an extra $500 a month even if you have solar, which seems insane. I know we’re talking about positive and negative, but I just decided, like, you know what I need to enjoy today? My whole point to that story was you have made a conscious decision to show up and have a good day, because we talked about this. The alternative is what? You didn’t get to show up and you didn’t wake up, and you can’t even talk about your feelings. So be grateful that you’re here today and make a difference. And I think that that’s really it. It comes down to the choice of what you’re going to spend your time doing. Do you want to sit around and complain? And what does that get you? It doesn’t solve the problem. Stressing. We all stress. But what can you do to control that so that you’re not wasting time on it? Because this moment, these minutes you don’t get back. They’re doubt never get them back. So how are you going to spend the day? And I love that you said you haven’t had a bad day in years. That’s amazing. I didn’t sleep well at all last night, and so I woke up, and I’m still, like, kind of a little bit of a fog, but I’m going to make the best of the day I woke up.

People Laugh I never really kind of went to sleep. People ask me that all the time. How are you doing? I woke up. It’s a fantastic day. And they Chuckle and I’m being serious, right? It’s a small little wins that we don’t champion enough within our mindset and tell people, like, I’m grateful. My gratitude exercise might have messaged that on the last mentioned it part of me on the last episode. I literally thank God when I do my gratitude gratefulness before I get to bed for having feet, that I am able to stand on the ground, legs to move me forward, arms to take care of myself and others. I talk about that to myself. I’m conscious about it and people go, well, that’s kind of cheesy. Okay, well, how about you try gratefulness exercises like I’ve done for like 28 days, 30 days, like one month, and the difference in your energy level is going to be through the roof. How about you pivot and change? But it’s a coaching process of teaching people how to live life on purpose and not by accident, which is my mission. And I’ve told you that before, it’s not just about money, it’s about people. Six inches, that’s the most important asset we have. It’s not our house, it’s not our car. All of that is materialistic. And we need to just work on our six inches and work on being the best versions of ourselves for ourselves. Because how can we show up? How can Jeannie show up to the world as a person that can help if she can’t help herself first and foremost and can’t get over or work on things that she’s working on with others? Like, I coach people and say, you know what, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to help you with this. I’m this part far in the journey, working on it for myself. I’m farther than you, so I can help drag you along with me. Are you willing?

No, that’s exactly right. And you mentioned gratitude, even for the little things. Like we take it for granted that our feet look where they’ve taken us. And if you really break it down to something that’s simple and you’re grateful for your feet, although it’s not a simple process to walk, really, those who can’t would want that back. And when you’ve twisted your ankle or I broke my foot, you realize, Dang, you’ve taken it for granted. So I love that you actually appreciate that every day. That’s a great way to start. And like you said, other people, if they took 21 days or 28 days or 35 days to appreciate just their physical being and what you have to work with today, it goes a long way. The other things, it just simply puts it all into perspective. And I think I love what you said about the six inches of your head. It’s like you’ve got to. Take charge of your thoughts. And like you said, if you weren’t, how can you help anyone else if you’re not figuring it out for yourself? And so I work with leaders all the time and say, hold on, have you looked in the mirror? Have you thought about how you do this? Because that’s where we need to start.

And you got to be vulnerable with others. You got to be honest and say, you know what? I’m a working project. I tell people that all the time, and I’m not embarrassed by it. I’ve had people say, well, by doing that, you’re making yourself like, you’re not a good leader. No, I am a better leader, because I can tell somebody, listen, I’m a working project. I’m farther than you. I’ve worked on this. And this is what I’ve come to realize. Here’s my understanding. Here’s my understanding of it. Because I’ve coached so many people and I’ve listened to their challenges, I’ve analyzed my own challenges, my family, friends. And this is what I’ve come to a realization. I’m not better than you. I’m just farther on the journey than you. Never be on a pedestal above a perfect leader and a coach is somebody that can empathize. When I want to mentor somebody, I better be mentoring them on something that I understand, not something I’ve read or I’ve listened to. And I’m just regurgitating. That’s not a thought leader. That’s just a person that’s just regurgitating information. And as a side note, we could have a whole talk and a whole podcast just about how you pick a proper coach and mentor too.

Oh, yeah. And figure out ways. Like, I have all types of tools that I pull in my mind when I need it to get through that situation. So it could be anything from putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and saying, Whoa. Like, worst case scenario, I think we might have talked about this, or I was talking about somebody else. You’re frustrated in traffic because this person is going so slow. Well, how do you know that they didn’t just pick up Grandma from the hospital and they don’t want her to rupture her stitches? Like, put yourself in their shoes. They’re not deliberately driving slow. I always want to say they’re driving slow for a reason. I will never know what it is. But what is my rush to get to the light now? If somebody’s sitting on their phone at the red light and now it’s green light and they’re texting or they’re doing a video on Instagram Live, then I’m going to honk in them because, get out of the way. You shouldn’t even have the phone and the steering wheel in the same hands. Right, exactly. There’s a lot of tools that I have, or there’s in positive intelligence, you find ways to ground yourself, whether it be sound, so you’re hearing things sight. You’re focusing on something. Like, for example, if you’re in a meeting with your manager and your manager is saying something that is starting to make you angry. Start focusing on like I’m doing with White right now. I’m looking at the rim of your glasses and I’m really focusing on that. I’m totally listening to you because you don’t ever want to lose touch of being in the present moment and lose some of the information that’s being said, but focus on something else and pull yourself out of that negativity and bring yourself back up into that anabolic state. Now you’re ready to respond. So once you have this awareness and you understand how this feels like, you get tense, you get stressed, you get, oh my God, this is happening again. This person pisses me off. Find a way like you can rub your fingers together and feel the texture between your fingertips. And if you’re truly focused and present on this, you can’t be angry anymore. So there’s like a whole toolbox full of stuff in my head that I just pull up when I need it and use it. The skills you’ve developed, my advantage and those people I’m working with.

Yes, you have to work on it. You go to work, only practice it, right? There’s days I think to myself, like I mentioned prior, I forgot to do this. Why did I let that I know how to deal with that. But you know what? There’s one word human. I’m human. I’m not perfect. I’m not a robot. And I’m the type of person that if I mess up, I’m going to get a hold of you and say, hey, I messed up. I’m sorry. Can we talk about this? And hopefully it wasn’t bad enough where there’s a separation season that’s never going to come back to fruition, that we’re just we’re done. Because I stuck my foot so far down into my mouth I can’t recover. Has that happened in my life? Yes. Probably not in the last 20 years. But I’ve also been a working project for the last 20 years and working on not being that reactionary person, that’s not cognizant of other people’s feelings and emotions and respecting the fact of, as you mentioned, having respect and dignity for other people’s circumstances. Even as simple as being at a satellites and not knowing what their circumstances are. I practice that huge when it comes to driving because I used to have severe road rage. I wanted to get out and beat people.

I did too. And then I’d be like, why am I so angry? I don’t even know these people. It would frustrate the heck out of me. And now I just put myself in their shoes. Or I’m like, you know what? That’s their problem. It’s not mine. I’m okay where I’m at. You just a whole lot of positive self talk and that’s just an example. And probably more than half of the people who drive have road rage. It did not serve me well. I lived in La. People are pulling guns at me, and I’m like, you know what? I’m going to take charge of what I can control, and I can’t control what they do. I can just get out of their way and not be in the line of sight. Right. But I love what you said about if you mess up, that you fess up. I just made that up. I like that part. When I mess up, I fess up. And I think that goes a long way. 2030 years ago, I remember kind of screwing up pretty bad at one of my jobs, and I thought, oh, my God, this is like, this could be major. So I quickly went into problem solve mode and had twelve different other options, went in, fessed up to the CEO that I majorly screwed up. But what I learned in the process is that these other twelve options might even be better. So here they are. And he was like, thank you for fessing up to screwing up, basically, and let’s hear what you have to say. So there’s so many people, like, I’m afraid to tell him that I didn’t do it perfect. To your point, we are human. There’s human error. And you know what? If you are perfect at everything, you’re faking something. So if you want to be truly authentic, we make mistakes. Fess up to them, and the sooner after, the better.

Absolutely. So, again, wonderful conversation. Didn’t get through a lot of questions. Do you have one time for one more question before we wrap up? Okay, this one I really wanted to get to last time.

I’m going to turn off my little what do they call the little heaters. That’s why my feet. No problem burning my feet.

No, that’s not good. Don’t have burnt feet. Jeannie what I needed to talk to you about is core values. Yes, or Jeannie pardon me. I value core values and live by them on a daily basis and have for 30 years. Many do not understand what they are or nor have they ever been introduced to the importance of core values. Why are core values so important for people to adopt and live by, both in their personal and professional lives?

Such a great question. And I lived by my core values, but I had no idea what they even were. And when I went through my coaching certification, we went through hours, if not days, on this whole concept of core values and identifying who you are at the core. Why do you do what you do the way you do it? It’s because of your core values. So I actually have an assessment that helps people identify what those are. If they haven’t figured that out, you can break it down to your top ten, your top three, but when you figure out what that is, one of my top values is respect. And now knowing that and really knowing what that means, to me and how I show up in service of others has made all the difference. So when I am faced, I’m in a stressful situation. I pause and I ask myself, what core value is being compromised right now? Well, this particular situation, my core value of respect is being compromised. Okay, so when this has happened before, how did it make you feel? What was the outcome? How did you deal with it? And how can you at this moment, what can you do while you’re pausing to pinpoint exactly what’s going on and then pivot how you want to show up? But you can’t even go through those three steps until you know what your core values are, because you don’t know why you’re being stressed. You don’t know what’s triggering the stress. But it really is our core values and who we are, how we are programmed, and how we show up in the world. Now, your core values can change over time depending on the knowledge, skills and abilities that you gain. And like, some of us as children were exposed to certain things, so we may believe we have a core value of this. But when you go back and look at why that how true is that in your real adult world? Does it still exist? And I’ll tell you ten out of ten times that I ask people that, and we drill down to this incident as a child, it doesn’t really exist as an adult anymore. So then we can make it go away, because a lot of people do things. The example was somebody said, why do you make that Easter Day dinner ham that way? Because Grandma always did it right. But do you have to do it that way? Now? You don’t. You can be who you want to be now. You don’t have to do certain things just because your parents said that. That’s how you do it. And a lot of people do things without understanding why. That’s where a really good coach helps people understand why they do things, when they do it and how they do it. And does it make sense for you to still continue to do things that way as an adult? How is it serving you first and foremost? But how is it serving the people that you are working with? Why are we still doing it, whatever it is? We’re complex as humans, very complex. There’s a lot there. But understanding your core values is, I think, a game changer. And I’ll give you a quick scenario, super simple. My son was in kinder and I was the room mom. So it was Teacher Appreciation Day, and I was going to hand out flowers. They were carnations, and I must have had, like, I don’t know, 40 different carnations now. Live and learn. Anybody who is going to do this, get the same color. Save yourself the heartache. I had a whole rainbow, and so I wanted to give the five year olds their choice of color of flower, right? So it’d be better just to have them all the same, just make your life easy. But anyway, I did it. So I’m going, I’m in the line. The teacher, she was a very tough kindergarten teacher in my mind. She gave me six minutes, and six minutes only. She’s opening the door, and the kids are coming in, ready or not. So I have six minutes. So the pressure is on. I’m an overachiever, so I want to get this done. I want it all lined up. When she opens the door. The kids know exactly what they’re going to do. They all have the flowers in their hand. So I have this big bouquet, and I’m walking down the road. Johnny, what color do you want? Jimmy, what color do you want? And here comes a mom. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. She’s tapping me on my shoulder, what are you doing? And I go, It’s Teacher Appreciation Day. We’re handing out the flowers. Why am I not involved? Did you send me an email? Yeah, I sent an email out, what address did you send it to? And now I’m just like, tick talk, tick talk, tick talk. My brain’s freaking out because I only have these six minutes, and now I’ve already wasted three. And if I give her a minute now what? Now the kids aren’t going to be ready. And this was my one job I had to do today. So you see where the stress starts coming from, and I’m feeling, without identifying exactly what it was, that she’s really pissing me off. So what I said was, can’t you see I have something to do? So what happened to her? She got pissed off. So now we’re just spreading this pissed offness around, right? If I could go back and do that over again, knowing what I know now, same scenario, I still have the rainbow flowers. I still only have six minutes. Tap, tap, tap. If you give me a minute, I’ll be all yours. I only actually have three minutes left, and then I’m all yours. Boom. Right? That is a response versus a reaction. My reaction by yelling at her like, I don’t know, a damn email. Why do you keep asking me more questions? Like, how would I know what email I sent it to her? What address? So there’s the difference. When I realize now, oh, my value of respect, she’s not respecting my time, my responsibility, my task here me. My value of respect is being compromised. So I lashed out without understanding what that was. But now that I have these knowledge, skills and abilities on how to respond versus react, how to pause, pinpoint my issue, and then pivot how I’m going to respond versus react, it’s life changing for me. And it sounds funny when people say this, when I’ve heard this in my life before. Oh, it’s life changing, but this really was life changing because I can say, oh, I get it, if you give me a minute, I’m all yours. So you’re communicating the expectations so they know what to expect of you. And when it took me 2 seconds, maybe what 4 seconds to say that the other that my reaction. I don’t know. What email do you have? Continuing to argue with myself and her over this takes so much longer.

Absolutely. Unfortunately, in life we have a template that we decide whether or not we’re going to follow. Like you talked about the ham. And really at the end of the day, that template of how grandma or mom or whoever prepared or cooked something or dad did things a certain way, you don’t have to follow that. It can be a template for you to become the version of you, the best version of you. You don’t have to be version of them. You don’t have to live your life through the template or patterns of others. I like how that example you brought up though and the knowledge and skills and abilities. Right. It’s skills we learn. There’s things I look back and think to myself, oh my gosh, I lost this friendship, I lost this big deal, I lost this big client and looked back at it and thought oh no. As I’ve developed skills, I realized what did I did wrong? It’s too late to go back to it, fix it. But it’s okay to look back at the past and acknowledge to ourselves because it’s still upstairs in your brain. Acknowledge it so that you can forgive yourself maybe, right. And you just move on. And now you use your new skills to deal with things differently.

Absolutely. And we can only connect the dots. Looking back at the time, we did the best we could do with what we knew to do, like how, what to do. But now you learn from it. You see it as an opportunity for improvement and you know what not to do next time and it’s huge.

Absolutely. So we’re going to wrap up here. Jeannie, if you could do me a favor and same thing I did in the last episode. If you had to give one last closing message, what would you tell whoever’s listening and watching in regards to giving a heck and never giving up?

My advice would be to ask yourself why? Why are you doing whatever it is you’re doing? Why do you continue to do this and why are you not doing the things that you want to do? And if it’s because I don’t know. I had a client once whose parents sadly told her that she wasn’t necessarily smart enough, that she was an athlete, so she could be a good athlete, but it’s okay if she doesn’t get very good grades in school because she’s just not that type of person. There’s a big difference there between telling someone that’s the message they’re hearing but how true is that now as an adult? So ask yourself why that person is a full on adult thinking they’re not smart enough, so they don’t take on challenges or they don’t live the life that they want because they compare themselves to others. How true is that, really? So ask yourself why instead of it and work with somebody to figure it out, if you can’t.

And I have a friend that does this and drills down. She’s also an empath coach, and she actually has a process. She’s been on my podcast twice and she literally why. And the first time she took me through the process that she utilizes, it’s so simplistic, but yet it’s so powerful and it’s stuff that we all have the ability to do. And I was sitting face to face with her just outside of Salt Lake City in Sandy, Utah, and she was doing this to me, and I was just like a giant lightbulb moment, well, why am I not doing this? Why? Went right back to she’s taking me to this why process. And I’m asking myself this reflection, that inner voice or that inner reflection of ourselves, why am I not putting more effort into asking people why? So what do you want to achieve this? Why? Okay, well, I want to do that because of this, this and that why. And it drills down to people’s reasons. And it is so powerful, that little three letter word, right?

It is so powerful. It gives you a reason and a focus and you understand. Like, if somebody says, I want to lose weight or I want to work out every day, why do you want to do that? Well, I want to do that so I stopped injuring myself. If I work out every day, maybe my physical body will be stronger and I will stop hurting myself, or I don’t want to be disadvantaged with my kids who want to run and play soccer or hike. So find out your why behind what you do and it gives you that purpose.

Yeah, exactly.

And then you can actually have that visual of your goal and you have a better chance of achieving it.

That’s so true. So thank you for that last message. I appreciate that our time is almost up. In case this is the first time that somebody’s having the pleasure of listening to you discuss and communicate different ways to deal with life, could you please let people know what is the best way to reach you?

The best way is through my website and it’s Dynamism leadership. So it’s Dynamism Leadership.com on there. On the very first page, there is a link to my schedule where you can actually get a free 15 minutes conversation with me to see if we could possibly be a good fit. There’s also a link to an application for group coaching. The group coaching programs that I do, I’m very selective to make sure that the group is supportive of one another, and so I put them together in different groups. So there’s an application and an approval process for that, but that’s also online.

Fantastic. I’ll make sure that goes into Show Notes, people that are new to the show, you can find the Show Notes@giveahec.com, go into the portal for podcast, and you will see the show as well as abbreviated Show Notes below, which will give you links to what Jeannie’s talked about. And yeah, you’ll be able to reach out to her. So, any last closing comments?

No, I think this was great. This was great. Again, you and I could talk forever. And I think with people like you and I in the world, there’s a good chance that we can make a difference and help people just show up in a manner that’s more positive and uplifting and supportive and kind to more people.

Absolutely. Never forget listeners or people watching. Affecting and changing one person at a time is a spider effect, and it grows. If you enrich and change one person’s lives and they’re happier, that happiness goes outward and it can help their family, their career, their business, every aspect of a person’s life. So don’t ever think that you can’t make a difference with one person. So thanks so much for being on give a heck, Jeannie. I appreciate your time and sharing some of your experiences so that others too, can learn. It is never too late to, give a heck.