On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 4 Strategies to Identify Your Values & How They Can Guide Your Daily Decisions

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

Can you identify who you are, or are you chasing someone else’s dream? Jay explains how easy it is for people to become wrapped up in what they think others think of them and lose themselves in the process. Listen in to hear him share his wisdom on how to find your true self. Learn how to clear away outside distractions and apply your guiding values to your life. Train your mind for peace and purpose everyday. Grab a copy of Think Like A Monk, or listen to the audiobook now! Book: https://books.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewFeature?id=1532264534&mt=11&ls=1&itscg=80048&itsct=js_httlam_book Audiobook: https://books.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewFeature?id=1532264062&mt=3&ls=1&itscg=80048&itsct=js_httlam_audiobookSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Eva Longoria. And I'm Maite Gomes-Rajon. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry For History! On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories, decode culinary customs, and even provide a recipe or two

for you to try at home. Listen to Hungry For History on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The world of chocolate has been turned upside down. A very unusual situation. You saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate comes from the cacao tree, and recently, Variety's cacao, thought to have been

lost centuries ago, were rediscovered in the Amazon. There is no chocolate on Earth like this. Now some chocolate makers are racing deep into the jungle to find the next game-changing chocolate, and I'm coming along. OK, that was a very large crack it up. Listen to obsessions while chocolate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season,

and yet we're constantly discovering new secrets. The variety of them continues to be astonishing. I can't wait to share 10 incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you'll get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. So I have got an extremely, extremely special treat for each and every one of you today.

What I'm going to be sharing with you is chapter one of the audiobook for my book think like a monk. Now, if you've been reading along, you can hear this chapter for absolutely free today. And if you love it, you can go and grab yourself a copy. I think like a monk book.com. It's on Apple books, audible audio books. I can't wait for you to listen to this. It's one of my favorite chapters in the book. And I can't wait for you to listen to this. It's one of my favorite chapters in the book and I can't wait to share it with you. So listen and share your best insight and thank you so much. I am what I think I am. It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. Bhagavad Gita, 335.

In 1902, the sociologist Charles Horton Kruly wrote, And I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. Let that blow your mind for a moment. Our identity is wrapped up in what others think of us, or more accurately what we think others think of us. Not only is our self-image tied up in how we think others see us, but most of our efforts at self-improvement are really just us trying to meet that imagined ideal. If we think someone we admire sees wealth as success, then we chase wealth to impress that person. If we imagine that a friend is judging our looks, we tailor our appearance in response.

In West Side Story, Maria meets a boy who's into her. What's her very next song? I feel pretty. As of this writing, the world's only triple best actor Oscar winner, Daniel Day Lewis, has acted in just six films since 1998. He prepares for each role extensively, immersing himself completely in his character. For the role of Bill DeButcher in Martin Scorsese's gangs of New York, he trained as a butcher,

spoke with a thick Irish accent on and off set and hired circus performers to teach him how to throw knives. And that's only the beginning. He wore only authentic 19th century clothing and walked around Rome in character, starting arguments and fights with strangers. Perhaps thanks to that clothing, he caught pneumonia. Day Lewis was employing a technique called method acting,

which requires the actor to live as much like his character as possible in order to become the role he's playing. This is an incredible skill and art, but often method actors become so absorbed in their character that the role takes on a life beyond the stage or screen. I will admit that I went mad, totally mad, Dei Lewis said, to the independent years later, admitting the role was not so good for my physical or mental health. Unconsciously, we're all method acting to some degree. We have personas we play online at work with friends and at home. These different personas have their benefits. They enable us to make the money that pays our bills. They help us function in a workplace where we don't always feel comfortable.

They let us maintain relationships with people we don't really like but need to interact with But often our identity has so many layers that we lose sight of the real us If we ever knew who or what that was in the first place We bring our work role home with us and we take the role we play with our friends into our romantic life without any conscious control or intention. However, successfully we play our roles, we end up feeling dissatisfied, depressed, unworthy and unhappy. The I and me, small and vulnerable, to begin with, get distorted. vulnerable to begin with, get distorted. We try to live up to what we think others think of us,

even at the expense of our values. Rarely, if ever, do we consciously, intentionally create our own values? We make life choices using this twice reflected image of who we might be without really thinking it through. of who we might be without really thinking it through. Coolie called this phenomenon the looking, glass, self. We live in a perception of a perception of ourselves and we've lost our real selves as a result.

How can we recognize who we are and what makes us happy when we're chasing the distorted reflection of someone else's dreams? You might think that the hard part about becoming a monk is letting go of the fun stuff, partying sex, watching TV, owning things, sleeping in an actual bed. Okay, the bed part was pretty rough. But before I took that step, there was a bigger hurdle I had to overcome, breaking my career choice to my parents.

By the time I was wrapping up my final year of college, I decided what path I wanted to take. I told my parents I'll be turning down the job offers that had come my way. I always joked that as far as my parents were concerned I had three career options. Dr. Lawyer or Failure, there's no better way to tell your parents that everything they did for you was a waste than to become a monk. Like all parents, mine had dreams for me, but at least I had eased them into the idea that I might become a monk. Every year since I was 18, I'd spent part of the summer interning at a finance job in London and part of the year training at the Ashram in Mumbai.

By the time I made my decision, my mother's first concern was the same as any mother's. My well-being. Would I have health care? Was seeking enlightenment just a fancy way of saying, sitting around all day? Even more challenging for my mother was that we were surrounded by friends and family who shared the Doctor Lawyer Failure definition of success. Word spread that I was making this radical move,

and her friends started saying, but you've invested so much in this education, and he's been brainwashed and he's going to waste his life. My friends two thought I was failing in life. I heard, you're never going to get a job again. And you're throwing away any hope of earning a living. When you try to live your most authentic life, some of your relationships will be put in jeopardy. Losing them is a risk worth bearing. Finding

a way to keep them in your life is a challenge worth taking on. Luckily to my developing monk mind, the voices of my parents and their friends were not the most important guidelines I used when making this decision. Instead, I relied on my own experience. Every year since I was 18, I had tested both lives. I didn't come home from my summer finance jobs feeling anything but hungry for dinner. But every time I left the ashram, I thought, that was amazing. I just had the best time of my life. Experimenting with these widely diverse experiences, values, and belief systems helped me understand

my own. The reactions to my choice to become a monk are examples of the external pressures we all face throughout our lives. Our families, our friends, society, media, we are surrounded by images and voices telling us who we should be and what we should do. They clamor with opinions and expectations and obligations. Go straight from high school to the best college, find a lucrative job, get married, buy a home, have children, get promoted. Cultural norms exist for a reason. There is nothing wrong with the society that offers models of what a fulfilling life might look like. But if we take on these goals without reflection, we'll never understand why

we don't own a home or we're not happy where we live, why our job feels hollow, whether we even want to spouse or any of the goals we're striving for. My decision to join the Ashram turned up the volume of opinions and concerns around me. But conveniently, my experiences in the Ashram had also given me the tools I needed to filter out that noise. The cause and the solution were the same. I was less vulnerable to the noises around me, telling me what was normal, safe, practical, best.

I didn't shut out the people who loved me. I cared about them. And didn't want them to worry. But neither did I let their definitions of success and happiness dictate my choices. It was, at the time, the hardest decision I'd ever made. And it was the right one. The voices of parents, friends, education and media all crowd a young person's mind, seeding beliefs and values. Society's definition of a happy life is everybody's and nobody's. The only way to build a meaningful life is to filter out that noise and look within.

This is the first step to building your monk mind. We will start this journey the way monks do, by clearing away distractions. First, we'll look at the external forces that shape us and distract us from our values. Then we will take stock of the values that currently shape our lives and reflect on whether they're in line with who we want to be and how we want to live. I'm Mungesha Tikhler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention.

Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good, there is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Eva Longoria. I'm Maite Gomez-Rajón. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry for History! On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories, decode culinary customs, and even provide a recipe here too for you to try at home.

Corner flower. Both. Oh, you can't decide. I can't decide. I love both. You know, I'm a flower tortilla flower. Your team flower? I'm team flower. I need a shirt. Team flower, team core. Join us as we explore surprising and lesser known corners of Latinx culinary history and traditions. I mean, these are these legends, right? Apparently this guy Juan Mendes, he was making these tacos wrapped in these huge tortillas to keep it warm and he was transporting them in a burro, hence the name the burritos. Listen to Hungary for history with Ivalangoria and Mite Gomez Rejón as part of the Michael Tura podcast network available on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

The therapy for Black Girls podcast is the destination for all things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Here, we have the conversations that help black women dig a little deeper into the most impactful relationships in our lives, those with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, and most importantly ourselves. We chat about things like what to do when a friendship ends, how to know when it's time to break up with your therapist,

and how to end the cycle of perfectionism. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. And I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Take good care. Is this dust or is it me? Corrunga does offered me a beautiful metaphor to illustrate the

external influences that obscure our true selves. We are in a storeroom lined with unused books and boxes full of artifacts. Unlike the rest of the ashram, which is always tidy and well-swept, this place is dusty and draped-in cobwebs. The senior monk leads me up to a mirror and says, to a mirror and says, What can you see? Through the thick layer of dust, I can't even see my reflection. I say as much and monk nods. Then he wipes the arm of his robe across the glass. A cloud of dust puffs into my face, stinging my eyes and filling my throat. He says, your identity is a mirror covered with dust. When you first look in the mirror, the truth of who you are and what you value is obscured.

Clearing it may not be pleasant, but only when that dust is gone can you see your true reflection. This was a practical demonstration of the words of Caitanya, a 16th century Bengali Hindu saint. Caitanya called the state of affairs, Caitodarpana Marjanam, or clearance of the impure mirror of the mind. The foundation of virtually all monastic traditions is removing distractions that prevent us from focusing on what matters most, finding meaning in life by mastering physical and mental desires.

Some traditions give up speaking, some give up sex, some give up worldly possessions, and some give up all three. In the ashramam we lived with just what we needed and nothing more. I experienced first hand the enlightenment of letting go. When we are buried in non-essentials, we lose track of what is truly significant. I am not asking you to give up any of these things, but I want to help you recognize and filter out the noise of external influences. This is how we clear the dust and see if those values truly reflect you. Guiding values are the principles that are most important to us and that we feel should guide us,

who we want to be, how we treat ourselves and others. Values tend to be single-word concepts like freedom, equality, compassion, honesty. That might sound rather abstract and idealistic, but values are really practical. They're a kind of ethical GPS we can use to navigate through life. If you know your values, you have directions that point you toward the people and actions and habits that are best for you. Just as when we drive through a new area, we wander aimlessly without values, we take wrong turns, we get lost, we're trapped by indecision. Values make it easier for you to surround yourself with the right people,

make tough career choices, use your time more wisely, and focus your attention where it matters. Without them, we're swept away by distraction. Where values come from? Our values don't come to us in our sleep. We don't think them through consciously. Rarely do we even put them into words, but they exist nonetheless. Everyone is born into a certain set of circumstances, and our values are defined by what we experience, what we born into hardship or luxury. Where did we receive praise? Parents and caregivers are often our loudest fans and critics. But we might rebel in our teenage years,

we're generally compelled to please and imitate those authority figures. Looking back, think about how your time with your parents was spent, playing, enjoying, conversation, working on projects together. What did they tell you was most important and did it match what mattered most to them?

Who did they want you to be? What did they want you to accomplish? How did they expect you to behave? Did you absorb these ideals and have they worked for you? From the start, our educations are another powerful influence. The subjects that are taught, the cultural angle from which they're taught, the way we are expected to learn, a fact-driven curriculum doesn't encourage creativity, a narrow cultural approach doesn't foster tolerance for people from different backgrounds and places,

and there are few opportunities to immerse ourselves in our passions, even if we know them from an early age. This is not to say that school doesn't prepare us for life, and there are many different educational models out there, some of which are less restrictive, but it is worth taking a step back to consider whether the values you carried from school feel right to you. The media mind game. As a monk, I learned early on that our values are influenced by whatever absorbs our minds. We're not our minds, but the mind is the vehicle by which we decide what is important in our hearts. The movies we watch, the music we hear, the books we read, the TV shows we bence, the people we follow online and offline.

What's on your news feed is feeding your mind. The more we are absorbed in celebrity gossip, images of success, violent video games and troubling news, the more our values are tainted, with envy, judgment, competition and discontent. with envy, judgment, competition and discontent. Observing and evaluating are key to thinking like a monk, and they begin with space and stillness. For monks, the first step in filtering the noise of external influences is a material letting go. I had three stints visiting the ashram, graduated college, then officially became a monk. After a couple of months of training at the Bhaktivedanta Manur, a temple in the

countryside north of London, I headed to India, arriving at the village Ashram in the beginning of September 2010. I exchanged my relatively stylish clothes for two robes, one to wear and one to wash. I forfeited my fairly slick haircut for no hair, our heads were shaved, and I was deprived of almost all opportunities to check myself out. The ashram contained no mirrors except the one I would later be shown in the store room. So we monks were prevented from obsessing over our appearance, a to simple diet that rarely varied, slept on thin mats laid on the floor, and the only music we heard was the chance and bells that punctuated our meditations and rituals. We didn't watch

movies or TV shows, and we received limited news and email on shared desktop computers in a communal area. Nothing took the place of these distractions except space, stillness, and silence. When we tune out the opinions, expectations, and obligations of the world around us, we begin to hear ourselves. In that silence, I began to recognize the difference between outside noise and my own voice. I could clear away the dust of others to see my core beliefs. I promised you I wouldn't ask you to shave your head and don robes, but how in the modern world can we give ourselves the space, silence and stillness to build awareness? Most of us don't sit down and think about our values.

We don't like to be alone with our own thoughts. Our inclination is to avoid silence, to try to fill our heads, to keep moving. In a series of studies, researchers from the University of Virginia and Harvard asked participants to spend just six to fifteen minutes alone in a room with no smartphone, no writing instruments and nothing to read. The researchers then let them listen to music or use their phones. Participants not only preferred their phones and music, many of them even chose to zap themselves with an electric shock rather than be alone with their thoughts. If you go to a networking event every day and have to tell people what you do for a living, it's hard to step away from that reduction of who you are.

If you watch real housewives every night, you start to think that throwing glasses of wine in your friend's faces is routine behavior. When we fill up our lives and leave ourselves no room to reflect, those distractions become our values by default. We can't address our thoughts and explore our minds when we're preoccupied. Nor does just sitting in your home teach you anything. There are three ways I suggest you actively create space for reflection. First, on a daily basis, I recommend you sit down to reflect on how the day went and what emotions you're feeling. Second, once a month, you can approximate the change that I found at the Ashram by going someplace you've never been before

to explore yourself in a different environment. This can be anything from visiting a park or a library you've never been to before to taking a trip. Finally, get involved in something that's meaningful to you, a hobby, a charity, a political cause. Another way to create space is to take stock of how we are filling the space that we have and whether those choices reflect our true values. Try this. Where did your values come from? It can be hard to perceive the effects these casual influences have on us.

Values are abstract, elusive, and the world we live in constantly pushes blatant and subliminal suggestions as to what we should want and how we should live and how we form our ideas of who we are. Write down some of the values that shape your life. Next to each, write the origin. Put a checkmark next to each value that you truly share. Here's an example. Let's say the value you wrote is kindness and the origin is your parent. Is it true to me? Is it something that resonates? Yes. Now let's look at another value or what you've chosen to value a specific type of appearance. What is the origin? Maybe it's media. Is it true to me? Do I really want to look that way for me? Not in the same way. Now let's look at another value of wealth. Where did our values around wealth come from? Maybe the origin is our parents.

Is it true to me? No, maybe I don't value wealth in the same way my parents did. And let's take a look at a few more. Let's say you value good grades and the origin comes from school. And is it true to me? It's interfered with real learning. The value of knowledge, how you value knowledge into what degree, what's the origin school? Is it true to me? Yes!

And the value of family. The way you perceive family, where does that come from? The origin is tradition. Is it true to me? Family, yes, but not in the traditional way. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. Yes, but not in the traditional way. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season. And yet, we're constantly discovering new secrets.

The depths of them, the variety of them continues to be astonishing. I can't wait to share 10 incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. When I realized this is not just happening to me, this is who and what I am. I needed her to help me. Something was gnawing at me that I couldn't put my finger on that I just felt somehow that there was a

piece missing. Why not restart? Look at all the things that were going wrong. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains

and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or, can we create new senses for humans? Or, what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagelman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is what it sounds like inside the box.

I'm journalist and I'm Morton in my podcast City of the Rails. I plunged into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop train. Just like stuff on the train, not where I'm gonna end up, and I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society, off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom, this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American Dream.

It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die, or you can have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or cityoftherails.com. Or did your life.

No matter what you think your values are, your actions tell the real story. What we do with our spare time shows what we value. For instance, you might put spending time with your family at the top of your list of values, but if you spend all your free time playing golf, your actions don't match your values, and you need to do some self-examination. Time. First, let's assess how you spend the time when you're not sleeping or working. Let's assess how you spend the time when you're not sleeping or working. Researchers have found that by the end of our lives, on average, each of us will spend

33 years in bed, 7 years of which will be spent trying to sleep, a year and 4 months exercising, and more than 3 years on vacation. If you're a woman, you'll spend 136 days getting ready. If you're a man, this number drops to 46 days. These are just estimates of course, but our daily choices add up. Try this. Audit your time. Spend a week tracking how much time you devote to the following. Family, friends, health and self. Note that we're leaving out sleeping, eating and working. Work in all its forms can sprawl without boundaries. If this is the case for you, then set your own definition of when you are officially at work and make extra work one of your categories. The areas where you spend the most time should match what you value the most. Say the amount

of time that your job requires exceeds how important it is to you. That's a sign that you need to look very closely at that decision. You're deciding to spend time on something that doesn't feel important to you. What are the values behind that decision? Are your earnings from your job ultimately serving your value? Media. When you did your audit, no doubt a significant amount of your time was spent reading or viewing media. Research is estimate that on average each of us will spend more than 11 years of our lives

looking at a TV and social media. Perhaps your media choices feel casual, but time reflects values. There are many forms of media, but most of us aren't overdoing it on movies, TV or magazines. It's all about devices. Conveniently your iPhone will tell you exactly how you're using it. Under settings, look at the screen time report for the last week,

and you'll see how much time you spend on social media, games, mail, and browsing the web. If you don't like what you see, you can even set limits for yourself. On Android, you can look at your battery usage under settings. Then, from the menu, choose Show Full Device Usage, or you can download an app like Social Fever or My Addictometer. Money. Like time, you can look at the money you spend

to see the values by which you live. Exclude necessities like home, dependence, car, bills, food and debt. Now look at your discretionary spending. What was your biggest investment this month? Which discretionary areas are costing you the most? Does your spending correspond to what matters most to you? We often have an odd perspective on what's worth it that doesn't quite make sense if you look at all your

expenditures at once. I was advising someone who complained that the family was overspending on after-school classes for the kids until she realized that she spent more on her shoes than on their music lessons. Seeing posts on social media that compared spending and our priorities got me thinking about how the ways we spend our time and money reveal what we value. A 60 minute TV show flew by. A 60 minute lunch with family will it ever end. Every day coffee habit, $4 a day, almost $1500 a year, need it. Fresh healthy food choices, an extra $1.50 a day, about $550 a year, not worth it. 15 minutes of scrolling social media, me time, 15 minutes of meditation, no time.

It's all in how you see it. When you look at a month of expenses, think about whether discretionary purchases were long or short-term investments. A great dinner out or a dance class were they for entertainment or enlightenment for yourself or someone else. If you have a gym membership but only went once this month and spent more on wine, you have some rethinking to do. Curate your values.

Doing a self audit tells you the values that have crept into your life by default. The next step is to decide what your values are and whether your choices are in alignment with them. Contemplating monk values may help you identify your own. Our teachers at the Ashram explained that there are higher and lower values. Our teachers at the Ashram explained that there are higher and lower values. Higher values propel and elevate us toward happiness, fulfillment and meaning. Lower values demotus toward anxiety, depression and suffering. According to the Gita, these are the higher values and qualities. Fearlessness, purity of mind, gratitude, service and charity, acceptance,

performing sacrifice, deep study, austerity, straight forwardness, non-violence, truthfulness, absence of anger, renunciation, perspective, restraint from fault-finding, compassion toward all living beings, satisfaction, gentleness or kindness, integrity, determination. Notice that happiness and success are not among these values. These are not values, they are rewards, the end game, and we will address them further in chapter 4. The six lower values are greed, lust, anger, ego, illusion and envy. The downside of the lower values is that they so readily take us over when we give them space to do so. But the upside is that there are a lot fewer of them. Or as my teacher Gorangadhas reminded us, there are always more ways to be pulled up than to be pulled down.

We can't pull a set of values out of thin air and make sweeping changes overnight. Instead, we want to let go of the false values that fill the space in our lives. The ashram gave us amongst the opportunity to observe nature, and our teachers called our attention to the cycles of all living things. Leafs sprout, transform and drop, reptiles birds and mammals shed their skins, feathers fur. Letting go is a big part of the rhythm of nature as is rebirth. We humans cling to stuff, people, ideas, material possessions, copies of Marie Kondo's book, thinking it's unnatural to purge, but letting Go is a direct root to space, literally

and stillness. We separate ourselves emotionally, if not physically, from the people and ideas who fill up our lives, and then we take time to observe the natural inclinations that compel us. Choices come along every day, and we can begin to weave values into them. Whenever we make a choice, whether it's as big as getting married or as small as an argument with a friend, we are driven by our values, whether they are high or low.

If these choices work out well for us, then our values are in alignment with our actions. But when things don't work out, it's worth revisiting what drove the decision you made. Try this, past values. Reflect on the three best and three worst choices you've ever made. Why did you make them? What have you learned?

How would you have done it differently? Take a close look at your answers. Buried in them are your values. Why did you make a choice? You may have been with the right or wrong person for the same reason, because you value love. Or maybe you moved across the country because you wanted a change. The underlying value may be adventure. Now do the same thing for the future. Look at your biggest goals to see if they're driven by other people, tradition or media-driven ideas of how we should live. Try this, value-driven decisions. For the next week, whenever you spend money on a non-necessity or make a plan

for how you will spend your free time, pause and think. What is the value behind the choice? It takes only a second, a flash of consideration. Ideally, this momentary pause becomes instinctive so that you're making conscious choices about what matters to you and how much energy you devote to it. Filter OEOs, don't block them. Once you filter out the noise of opinions, expectations, and obligations, OEOs, you will see the world through different eyes. The

next step is inviting the world back in. When I ask you to strip away outside influences, I don't want you to tune out the whole world indefinitely. Your monk mind can and must learn from other people. The challenge is to do so consciously by asking ourselves simple questions. What qualities do I look for or admire in family, friends or colleagues? Are they trust, confidence, determination, honesty? Whatever they may be, these qualities are in fact our own values, the very landmarks we should use to guide ourselves through our own lives. When you're not alone, surround yourself with people who fit well with your values. It helps to find a community that reflects who you want to be, a community that looks like the future you want.

Remember how hard it was for me to start living like a monk during my final year of college? And now, it's hard for me to live in London, surrounded by the people I grew up with, and their ways of living. I'm tempted to sleep in, gossip, judge others. A new culture helped me redefine myself, and another new culture helped me continue on my path. Every time you move homes or take a different job or embark on a new relationship, you have a golden opportunity to reinvent yourself. Multiple studies show that the way we relate to the world around us is contagious. A 20-year study of people living in a Massachusetts town showed that both happiness and depression spread within social circles. If a friend who lives within a mile of

you becomes happier, then the chance that you are also happy increases by 25%. The effect jumps higher with next door neighbors. Who you surround yourself with helps you stick to your values and achieve your goals. You grow together. If you want to run a 245 marathon, you don't train with people who run a 445. If you want to be more spiritual, expand your practice with other spiritual people. If you want to grow your business, join a local Chamber of Commerce or an online group of business owners who are similarly driven toward that kind of success. If you're an overworked parent who wants to make your kids your priority, cultivate relationships

with other parents who prioritize their kids so you can exchange support and advice. That's it yet, we're possible, cross groups, foster relationships with family-oriented, spiritual entrepreneurs who run marathons. Okay, I'm kidding. Yeah, in today's world where we have more ways to connect than ever, platforms like LinkedIn and Meetup and tools like Facebook groups make it easier than ever to find your tribe. If you're looking for love, looking places that are value-driven, like service opportunities, fitness or sports activities, a series of lectures on a topic

that interests you. If you're not sure where others fit in relation to your values, ask yourself a question. When I spend time with this person or group, do I feel like I'm getting closer to or further away from who I want to be? The answer could be clear-cut. It's obvious. If you're spending four hours at a time playing FIFA Soccer on PS2, not that I've ever done that, versus engaging in meaningful interactions that improves the quality of your life, or the answer could be more vague.

A feeling like irritability or mental fuzziness after you spend time with them. It feels good to be around people who are good for us. It doesn't feel good to be around people who don't support us or bring out our bad habits. Try this, companion order. Over the course of a week, make a list of the people with whom you spend the most time. List of values

that you share next to each person. Are you giving the most time to the people who align most closely with your values? Who you talk to, what you watch, what you do with your time, all of these sources, push values and beliefs. If you're just going from one day to the next without questioning your values, you'll be swayed by what everyone else from your family to hordes of marketing professionals wants you to think. I remind myself of the moment in the storeroom all the time. A thought comes into my mind and I ask myself, does this fit my chosen values or those that others have selected for me? Is this dust or is it me? When you give yourself space and stillness you can

clear the dust and see yourself, not through other's eyes but from within. Identifying your values and letting them guide you will help you filter external influences. In the next chapter, these skills will help you filter out unwanted attitudes and emotions. Getting better with money is a great goal for 2023. But how are you going to make it happen? Ordering a book that lingers on your nightstand isn't going to do the trick. Instead, check out our podcast How to Money. That's right, we're two best buds offering all the helpful personal finance information you need without putting you to sleep.

We offer guidance three times a week and we talk about debt payoff, saving more, intelligent investing, and increasing your earnings. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them make progress with their financial goals. You can listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Debbie Brown, host of the Deeply Well podcast, where we hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness around topics that are meant to expand and support

you on your well-being journey. Deeply well is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment, to heal, to learn, to grow, to become who you deserve to be. Deeply well with Debbie Brown is available now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Namaste. Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives.

But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the Psychology of Your 20s. Each week we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.