Latest / Just Julia / Before You Decide What's Next, Know What You Stand For

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Before You Decide What's Next, Know What You Stand For · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Before you decide what's next, know what you stand for.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have been thinking a lot about what I might build next.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it will be a company.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it won't.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I will work for someone else again while building something alongside it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely don't know yet, and I'm trying to become a little more comfortable with not knowing.
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  SPEAKER_00: But because entrepreneurship has been on my mind,
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  SPEAKER_00: I've been reading more about what makes a company worth building beyond
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: the obvious things like the product,
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  SPEAKER_00: the market, the numbers, and whether anybody will actually pay for it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is how I ended up thinking about values.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was reading The Buddha and the Badass by Vishen Lakhiani
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  SPEAKER_00: when I reached his discussion of foundational values and the origin story exercise.
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  SPEAKER_00: The premise made me stop,
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  SPEAKER_00: because rather than asking us to choose a collection of admirable words,
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  SPEAKER_00: it asks us to look backwards at the experiences that shaped us
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  SPEAKER_00: and consider what they might have taught us to value.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: One section is called The Hidden Gifts of Your Pain.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: That title stayed with me.
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  SPEAKER_00: So did two ideas discussed around this subject.
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  SPEAKER_00: Rumi's image of the wound as the place where light enters us,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Viktor Frankl's idea that suffering changes when we are able to find meaning
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  SPEAKER_00: in it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe everything painful happens for a reason,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I don't think we need to turn every difficult experience into
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  SPEAKER_00: a beautiful lesson.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some things are simply painful.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some are unfair.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some I would happily have lived without.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I became interested in a slightly different question.
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  SPEAKER_00: What if the things that hurt us leave clues about what matters to us?
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  SPEAKER_00: And instead of thinking about the values of a company I haven't even created,
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  SPEAKER_00: I found myself asking a much more basic question.
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  SPEAKER_00: What are mine?
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  SPEAKER_00: At first, the question seemed almost too easy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Family, love, honesty, growth, courage.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most of us could probably sit down and produce a respectable list in five minutes,
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  SPEAKER_00: but there is a difference between choosing words that sound like us
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  SPEAKER_00: and understanding the values that have actually been shaping the way we live.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I started going backwards.
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  SPEAKER_00: I looked at experiences from childhood and adolescence that still carried emotion
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  SPEAKER_00: when I remembered them.
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  SPEAKER_00: I looked at moments in my career when I felt overlooked or underestimated,
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  SPEAKER_00: relationships that ended without the closure I wanted,
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  SPEAKER_00: and times when I allowed somebody else's decision about me to say something
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  SPEAKER_00: about my value.
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  SPEAKER_00: As I did that, I began noticing something.
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  SPEAKER_00: Different people, different countries, different stages of life.
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  SPEAKER_00: But underneath many of those experiences was a similar question.
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  SPEAKER_00: Will you see my value?
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  SPEAKER_00: That was uncomfortable to recognize because, rationally, I know that I have value.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know what I've done, what I've built, and what I'm capable of.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yet,
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  SPEAKER_00: I've also seen how quickly somebody else's lack of recognition can sometimes make
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  SPEAKER_00: that knowledge tremble.
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  SPEAKER_00: The first word I wrote down was self-worth.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the longer I sat with it, the less precise it felt.
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  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, another expression came closer.
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  SPEAKER_00: Intrinsic worth.
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  SPEAKER_00: My value has to exist before somebody else recognizes it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm still learning that one.
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  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is part of this exercise too.
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  SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily find the perfect words immediately.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you start with one,
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  SPEAKER_00: sit with it,
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  SPEAKER_00: Question it and eventually discover that there is another word underneath it
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  SPEAKER_00: that tells the truth more accurately.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pain, however, wasn't the only place where I found clues.
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  SPEAKER_00: I also started thinking about the moments in my life when I had felt most alive,
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  SPEAKER_00: expansive, courageous, curious, or completely myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: New Zealand appeared almost immediately.
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  SPEAKER_00: I first left Brazil for New Zealand when I was young and later returned through a scholarship.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those experiences changed far more than my address or my English.
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  SPEAKER_00: They changed the size of the world I thought was available to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: I had been a very shy girl,
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  SPEAKER_00: and suddenly I was somewhere where nobody knew the previous versions of me.
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  SPEAKER_00: While doing this exercise,
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  SPEAKER_00: I found a sentence
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  SPEAKER_00: that helped me understand why international experiences have mattered
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  SPEAKER_00: so much throughout my life.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I left the environment that already knew me,
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  SPEAKER_00: I discovered versions of myself I hadn't known existed.
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  SPEAKER_00: New Zealand was followed by Italy,
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  SPEAKER_00: New York,
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  SPEAKER_00: the United Nations,
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  SPEAKER_00: working across countries and cultures,
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  SPEAKER_00: and speaking languages that sometimes made me feel less intelligent
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  SPEAKER_00: than I knew I was, until, slowly, they became other ways of expressing who I am.
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  SPEAKER_00: From those experiences, different words began appearing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Possibility.
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  SPEAKER_00: Growth.
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  SPEAKER_00: Courage.
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  SPEAKER_00: Belonging.
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  SPEAKER_00: Becoming.
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  SPEAKER_00: Growth in particular made me stop because I realized that for years,
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  SPEAKER_00: part of my relationship with personal development may have come from a quiet belief
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  SPEAKER_00: that there was always something about me that needed improving.
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  SPEAKER_00: I need to become better because I'm not enough yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: That isn't the kind of growth I want to build my life around anymore.
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  SPEAKER_00: I prefer this.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to grow because there is more of me to discover.
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  SPEAKER_00: One comes from inadequacy.
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  SPEAKER_00: The other comes from possibility.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that difference matters to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is where I want to turn the exercise over to you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Vishen's origin story exercise inspired me to revisit the experiences that shaped me
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  SPEAKER_00: and look for the values hidden inside them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Rather than reproducing that exercise here,
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  SPEAKER_00: these are the questions that became useful while working through my own story.
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  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to be starting a company to do this.
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  SPEAKER_00: You might be changing careers,
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  SPEAKER_00: becoming a mother,
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  SPEAKER_00: leaving a relationship,
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  SPEAKER_00: approaching 40,
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  SPEAKER_00: starting again,
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  SPEAKER_00: or simply realizing that some of
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  SPEAKER_00: the things you spent years pursuing don't feel quite as important anymore.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe nothing dramatic is happening at all.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you simply haven't asked yourself this question for a very long time.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when one appears, don't stop at the word.
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  SPEAKER_00: Define it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Two women can both write freedom and mean entirely different things.
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  SPEAKER_00: For one, freedom might mean financial independence.
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  SPEAKER_00: For another, it might mean living in another country.
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  SPEAKER_00: For another, having enough control over her time to pick her children up from school.
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  SPEAKER_00: For somebody else,
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  SPEAKER_00: freedom might mean finally being able to say what she thinks
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  SPEAKER_00: without constantly worrying about how everybody else will respond.
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  SPEAKER_00: So, when you find a word, try completing this.
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  SPEAKER_00: What is my word?
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  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to me?
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  SPEAKER_00: What taught me this?
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  SPEAKER_00: If I lived more faithfully to this value, what would I do differently?
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  SPEAKER_00: That last question is where this stopped being simply an interesting exercise
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  SPEAKER_00: for me,
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  SPEAKER_00: because once we know what we value,
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  SPEAKER_00: we also have to look at whether the life we're living reflects it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And motherhood added another dimension to the question that I hadn't expected.
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  SPEAKER_00: We spend so much time thinking about the values we want to teach our children.
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  SPEAKER_00: Be kind, be brave, respect people, believe in yourself, work hard, love your family.
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  SPEAKER_00: But our children are also watching the way we live.
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  SPEAKER_00: If I want my son to know that his worth doesn't depend on somebody else's approval,
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  SPEAKER_00: am I living as though mine does?
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  SPEAKER_00: If I want him to be courageous, does he see me trying things before I know whether I'll succeed?
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  SPEAKER_00: If I tell him that family matters, can he see that value in the way I protect my time?
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  SPEAKER_00: If I want him to remain curious about the world,
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  SPEAKER_00: does he see his mother continuing to learn,
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  SPEAKER_00: question, change her mind, and begin again?
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  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, values become much more than words.
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  SPEAKER_00: They become behavior.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to be a mother to ask yourself the same thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: If somebody who knew me intimately had to guess my values only
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  SPEAKER_00: by watching how I live, Intrinsic Worth.
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  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that my value exists before somebody else recognizes it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Growth.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because I'm inadequate and need to fix myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: but because I believe there is always more of myself to discover.
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  SPEAKER_00: Courage and agency.
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  SPEAKER_00: Having the courage to leave environments that make me smaller,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the courage to enter environments that require me to grow.
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  SPEAKER_00: Belonging.
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  SPEAKER_00: But more specifically, belonging without having to shrink myself to earn admission.
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  SPEAKER_00: Possibility.
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  SPEAKER_00: The belief that our lives can become larger than the circumstances,
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  SPEAKER_00: identities, or fears that once defined what seemed possible.
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  SPEAKER_00: Love, family, and connection.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because when I look at the greatest peaks of my life,
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  SPEAKER_00: achievement is there, but the people I love are there too.
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  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the word sitting underneath so much of this is the one I keep returning
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  SPEAKER_00: to in my writing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Becoming.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the point is to create a perfect list and carve it into stone.
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  SPEAKER_00: The point is to understand ourselves well enough to recognize what matters and
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  SPEAKER_00: to notice when the lives we're creating move too far away from it.
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  SPEAKER_00: For now, this is my list.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to put it in a notebook and forget about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to remind myself of these values when I'm making decisions,
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  SPEAKER_00: when I'm considering what kind of work I want to do next,
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  SPEAKER_00: when I'm looking at a company and wondering whether its culture is compatible with
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  SPEAKER_00: the things I believe in,
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  SPEAKER_00: When I'm choosing who I want to work with and what I will or won't compromise for
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  SPEAKER_00: an opportunity.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to remember them in the way I raise my son and in the kind of woman he sees me becoming.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if one day I build a company of my own,
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to sit in a room and invent five corporate values
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  SPEAKER_00: because they sound good on a website.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want whatever I build to reflect somehow what I actually stand for.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why this exercise mattered more than I expected.
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  SPEAKER_00: I began by thinking about the values of a future company.
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  SPEAKER_00: I ended up realizing that before I decide what comes next,
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  SPEAKER_00: a company,
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  SPEAKER_00: another career,
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  SPEAKER_00: another chapter of my life,
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to understand the values of the woman making that decision.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe take 20 minutes this week and go backwards before you go forward.
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  SPEAKER_00: Look at the wounds.
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  SPEAKER_00: Look at the peaks.
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  SPEAKER_00: Look at the patterns.
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  SPEAKER_00: Look at the decisions that changed you.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then write down the words that remain.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself whether those words are visible in the life you are living today and
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  SPEAKER_00: whether they belong in the life you are trying to create next.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've started finding mine.
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  SPEAKER_00: What are yours?
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  SPEAKER_00: If you do the exercise, leave one word in the comments.
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  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to tell me the whole story behind it unless you want to.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes one word is enough to begin.
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  SPEAKER_00: This reflection was inspired by Vishen Lakhiani's discussion of foundational values,
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  SPEAKER_00: the hidden gifts of your pain,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the origin story exercise in The Buddha and the Badass.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've interpreted those ideas through my own experience and created
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: the reflection questions above from the process I went through myself.