Carving A Future with Core Values & Goal Setting

Last night, 50 YWiB’ers joined Lululemon’s VP of Global Brand Deanne Schweitzer and Skoah’s Andrea Scott for an evening of exploring the future possibilities when you have a number of established core values and set goals.

Core values, defined as a set of moral guidelines to which you base your decision making on, rather than on societal pressures or perceived expectations. By creating a set of core values, ideas or behaviors that guide your life, you bring purpose, direction and happiness to yourself and to those around you. Skoah’s Andrea Scott so beautifully described her personal core values and how they have helped her shape her very successful business. They have also given way to another set of professional core values that Skoah operates upon:

1. Listen to Understand – Everyone has a right to be heard. Naturally, people talk more about themselves when they are uncomfortable, to compensate by showing others they know what they are doing.  However, in most situations the best thing to do is to stop talking and listen.
2. Give Your Energy to Others – It’s impossible to have positive energy all the time, but it is possible to be honest to those around you at all times. Ask for help and get support if you’re having a difficult day.  Just because you’re having a hard time, doesn’t mean everyone else has to either.
3. Create a New Experience – Certain jobs can start to be repetitious, so make an effort to create a new experience with everyone you meet, rather than just a scripted response. By saying something that is unexpected allows others to really think and communicate what they really want or need.
4. Pursue your goals passionately.
5. Be Indispensible – No matter what your role is, you’ve committed to it, so be the best you can be so it can elevate you to the next step.

How much time have you spent thinking about what guides your decision making process? When you set goals for yourself, are you coming from a place of kindness, or are you making them for the sole purpose of “looking good?”

Lululemon’s Deanne Schweitzer spoke on how to create core values and goals with this simple illustration:

Make decisions based on “above the line thinking," rather than “below the line."  Come from a place of kindness and virtue rather than superficiality. She suggested 6 points to consider when making goals:

1. Possibility – The ability to stand in nothing and create.  Let go of the past because it’s impossible to create a future if you let your past hold you back.
2. Vision – Where do you envision yourself in 10 years? If you were on your death bed, what would you want to be remembered as? Set your goals and core values based on where you see yourself at this time.
3. Balance – Set goals for Personal, Health and Career. If you are too heavy in any one of those, you will feel out of balance.
4. Have BIG, HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOALS.  When you think of them, you should get goosebumps.
5. Format – Goals should trickle down from your vision and should be quantifiable. How will you measure their success?
6. Integrity – How will you incorporate your goals into your daily life in order to achieve them? Set a completion date, tell someone, be accountable to your goals.

Fortunately for me, I have defined what my core values are, but I have never written them down before to truly articulate what they mean to me:

1. Honesty – Be true to yourself and be true to others, will you be proud of it tomorrow morning?
2. Be Present – Give someone your time by truly listening to them, rather than just nod politely as you make lists in your head. Appreciate what you’ve been given in that moment.
3. Egoless – Be humble, be kind to yourself. Accept that something may be unreachable today, but not necessarily tomorrow.
4. Be Indispensible – Give it all you got and people will truly see your worth, but only if you see it for yourself, first.
5. Show Compassion & Be Mindful – We all have a different reality, and experience situations independently. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

I encourage everyone to take the time to define what is important to them, and live by their core values.  If you have clearly defined them for yourself, finding the path to success isn’t too far behind! Let your core values help in your every day decision and goal-making.

There were many GREAT quotes from the night, but here are just a few:

“… find someone that you can empty your filing cabinet with”

“… when you find the right fit and core values in the company you are in, you will love what you do… find the right seat on the bus.”

“balance is different for everyone, define it for yourself” - Deanne

"when I was in my 20s, I wish I had spent more time thinking about what gets me going in the morning"- Deanne

"Possibility - the ability to stand in nothing and create"   - Deanne

"Be indispensable - take everything u can from your role & give everything you can. That will elevate you to your next role" - Andrea

There were also a few book recommendations by our speakers.  If you want to read up more about core values and goal setting, check these out:

Strength Finder by Tom Rath http://strengths.gallup.com/110440/About-StrengthsFinder-2.aspx

LinchPin – Are You Indispensible?  by Seth Godin

The Psychology of Achievement by Brian Tracey

Good to Great  by Jim Collins

Last but not least, a great big THANK YOU to Deanne Schweitzer and Andrea Scott for the time they took to inspire so many of us!