How to Live According to Your Values, Not Fear | Ep. 356

If you want to live a life according to your values, not fear, you’re in the right place. I am going to give you a detailed look at how you can do this for yourself, but I will also show you how not to do this.

Lots of people are talking about this idea of living life according to their values, not fear. I want to really inspire you, highlight the way that you can do this, and also show you how it cannot be done so well. I’ll actually give you some personal experiences. Hopefully, my goal here is to inspire you to live a life where your values lead the way and fear no longer makes your decisions. Your fear is no longer in the driver’s seat; you are. If that’s good for you, let’s go. 

Hello, my name is Kimberley Quinlan. I’m a marriage and family therapist. I, myself, have struggled for many years with anxiety. In little ways, anxiety just took away the things I wanted, took me away from doing the things I wanted, showing up the way I wanted, and learning how to live a life according to my values, not fear, has literally changed my life. 

Now, my hope here is that I can explain this to you. There have been times where my clients have said, “I’m hearing about this idea of values, but it literally doesn’t make any sense to me. Like, how would I navigate that?” So my hope here is to make it nice and clear, give you some clarity and some directions so that you too can live your life according to your values and not fear. 

Now, the thing to remember here is that this idea of values has probably been spoken about in many different modalities, but the one that’s really popular right now that people are talking about is a type of therapy modality called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. What they do is they talk about values as this idea of principles that govern how you want to act. Again, it’s not being perfect. It’s principles that are going to guide you. 

Now, unlike just setting goals, values are never fully accomplished. They’re something that involves continuous behaviors. They’re small baby decisions and little pivots that you are going to make throughout your entire life, and they guide your choices and your decisions according to the person that you want to be, the kind of person you want to see yourself as, or that you identify with. 

Now, often when we’re talking about values, the biggest question I get asked is, “How do I determine these values?” Let’s just stop for a minute and just talk about how we’re going to apply this. 

As you probably already know, fear is a very, very good motivator, and it’s a driver of behaviors. Let’s say you’re just walking along or you’re at home enjoying your day, and then you have a thought or a feeling of danger, like what if something really bad happens? For you, it will be a specific thought or feeling, but for the sake of just making this really broad, basically, your brain has interpreted, “There might be something wrong. There could be danger. Bad things could happen. I feel uncertain about the future.” 

When that happens, our natural human instinct is to fight that fear, run away from that fear, freeze in that fear, or go into people-pleasing mode. We call it the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn response. This is a normal human reaction. We all do it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t mean that you’re wrong or bad. 

If there was actual danger, if there was somebody who was intruding on you or making you uncomfortable and that you were in danger, this 5Fs, the FFFFF approach, is a very appropriate response to being in danger. But when our brain tricks us or sets off the alarm, the danger alarm too fast or inappropriately, we often perceive there to be danger, and we go into a response where we respond to that fear as if it is a real danger, and before we know it, we’ve completely gone in the wrong direction from the way we wanted our day to be. 

Again, I might be dropping off my children at school, and I might have the thought, “What if something happens to them today?” I have to make a decision in that moment whether I’m going to respond to that fear, that thought, that feeling as if it’s fact, or if it is just a thought, a feeling, or an experience or sensation. 

The first step here is being able to stop and identify when fear is showing up and identify then, “How do I want to respond?” And that’s where your values come in. 

What I’m going to encourage you to do once you’ve finished listening to this is go onto Google or whatever search engine you use and Google ‘Values List PDF.’ There are hundreds of them, and they’re going to give you a list of all of the different values that you then may want to think about as things that can guide you in the direction that lines up with the way you want to show up in your life. 

Again, think of it like a crossroads. You’re going up to this crossroad; there’s a stop sign. The stop sign says, “There could be danger here.” You have to make a decision. Am I going to take a right or a left, which doesn’t matter, towards fear and trying to resolve that fear, or am I going to make a left where I act according to my values? On these lists that you’ve Googled, you will see an extensive list of ways in which you can respond right now.

Some examples of values would be patience, kindness, strength, integrity, and honesty. That’s just a few. Like I said, there’s hundreds of these. And then you can start to decide for yourself which value you want to lead with your step forward. What do they say? Put your best foot forward. That’s what we’re talking about here—the value that you pick is going to be the one that helps you in the long term, is the most skilled response, and is the one that lines up with who you want to be and how you want to be.

Again, think of it through the lens of the one-year-old or the three-month-old you. What would you want that person to do? And that’s how we can then start to choose values over fear. So, so important now. 

A lot of people get overwhelmed with the list. Let me help you get clear on how to determine the values that you’re going to choose.

Number one, pick values that have always led you in the right direction. Do a little inventory on when was the time that I really showed up for myself, or I showed up in a way I wanted to in an uncomfortable situation. What was one of the values that led me in the right direction? Often, with patients, I’ll ask them, “What was a time where you really had to muster through a really difficult time?” And they’ll think about, “Oh, there was this one time where there was this one sort of emergency, or I was running a marathon.” I’ll say, “Okay, great. You were able to achieve that. What were the values that got you through that uncomfortable time?” And there it falls very quickly without even looking at the list. It could be some values that matter to you or that have been effective for you. 

Another option is, pick values that give you a sense of purpose that helps you look in the long term, not just with short-term relief, but long-term accomplishment, long-term mastery, and long-term relief. In addition to that, pick a value that feels like it serves you in the ‘you-est you’ you can be. I know that’s a funny way. I say that with my patients all the time, like, “What’s the ‘you-est you’ that you can be? What value would lead you towards the ‘you-est you’ that you can be?” Because we’re all different and we all show up in different ways. We have different strengths and different challenges. So we want this to be very specific to you. 

But there is an important thing to remember here. There are no “right values.” You are going to look at this list. And as I did when I first started doing this work, I was like, “Oh my gosh, which ones should I pick?” Often, and this is one of the problems that I found, when I looked at them, I ended up with this long list of all the things I wanted to be. I was like, “Check, check. Yes, I want to be that. Yes, I want to be that. Yes, that’s a value of mine. Yes, that’s a value.” It was kind of like a want-to-be list. I had basically highlighted the majority of the values on the list. They were all important to me. 

But what we’re talking about here is, yes, they might be all important to you, but the goal is just pick two or three to start with. What we want to do here is pick two or three that will help you with this specific struggle or problem that you’re working through. If it’s fear and it’s anxiety, well, let’s work on that. But if you’re going through a medical condition, a family issue, a relationship issue, or an academic issue, you can then make a decision on, “What are the two or three values that will help me get through that particular problem?”

Another issue that often people ask me about is that theyre getting overwhelmed with this idea of “I want all these things in my life.” What we end up doing is using this idea of values as a way to fix their humanness, that these values work can become a breeding ground for perfectionism. This was the case for me. I was like, “Yes, a good person would check off that one,” and “I wish I was more generous. Yes, I’ll check that off.” It really just ended up making me feel guilty about who I was. I was really picking values based on what I thought a “good person” would pick. 

We want to move away from that because, yes, you’re going to look at this list of values as I did and be like, “I want to be all those things. I want to show up in those ways all the time, every day.” But the truth is, you’re a human being. You’re a messy human being, as am I, and we don’t want to overload ourselves with values and these ideas in a way that just is a way of being perfectionistic, hyper-responsible, and overly moral.

We want these values to guide us towards being the person we want to be, but we don’t want to pick them with this idea that we have to fix our humanness. We’re still going to be human. We’re still going to make mistakes. We’re still going to hurt people and say things that we wish we didn’t, and we can still go and repair that and show up as best as we can and be the best that we can. But please don’t use values as a way of raising the level so high and the expectation so high that you are destined to fail and destined to feel bad about yourself. We want to be as compassionate and realistic as we can as we do this valued work. 

The solution is to be gentle and kind as you peruse these values. Maybe you need to put your pen down and your highlighter down and just take a second to acknowledge that you might not be in a season where you can choose the “good Samaritan” values. You mightn’t be in a season where you can choose some of the values on the list.

I know when I was really sick from a chronic illness, and I looked at this values list, generosity was a big value that showed up where I was like highlighting, “Yes, I want to be more generous.” But I wasn’t in a season where I had the capacity to give back. I was in a season where I needed help from other people. And so I had to stop in that moment and look at the list and say, “Given the season I’m in, which of these values will help me recover?” I had to work through a little bit of self-judgment and a little disappointment and sadness that I wasn’t in a season where being generous was the priority, at the top of the list. 

You can still be a respectful, compassionate person while you work on whatever struggle you’re working on. Absolutely. It doesn’t mean we’re giving you permission to not be a good person. But we have to be able to prioritize and bring things up to the top, but without discounting or thinking black and white that because they’re not at the top, that makes us a bad person. Just because I couldn’t put generosity at the tippy top of my list and priorities for values didn’t make me a bad person. It just meant that because I was in this season, I had to reprioritize values to get me through this season so I could move on to being in the next season, which might have generosity at the top. 

Here is a pro tip with this, and I talked about this before. Find one area that you want to improve, and pick one to two values that might help you course-correct. Just do a small pivot. We don’t want to overcorrect. We want to do just a very slight course correction to start. 

Today, we’re talking about choosing values over fear. In this case, it might be a small value. Something that’s there for you that will help you face that fear. That being said, let me also say, if your fear is really loud and really aggressive and it’s hitting you from every angle, you might need to pick a value that’s actually very, very, very important to you, the most important to you, and have just that one thing.

Often, and here’s an example—but please, I don’t want you guys to feel you have to use this or feel like you’re a bad person if you don’t use this—a lot of my patients put family at the top of their values when they’re talking about managing their anxiety. If they have an anxiety disorder that’s taken so much from their life, they might say, “My kid is my highest value. And so when fear shows up, I’m going to imagine a picture of my kid, and I’m going to move towards that fear because that allows me to be with that kid,” or that partner or that parent. 

Other people might say, “My career matters to me so much that when fear shows up, because I want that career so much, I’m willing to be uncomfortable. I’m willing to ride some big, big waves of discomfort. I’m not going to choose fear anymore when I get to that crossroads; I’m going to choose that one really important fear.” Underneath, there might be a smaller one like compassion, hopefully. But again, you get to choose. You get to choose what’s right for you. This is your journey. Please do not let anybody tell you what your values should and should not be. 

Now, one of the reasons that I was so committed to doing this episode today was that I recently have come upon a realization about values that I didn’t know were there, which is that sometimes your values can compete.

Now, I talk to my patients about this all the time. That wasn’t the part that shocked me. Let’s talk about what that might look like. Often, people get confused. “Well, if I have these values, what if they compete with each other?” Let me give you a personal example. 

For me personally—but please don’t use this as your values unless they line up with your values—I highly value, number one, work ethic and discipline. It is a huge part of how I was raised. I love the fact that I have a very strong work ethic, and I’m very, very disciplined. It is something I hold as a very high priority, has gotten me through some very difficult times, and has allowed me to have the life that I am trying to create.

My second value is compassion, and I’m still working on that. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect at it, but it’s still a high value. The third is family—my family. My husband and my children are probably the most important things to me above all. The fourth is my mental health.

Now they’re in order, but depending on the day, they will switch, as I’ve talked to you about before. But then patients will often ask me if I share that: “But that doesn’t make sense. If work ethic is a value, but family is a value, how do I make both of those happen? Does that mean I have to choose to be a stay-at-home mom and be with my family? But if I go to work, obviously, I’m not valuing my family. They’re competing with each other.” Some people will say, “I really value rest, but I really value exercise or being strong. How do I make room for both of those? They’re competing.” 

The thing to remember here with values is, it’s not always, as I said, in the same order. Throughout our day, because we have to be flexible, we can make room for multiple values at a time, and we can find balance within these values. I can show up to work or right here today and give everything I have, and then still show up for my kids later on. It doesn’t mean I have to give my whole attention to that one value all day, every day, consistently at a hundred percent. Because I value compassion, some days that will mean I take a break, or I value mental health means I don’t have a strong work ethic or be with my kids. I take a drive, I go to the beach, or I take a walk and have some time to myself. 

It’s important to recognize that while it might feel like these values are competing, it’s not. It’s about us finding a balance of using them to guide us, but not, again, making them perfect. 

Any time, when we’re using these values, when we’re going overboard with them, we want to catch our rigidity in making them the only thing that we do, the only way we think, and the only way we act. We want this to be a flexible, moving target. As we said, values are never finished. They’re never completed. They’re something that we are constantly checking in with ourselves. What do I need? The most beautiful, compassionate question—what do I need? And using values to guide us, not fear—values. Allowing those values to decide what’s important to us, decide how we want to show up, and decide what the future me would want me to do. 

Now, this is where I have gotten stuck, and here is where I’ve found a– how would I say it? A problem. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just me. But I want to bring it up in case this is true for you too.

Now, I’ve already shared with you my core values. There’s work ethic and discipline, compassion, my family, and my mental health. These are all incredibly important to me, depending on the season, the day, the hour, and the minute. But I realized recently that work ethic, while it’s one of my biggest values, is actually partially fueled by fear. I’m holding it as a value, but it’s actually a partial fear response. Let me explain. 

Often, and this is something I want you to look out for, fear will dress up as values and pretend to be values when really it’s just fear. Think of it as a Halloween costume. Fear is like, “Oh, I know how to trump this system. I’m going to dress up as a value and show up in Kimberley’s life (or in your life), and I’m going to pretend I’m a value, but I’m actually really fear. I hope she doesn’t catch that I’m actually in a costume and I’m actually really fear. And so I’m going to see if this works.”

I do genuinely value work ethic and discipline. Like I said to you before, it has really given me so many beautiful things in my life and has allowed me to show up and serve you guys, and it’s been wonderful. But when I was with a client, we were talking about this exact problem, and I asked them a question, which was, if that value—when we’re talking about values—if that showed up, what would the non-anxious, trusting version of you do in this moment? And they realized that it was not the values they’d been working on. And then I thought, “Oh my goodness. I’m going to actually check in with myself on this, because if I asked myself, what would the non-anxious, trusting version of myself do in this moment, a lot of the time it wouldn’t be work ethic and discipline.” I realized that a small part of my work ethic and discipline is coming from a place of fear that if I don’t stay disciplined, that if I don’t hold my work ethic, everything will fall apart and bad things will happen. 

This stopped me in my tracks because—again, I want to reinforce this—my values were being tricked by fear. Fear was actually leading a part of that important value, or maybe I could say it was coming in and taking advantage of that value, and it might do that for you as well. 

And so what I want you to think about when you’re looking at values—and again, please don’t put pressure on yourself that you have to get this perfect. It’s a work in progress. I’ve been doing this work for a decade, and only now I’m realizing this—is slow down and just check in on “What would the non-anxious, trusting version of myself do in this moment?” I think that is where we can actually really get to the crux of “What are your values?”

Again, they will be ever-changing. Again, we will be forgiving and kind to the fact that we’re still messy human beings. We don’t have to get it perfect. But it did open me up to realizing a value that I didn’t know was so important to me. 

When I asked myself this question, I actually realized that the answer is playfulness and stillness—these two values that I’ve never really relied on. As I look back at my PDF of values, I’ve never highlighted them. When I asked myself this question of what would the trusting version and the non-anxious part of me do, playfulness and stillness was the value that rose up to the surface. It was a beautiful moment. I actually cried.

Now, from that, and I’m actually going to tell you a little bit of my news, I thought to myself, how could I implement playfulness and stillness into my life where I still value work ethic, compassion, family, and mental health? Into my mind came the image of a Volkswagen bus. Do you remember the old hippie buses? We call them Kombis in Australia. That was what showed up for me. Like, if I could show up in my business from a place of playfulness and stillness, I wouldn’t be working from this office. I would be working from a 45-year-old Volkswagen bus. And so I did. I did exactly that. I went and bought a Volkswagen van. It’s a 1985 Volkswagen Westfalia. I love, love vintage cars. I am actually a car person. I don’t know if you know that about me, but I love vintage cars, and I never allowed myself to really think about doing this. I’ve loved them forever. I’ve looked at them forever. I’ve wanted one forever, but I’ve always thought, “That’s not high on my priority list right now.” Until I realized that if I’m going to move towards trusting myself and honoring this bigger piece of me, playfulness and stillness have to come up on that list as well.

So if you live in Los Angeles and you see a gold Volkswagen Westfalia—it has, like I said, 195,000 miles on it—if you see one of those driving around Los Angeles and you see me, please beep your horn. That will be me driving around and parking my van at a beautiful place and working from there from now on, and that is my hope. That is my hope for myself, and I hope that you can use values to discover who you are so that you can be the ‘you-est you’ you can be.

I love the idea of implementing values into recovery. That is why I think act is so important as a complementary treatment to anxiety. I think that with some care, compassion, and some thoughtfulness, you too can identify the values that are important to you and learn to live and act from those values, not fear.

I hope that has been helpful for you today. I have had so much fun chatting with you about values. I am sending you so much love. Do not forget, it is a beautiful day to do hard things. I will see you next week. Have a wonderful day.