Uncovering Values, Strengths, and Boundaries
Hey there!
How are you?
Today, we’re going to explore the second area of the CARE Framework —Alignment.
It’s all about values, strengths, motivators, healthy boundaries, beliefs, and thought patterns.
When I think about Alignment, I see us putting ourselves and our needs back at the center of the picture. I imagine centering in it, standing tall and confident, feeling good, and being more effective.
Before diving further into Alignment, I want to invite you to my upcoming free workshop. In it, I’ll help you take stock of the past year, envision the upcoming 12 months, and plan your next steps in a way that feels good and nurturing.
It’s happening on September 18 on Zoom at 6:30PM CEST (12PM EST). Learn more and register here: The Regenerative Vision Workshop.
PS
This is going to be my first workshop hosted in English, so if you want to come to cheer me on, you’ll be very welcome!
Going Deeper
In Connection, we start harnessing awareness to learn more about ourselves.
In Alignment, we go deeper. We discover our values, strengths, and motivators and start giving ourselves permission to honor them, which may mean setting healthy boundaries, working on our assertiveness, and turning to self-compassion.
This is where you ask yourself, “How do I get what I want in a way that feels aligned?” or “Why am I getting what I want, but it doesn’t feel good?”.
Alignment is a stage in which we are still underground. If we follow last week’s metaphor of the seed, we are starting to grow our roots—those that will make us able to stand tall and steady. I associate this inner journey with Winter, a time that provides us with the darkness needed to deepen our inner connection and allow ourselves to let the world out to get ready to meet it again with restored capacity and wisdom.
Acknowledging And Unlearning
In Alignment, we also become more aware of our beliefs, thought patterns, and disempowering narratives. This is a crucial step if we want to be able to allow ourselves to put our needs and desires front and center.
As essential as it is, it requires time and practice—the practice of noticing, the practice of reframing or debunking, and the practice of trying. It is a lifetime’s work, maybe more than the one required by the other areas of CARE, because it means acknowledging and dismantling years of narratives we have learned and internalized.
However, I believe at some point in life, we feel the need to start this process, and when we’ve started it, it’s harder to go back than move forward, even though the practice of rebuilding is complex and can be tiring sometimes.
The people I talked with while developing the Framework mentioned how much they had needed to unlearn throughout their journeys in order to allow themselves to act in alignment with their deeper being. For each of them, this looked different, but it was instrumental in nurturing their joy, their businesses, and their visions, too.
Regenerative Impact features weekly explorations about what it means to be an entrepreneur or leader who cares to make an impact and wants to do it while feeling good and not burning out in the process.
Rebuilding In Alignment
Along with their unlearning, the main practices they mentioned were setting healthy boundaries to protect their time and mental well-being, finding and following what motivates them, and honoring their strengths.
What they didn’t mention explicitly but was clear from their words and actions is that they are clear about their values and honor them in their daily lives.
Living in alignment with our values, strengths, and motivators is critical to our well-being. To allow ourselves to do it, we must confront our disempowering, deep-seated beliefs with compassionate resolution.
We’ll need energy to keep up with this work, actualize our vision, and enjoy our lives. That’s why Regeneration is another key to our well-being. That’s what we’ll explore next week.
Reflect On Your Alignment
Meanwhile, why don’t you give yourself some space to reflect on today’s CARE Area?
Here are some prompts for you:
How do you foster Alignment these days?
Is there anything that you’d love to do more of to support this area?
Is there anything you’d love to do less to support this area?
If you feel like it, share your reflections in the comments!
With care,
Giada
❄️ Alignment Inspiration
Some quotes from posts that inspire interesting reflections about Alignment.
To locate your sense of self primarily outside of yourself is to live a wobbly and destabilized life. It’s like tossing your anchor into another boat instead of sinking it into solid ground. Whenever the wind changes, or the other boat shifts its position, you’re knocked off your feet.
Who am I? What it means to have an external locus of identity. –
People pleasing is so baked into society and culture that you were socialised and conditioned into thinking, feeling, being and doing things in the way you have and believing that this is who you are and have to be. But it’s like using a map to try to get to London’s King’s Cross Station and winding up hundreds of miles away, and then using the same route again.
We all carry these lessons of our past that haunt us in little ways. Maybe we were once told that we were too aggressive by a former manager, so we changed our personality to fit in better. Maybe we were taught to be seen but not heard. Or maybe we grew up with an unhealthy relationship with money. These behaviors may have served us once, but so many of them have outlived their usefulness—and some may have even become harmful.
I’m opening enrollment for my new coaching program!
Hello! I’m Giada (Jah-da, more or less), an Impact Coach who blends coaching and neuroscience, and I am about to launch my new coaching program to empower change agents to actualize their vision, make an impact, and cultivate joy while preventing burnout. Check it out here: The Regenerative Path!