How to get into the Pilates boss mindset live by your values

11 Oct How to get into the Pilates boss mindset live by your values

Melanie and Sally are hard working women with day jobs but both have a dream of becoming full-time professional Pilates instructors.  As they begin to explore their creative paths, they face the same issues: wondering if their silly ideas will ever come to fruition, they both have extremely financially rewarding careers and they are both unsure of whether their hard work to become a Pilates instructor will ever pay them enough to help them build the life of their dreams.

Whilst Melanie confronts and navigates through her insecurities, she invests heavily in time and effort to upskill and be the best Pilates instructor she could ever be, becoming an expert in her field. She connects with mentors and a community to enable her to practice and learn more about herself and about her new career. Because of the support she gets, not only does she land herself an amazing job with an established Pilates studio but she develops further confidence to venture out and open up her own business and be her own boss, reaping all the rewards of being a wellness entrepreneur.

Sally however, lets her questions and insecurities get in the way of her even beginning her journey to become an instructor. She chooses safety over possibility, security over taking a leap to the unknown and remains in her unfulfilled job until she retires. Whilst she stays committed to her job, she never fulfils her dream and commits to herself and her own values.

Your dream is your calling!

Which outcome do you choose to live with for the rest of your life?

If you don’t believe in yourself, your decisions and your dreams, you’re never going to face your fears and unleash the power of a new, more evolved, unstoppable and unsurpassable you! The most crucial factor of getting over yourself here is to ………. UNDERSTAND YOUR VALUES!

What do you value?

The core of the wellness entrepreneur mindset is your values and your intentions. Your values are the guiding principles that direct you through life, helping you prioritise what is important to you and stay true to who you are.  Your intentions are the purpose that give you your actions, helping you infuse every move you make with meaning. When your values and intentions are aligned, your work and life will feel efficient, effective and meaningful. Sounds pretty nice, right? Let’s dig in!

Values are the guiding principles that direct you through life

They are the personal truths and principles you hold most near and dear – they’re the things you’re willing to go to battle for! They are the “why” behind the decisions you make and the actions you take. For example, if you value security, you might want to have a route mapped out and an itinerary in place before setting out on a trip. Translate that to financial security and you would want to have a confirmed and credible forecast of what your next year or two are going to look like financially (a business plan), where you need to be in order to earn your income (working in a Pilates studio), how you are going to get there (working x amount of hours a week) and what it would look like when you reach your final destination (when you achieve your ultimate goal, which might be owning your own Pilates business).

When you are unclear of what matter the most to you, you might find yourself feeling apologetic, scattered and vulnerable to other people defining who you are and what you like or don’t like.

Find your own values

1. Find a quiet space, clear your head with some deep breathing, and connect your mind and body.  Most important: do not rush the process. Start by making a scared time and space to do the exercise – say, sixty to ninety minutes.
2. Take a short break to connect with your breath again. Close your eyes and think about a time in your life when you felt fantastic, in the flow, and like everything was right in the world. Feel all the sensations and breathe those sensations into every cell of your body. Then open your eyes and go back through the circled list with that vision  in mind. Which of those values were prominent in that scenario? Place a start next to those.
3. From the starred list, grab a highlighter and see if there are any values that are similar in scope and try to pari them off. Perhaps you have truth and honesty on the list… what do those words mean ot you personally? How does the dictionary define them> can you think of situations in which truth or honesty have played a role? Put them against each other and see what resonates most deeply with you.
4. Keep whittling down your list until you get to your five to ten values. I ended up sorting my list into five “hard” values and a few supportive “soft” values. For example, self-care is a hard value and supporting that are balance and health, because if I’m looking after myself by doing regular exercise, meditation and eating well, then I feel balanced and healthy, and if I miss out on my self-care, well, consider yourself warned. I learnt this the hard way after suffering from burnout 3 times over!
5. A final filter, I would like to throw in on this is ask yourself the question “If money wasn’t an issue, would these values still matter?” Or maybe you could ask yourself “Would I put up a fight or go to war to defend this value?”
6. Shelf it and walk away from it but keep those values in mind as you move through your week. See if they show up in your daily interactions and check them again at the end of the week to see if they still resonate with you. Once you feel you have solidified your list of values, write them down on your phone, on a post-it note (and stick them to your bedroom mirror like I do!) or somewhere else you will see them. Always remember you can tweak them whenever you need to!

Here’s my list of values to set you off in your self-discovery journey. Narrow it down to the most important 5 – 10 and you can classify them as “hard” and “soft” values like I suggested above: