Hi ,
This week’s Better Leadership Blueprint was inspired by the younger version of me, who thought my brother was judging me negatively… but he wasn’t. We just valued very different things.
Read time: 2 minutes
How do values differences show up in the real world?
People talk about ‘values’ a lot, but for a long time, it didn’t really mean much to me.
Until I had this very painful real-world experience of how values conflicts can create ACTUAL conflict if you let it.
When I was in my ‘20’s, I was what some might consider to be a foot-loose and fancy-free kinda gal… I:
Lived in Prague for a year
Drove an adventure travel bus all over the US and Mexico
Spent a lot of time in the Bay Area in ridiculous costumes, hanging out with very unique people
Meanwhile, my brother, who’s a year and a half younger than me, was:
In the army in Kuwait and Iraq
Married at 22
A police officer
I liked to joke about our family being 50% hippie and 50% cop, which is still true today. Sooooo… we had very different lives and existences.
And I felt self-conscious about it. I felt like he thought I was a flaky ne’er-do-well. (And who knows, maybe he did, but that’s not what matters here…)
We would argue about things (I mean, I have to admit that it doesn’t help that both of us love to argue), trying to convince the other person that we were right… get annoyed with each other, and basically damage our relationship in a pretty pointless way.