3.15: MAP Challenge #1

In this introduction to the Mindful Action Planning Challenge, I guide participants through the foundational step of identifying their values and crafting a statement of purpose. 

I emphasize the importance of understanding one's values for mindful decision-making and planning. I also encourage reflection on moments of alignment and offer tools, such as Brene Brown's list of values, to help participants identify their core values. 

I introduce a Mad Libs-style exercise to help participants articulate their purpose at work, focusing on who they are at their best and the impact they aim to make. 

The goal is to create alignment between values, purpose, and daily activities, setting the stage for mindful action planning.

You can access Josh's substack & podcast here:
https://joshuadolezal.substack.com/

Episode Details

Transcript

Hi, everybody, welcome back to the mindful Academy. I'm Jennifer Askey, your academic coach. And today we are kicking off the mindful action planning challenge with the foundation of your mindful action pyramid, which is your values. It is the foundation of the decisions you make it is maybe what you see in the rearview mirror when you look at watershed moments in your career and in your life. And it's important to articulate it for yourself rather than just have a sense of it, in order to engage in some really mindful planning. So I have talked about getting clear on your values on the podcast before. But I also get better at podcasting, I hope. So, this will be both conversational and targeted in that there's some things for you to think about and do. And this applies directly to the mindful action planning pyramid that you can download on my website for free, Jennifer askey.com. 

And again, this is part of the process that I take almost every client through at some point or another in our work together. So values, how am I going to define your values for this? One way to define your values is to think about the qualities of life people and of work that you hold in high regard, when you see something that really resonates with you, that you think is really awesome, what values are at play there. And the other way to think about values are the qualities that steer or have steered your decisions, especially the decisions that you're most proud of. Right. So I would invite you to spend some time reflecting on your values. Think of the moments in your life, when you felt most aligned, doing something you knew you were meant to be doing. And mentally look around at that moment, right and see what you notice, in terms of your values being at play? Do you notice community and communication? Do you notice nature and fresh air? Do you notice giving or receiving, of information of gifts of energy? Right, so what is at play both for you and for the people or things or entities around you. And if you're having a hard time coming up with good words, in the PDF for the mindful action planning pyramid, there is a link to Brene Brown's list of values that are part of her desire, excuse me her dare to lead program, I see the D two L in my notes, and I think desire to learn, which is a course management software that I used to use. But no, this is dare to lead. And in her dare to lead program. There's a values exercise in the worksheet for that it has like 100 Different words on it that are values that you can read through and see, you know, what resonates with me. And the way it works in dare to lead is that she walks you through a process where you whittle it down to one value that is, you know, the One Ring to rule them all. And I'm not going to ask you to do that because one value makes me twitchy makes me feel like I don't have enough choices and choices and options and autonomy evidently are things that I value a great deal. So maybe start with like 10-15 You know, just all of them that really resonate with you. And then you might notice, Oh, these are kind of synonyms, or all three of these things together, maybe point to this one bigger thing. And it is useful to try to narrow that list down to maybe five values that you think represent or guide your life, your decisions, your work at its best. And as you're doing this, you may notice I've had this I've seen this happen with clients before you may notice an enormous misalignment between the values that are being revealed to you as you think about it intentionally and what's going on in your life right now. And if you notice that like oh wow, I really value x and I have no time no opportunity permission to put x into play in my work. Maybe you can use a guide on the side to help clear some pathways for you, right? clarify what's aspirational, what's authentic, what's inauthentic, and help you get to know yourself better, so that you can feel rooted in your values when you make decisions. If that's work that you want to do, right, if you find even articulating and owning these values challenging, that's a place where coaching can come in handy. But that's an aside. So your goal is to come up with a list of five ish or so values. And ideally, if you have time, you should make time to think about yourself at work, and where you get to use these values. Where and maybe not all of them are work specific values, but hopefully, if you are, so for those values that are related to your work, what activities do you get to deploy or use or rely on those values in? And how often does that happen? Right? That's an alignment question about your values, but even listing them out and saying, Okay, I want to be as often as possible, guided by autonomy, guided by splendor, guided by peace, guided by harmony, community, right, all of those kinds of words. So that's one part of this foundational work is getting clear on what your values are. And this does not have to be your values for all time, in memoriam etched in stone never to change, right? Your life circumstances change your jobs, change, your family circumstances change, your values will change. Right? I'm currently an empty nester that has shifted some of my values, it shifted some of my priorities. And that's okay. So, you know, anchor this map exercise in where you're at right now, and where you want to be in the next three to five years. And as you do that, anchoring, say, okay, what are the values that I really want to guide this that are authentic to me. 

So the next part of this foundational bit is working on your statement of purpose. So you fulfill a lot of roles for a lot of people, right? You're a friend, colleague, maybe you're a parent or a spouse, you're a mentor, a teacher, someone's child, right, somebody's for mom, or for Dad, somebody's neighbor, right? This purpose, exercise helps you narrow down who you are at work. Because even at work, and even with a job description, you might find yourself doing all sorts of things that are maybe aligned with your skills, or maybe aligned with the needs that arise around you. But that doesn't really mean they're aligned with your purpose aligned with your desires. And I'll tell a really quick story about this. I was meeting with a client, a relatively new client recently. And she came to coaching in part to sort of manage how much was on her plate and decide what was important and what wasn't important. And the picture that emerged as she talked about her work was that she had gotten into the habit of being a problem solver for everybody around her. So people didn't dig into issues and resolve them. They relied on her institutional memory and her amazing capacity to take on work and work through it to solve problems that weren't even part of her job description. She was good at it and got, you know, little dopamine hits of success of satisfaction when she successfully solved this or that thorny problem. But that work was detracting from the work that was really a part of her purpose. And that was the misalignment and tension she was feeling. And so just because you're good at it, doesn't mean you should do it. Just because you're good at it doesn't mean you can do it all the time. Because where does that leave the big rocks? Where does that leave? Your your big desires, okay? So if you want to make an impact, be known for something, too. really advance in a chosen direction. You need to get clear on this purpose so that it can help you allocate your time. Right? Time management is priority management. And we can only nail down our priorities when we know what the ultimate objective is, right? So this is where we get to purpose. 

So, the your purpose question is around knowing who you are when you are at your best at work. So in the PDF, you'll see that I've offered a sort of Mad Libs style sentence, fill in the blank sentence to create a statement of purpose. If you're not familiar with Mad Libs, those of us who grew up in Gen X. on road trips, before we had cell phones, we have these little notebooks of stories with fill in the blanks. And the story would say, put a noun here, put a verb here, put an adjective here, and you would do that without reading the story. And then you'd slide it into the story narrative, and you'd get something super silly and ridiculous. And so there is an invitation here to not take this gravely earnestly, because, for me anyway, and for a lot of people, if you make this super, super earnest, it feels heavy, and I don't want it to feel heavy, I want it to feel fun and experimental. And, and like feel like something you can play with and return to the so the Mad Libs sentence looks like this. I am the blank. So that's your first blank. Who does blank, that's your second blank for or with or two blank. So that blank. All right. So for that first blank, I am the fill in the blank. This is where I invite you, you don't have to, but it's fun. And sometimes opens up a really deep knowing about your purpose to do this, I invite you to find a metaphor that you feel represents who you are, when you're doing your best at work when you are your best, the best version of yourself at work. So in the workshops that I've held on this process with people, some of the beautiful ones that have come up in gardener, conductor, conduit, medium, alchemist, light magician, tree, bridge, did I say bridge already? All of those things are metaphors that describe an essence of doing or being that might apply. So I have a hard time with mine. Because I think of Coach and that isn't as rich as I want it to be. So am I a guide on the side? Am I a cheerleader? Am I a magician? I don't know. So I play with it. Because I think sometimes I'm all of those things. So I invite you to play with this. And maybe something will really land and maybe it's a bit of a struggle. And that's okay, because this doesn't have to be perfect. Right? The work is like, oh gosh, who am I being when I'm at my best at work? So let's say I'm a gardener. Right? And I'm planting seeds. Alright, so that's, that's your metaphor, your gardener, the second two blanks, who does blank for blank. This is sort of what you might already say when people ask you about your work, right? I teach German literature to undergraduates. I teach German language to undergraduates, for example, or I run the Student Success Center at x University, those sorts of things. But if you have your metaphor, you're like, I'm a gardener. And I plant the seeds of curiosity about other cultures in the minds of kids who didn't even want to be in class. So that and here's the fourth blank. So with that, their horizons are broadened. And they're excited about the rest of the world. So that's the it's prosaic, right, it's super specific. It does not encompass all of the parts of my former faculty job at all right? But I also provide a few examples in the PDF of what this might look like. And my invitation to you is to just think like, Who are you when you're at your best at work? I am the bridge builder who connects x with y do that Zed happens, what I find when I run workshops on this format is that people forget this. So that part of the sentence, because even anchoring yourself down to like, Okay, this is who I am, and this is the work I do, that's already hard and so the impact of it the so that like people, I would have courageous souls share their their madlib statements in the chat in zoom rooms, and half of them wouldn't have a so that this regularly happens in these open calls these open webinars on it. And I think it's because we shy away from claiming impact. So the fourth blank in the sentence is this impact so that what is bigger, better, different improved, because of your best work because of your presence because of your care and attention. Whatever that is. So this is the second part of that foundational work, we have your values, and then we have your statement of purpose. And neither one of these have to be perfect. And neither one of these are etched in stone for all time. These are exercises for you to think about, okay, if I want to mindfully plan my career, what do I want more of what makes my heart sing, what creates a virtuous cycle of I enjoy the work, the work I do is good, I get really good feedback on the work, I get to do more of it. Right? So this is that opportunity. And for some people, when they get that metaphor, like river guide, garden or bridge, when people get that metaphor, it's like, Ah, okay, having that metaphor might just in and of itself, help me decide what I take on and what I don't, right if that extra project means I get to be less of a bridge builder, maybe I don't do that. And I do the other project that does, right. So again, this is this is all about creating alignment. So that is day one of the mindful action pyramid challenge. Again, the PDF is on my website at Jennifer askey.com and we just went through pretty much the first page gonna come back tomorrow for the next episode of the podcast that goes through the tippity top of the pyramid which is what it feels like to be successful. And at any point in this process, reach out and tell me what you're noticing what you love what you don't love what you're finding easy what you're finding difficult what you're learning about yourself, because I would love to hear it. Thank you so much and I'll be back in your ears soon.