How to Align Your Values with Your Life: Lessons from My Personal Journey

I have been grappling with this concept of self esteem and its relationship with our daily habits. How becoming a version of yourself that you really like is a series of making choices that you find admirable.

So now, if you don’t like who you are, you probably don’t like the choices you make much either. So what is self esteem, and what are some of the differences between the ones that have it and the ones that don’t?

There are two pop-culture references that stick out in my mind as I pose this question. One is from the actress, Zoe Saldana, who states:

“I know who I am. I love who I am. I like what I do. And I like how I do it. And I like my mistakes and I like the way I learn and I like the pace with which I learn my mistakes. I don’t want to be anybody else but me. And by knowing this I want to continue figuring out who the f*** I am.”

This to me presents the kind of self esteem and a level of self love that I hope I am on my way to achieving. Before we reach this pinnacle, I think we must start with curiosity. So many of us, both women and men, largely spend the early portion of our lives living for other people, typically without realizing it is happening. It is “normal” and doing thing you like, that are entirely for you, is labeled as “selfish. We think it is normal to ease the woes of those around us rather than choose what feels right for ourselves, because that is what we have been taught and what has been normalized.

To begin the next phase of our life, the one that is uniquely authentic to us, the one that embodies who we really are, we must be curious. It can be an incredibly confusing time as we un-mesh what is ours and what is others. For some of us, this may be the first time in our lives that we have ever even thought to ask ourselves what we like, what we want, or if we are even allowed to want it.

This tends to happen somewhere before or around the age of thirty if we are really listening (our Saturn Return), or more often, later in life presented as a “mid life crisis” if we are not.

This seemingly out of nowhere experience has been asking, no begging, for our attention for a long time. It first tried to ask us nicely, and because we did not listen, it instead must throw a tantrum in order to get our attention. It echoes that we have grown sick and tired of the life we have chosen, and more importantly, the person we have become. This makes things even more confusing, because we realize that we CHOSE this life, and we have been an active participant in each moment of it. In Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert perfectly portrays this gnawing feeling:

We'd only just bought this house a year ago. Hadn't I wanted this nice house? Hadn't I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? Wasn't I proud of all we'd accumulated—the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life—so why did I feel like none of it resembled me?

If you haven’t guessed yet, I am currently in this wildly confusing stage of life, and I am trying to listen to the whispers so that they don’t become screams. I am looking forward to becoming a person who can honestly and confidently answer the question “So tell me about yourself?” without turning into a brick wall.

Through my journey thus far, I have learned this:

I like being a gym person in the morning, And a grocery store person at night I like waking up before the sun, even though I don’t have to I like to use my reusable bags and buy my organic produce, to make delicious concoctions for the people I love. I love to keep us healthy, and tell you to take this, and try that, when you are not. I like to make my lattes at home, and think about how much plastic I’m saving in the world.

I love photography, and writing, and helping others make sense of life. I love to learn and I deeply value freedom.

I am currently at a place in life where my actions are not aligned with my true values, and I am making an active effort to change that.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, here are a few actionable steps you can take into the next chapter of your journey (which can start at literally any moment by the way):

Beginner Level: Get curious. Listen. Listen to yourself more than you listen to the outside world. There is a little voice inside that is trying to guide you, but you’ve probably had it silenced or silenced it yourself in an effort to do what’s best for others, what’s expected, or whatever your idea of “normal” is. Do this in silence, don’t ask for anyone’s opinion. Think of these little curiosities like breadcrumbs, you never know where they will lead you.

Intermediate Level: Get honest. If you know you are living a life that is misaligned, get honest on where that misalignment lies. What pieces no longer fit? What decisions that a previous “you” made, are you tired of living with? You are allowed to change your mind. Realize the thing you have been trying not to realize and sit with it. Make a list of things that feel bad in your life.

Advanced Level: Take action. Take tiny action, take massive action, any action that is honest and a representation of the direction you are heading will do. Sometimes this involve a series of shedding. Sometimes our clothes won’t fit us anymore and it’s not just because we are a different size.

I look forward to becoming a fully embodied person, side-by-side with you.

Aleca