Why Do We Make the Choices We Make? | UNCOVER | Seven Steps Back to You (Part 2)

Last week you left us with a question. What makes you dance? Why did you want us to contemplate that question?

Because it is deeper than that. It's not really about dancing, it's about asking yourself what matters most to you, what gives you joy, what gives you energy. I talked about last week about making that choice about recruitment, and then how that then evolved to dancing with my children or my girls in the kitchen, and really what that was about was my values.

So, if that one question helped you uncover your values, share with us more about values.

Well, values are like our inner compass. Our values can come from many places. They can come from our family, our upbringing, they can come from our belief system, they can be nature versus nurture. But the thing about values, when they're out of alignment, something feels off, and that could be in a relationship, it can be in a workplace with friendships, something just doesn't feel right, but when values are in alignment, then we feel we feel that energy, and we feel like we're in flow.

So, why don't we always make choices that are aligned with our values? May I read something from the introduction of your book, your current position in life results from the millions of choices you have made over a lifetime. This book helps you uncover the reasons behind your choices and discover why you are where you are right now.

The uncover step is all about getting curious about our choices, and like you said, we don't always make choices that align with our values, because our choices are influenced by other factors, like our belief system, like the beliefs of others, or our life experience, or the way we were raised.

So, you mentioned your book, and seven steps are the source of why we're even here.

Can I share a story with you from my childhood,

Please?

And I call it the sandwich story, and, and when I was writing my book, this story just came to me, and it was.. if looking back, I wouldn't have thought that it was as significant as it is, so I'll just sort of give you a picture. It was lunchtime, I was probably about 13 or 14, and I was with my dad and my brother, one of my brothers, and my dad said, "Abe, make us a sandwich, and I said, "Make your own sandwich. I thought, here are these two able-bodied men, they could clearly make their own sandwich, and right away my dad said to me, "Your mother would never say that. And so, at that point, and again, that stays with me. My dad was taking his belief of what he believed a woman should be and trying to get me to fit those parameters by saying, oh, your mother wouldn't say that, and so only upon review

Would you say your dad's a little old-fashioned, or was a little old-fashioned.

The thing is, it's not about my dad. I don't mean to blame my dad, or it was not about my dad, it was about me not being seen, and how that impacted, and that situation, as small as it was. It's only upon reflection and self understanding have I come to realize how much that little incident has impacted my choices going forward. So now going back with curiosity, not blame, I'm able to discover and be more intentional with the choices that I make now, because that belief system that my dad had for me doesn't serve me now, didn't serve me then, but I didn't know it then.

So we've been together for 20 years, and I can share that that growing up experience and the interaction with your dad has had significant impact on who you are, to the point that conversations would be quite emotional as to where you are today and where you wanted to be growing up, but you were just held back by kind of some of the other thoughts and ideas that your dad had for you, again, no blame, but that's that was your dad.

Well, that yeah, so we are all medley of all the things that we've experienced in our life, and without that sort of awareness and rediscovering where they've come from and how they're impacting our choices, because behind every choice there is something. There is some reason behind every choice that we make. All those millions of choices that I talked about in the first two lines of my book, that's what Uncover is all about, helping you to uncover. Over, why we make the choices that we make in our lives. So, I am going to give you a question. I want you to think about what is the choice that you have made in your life, and what was the reason behind you making that choice. So, that's uncover. That's where we begin next week. We're going to talk about notice and the patterns that develop as a result of the choices that we've made. Until then, we'll see you next time. Looking forward to next week.