Deconstruction & Core Values: Your Blueprint for Authentic Growth

As the year winds down, it's natural to reflect on where we've been and where we're headed. In this episode, we're diving into a powerful and often misunderstood concept: Deconstruction—not just as a personal growth tool but as a vital process for uncovering and honoring your Core Values.

If you've ever felt stuck, unsure where to start, or hesitant to face the hard work of self-discovery, you're not alone. I'll unpack common fears and misconceptions about deconstruction, show how it's intertwined with identifying your Core Values, and explain why it's essential for authentic leadership and personal growth.

You'll learn:

 ▶️ How deconstruction reveals the motivations behind your actions and beliefs.
 ▶️ Why your Core Values are key to building confidence, clarity, and resilience.
 ▶️ Practical insights into disentangling assumptions, beliefs, and conditioning to embrace your authentic self.

Plus, hear about ongoing opportunities like Live2Lead on LeaderPass—a must for anyone looking to elevate their leadership and growth journey—and an exclusive chance to join my Core Values Coaching Beta Program with special year-end pricing.

The world needs leaders who are curious, welcoming, and wise. That includes YOU. Let’s uncover what makes you uniquely equipped to lead with purpose and integrity.

It’s time to Stand Tall & Own It—embrace the work that makes 2025 your most impactful year yet!

Mentioned in this Episode:
Live2Lead LeaderPass
Core Values Coaching Beta
Demystifying Deconstruction, The Hidden Gem of Personal Growth
Need a Set of Life Principles? Discover the Power of Intentional Optimism
Core Values Exercise
What Is Intentional Optimism?

Check us out on YouTube: https://youtu.be/a46yErlm7c0

For a deeper discussion, DM me @theintentionaloptimist (IG or LI) or email me at andrea@theintentionaloptimist.com.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to Stand Tall and Own It, a podcast for high-performing female leaders who are ready to make an impact by discovering the safety that comes from understanding their own values and exercising their own authority. I'm your host, Andrea Johnson, and I'm here to tell you it is time to just truly be you, my strong friend. It's time to stand tall and own it. Hey there, welcome back to another episode of Stand Tall and Own It. I am your host, Andrea Johnson, the intentional optimist. And if there's anything I know about the end of the year, it's that I'm not the only one who gets reflective. And I look back and I see what I did and what I didn't do. And if I'm honest, I also get anxious and hopeful about looking forward. Now, before we jump into what I want to talk about today, I want to quickly remind you that we are still in the Live to Lead season. And you can still get access to this amazing content through an on-demand virtual ticket called LeaderPass. With LeaderPass, you get five days of virtual on-demand access to Live to Lead 2024, featuring all eight of the speakers like John Maxwell, Shantae Lowe, John Gordon, Michael Jr., Valerie Burton, Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Robinson, Brandon Johnson, Brandon Dawson, all eight in total, and nine more past speakers like Marcus Buckingham, Ryan Leake, Ed Milette, and Jamie Kern Lima. What's cool is that LeaderPass is ready for you right now. If you need to give yourself a Christmas or Hanukkah gift, I've included the link in the show notes so that if you're ready to be inspired and elevate your own personal growth and leadership, it's right there, ready for you. It's on demand. At just $79, this is an amazing value. Now, if you're a business owner or you think this is something that your organization would be interested in, we should talk about a corporate license. If you have 75 or more in your organization, we can brand it for you specifically and you can make it available to your entire team. Or if your team isn't 75 and you've got people that you consider to be VIP clients or customers, you could actually create your own portal, a place for all of them to take notes on the speakers, and even have an extended watch window. What I mean by that is the original individual one is only available to you for it's like a five-day window for you to watch everything, whereas with the corporate license, we can make that longer than five days, 10, 20, however it works for you. But for your information, all live to lead and leader pass opportunities are only good through February 28th, 2025. Now, a new Live to Lead will come out in October of 2025. But who wants to wait all the way to October? You've got all this amazing content available to you through the end of February. So reach out or click the link below and let's talk about Live to Lead. This is a way to kind of give you the boost that you need heading into 2025 with some leader, some amazing inspirational leadership speakers. Okay, now let's talk. Welcome to December, y'all. I can't believe it's the end of the year already. People are putting up all their decorations, we're doing our own, but and it just feels a little bit surreal that we're already here. But there is a topic that I want to talk about today that has repeatedly come up in interview after interview, coaching, conversations that I'm having and networking events. And I even addressed this earlier in the year, back in February of 24, in an episode entitled Demystifying Deconstruction: The Hidden Gem of Personal Growth. Now, if you go listen to that, the link is in the show notes here. If you go listen, you'll hear my earliest public conversations around this topic of deconstruction and what a difference the process made in my own personal growth. Hidden gem indeed. And I was terrified to talk about it because for me it started in the faith space. However, today, I'd love to take it to a deeper level. It's not just a hidden gem, it is essential, and it is inextricably intertwined with uncovering and honoring your core values. I know that sounds big, like a really tall order, but bear with me. I want to tell you why, and I want to set the stage a little bit here. I do my work. I'm here, I'm on this podcast, and I do all of my coaching and all of my speaking and my workshops because I truly believe that the world needs more curious, welcoming, and wise leaders. Leaders who understand their core values, who recognize their strengths, and live by a clear set of life principles. For me, those life principles are intentional optimism. And I did an episode on life principles, and I'll link that one in the show notes as well. And it's a good explanation of what intentional optimism is. But the work that I do and the conversations that I have around and about that work all have the goal of promoting those six tenets: optimistic, present, energetic, courageous, wise, and intentional. So if you're not familiar with them, you can go listen to that episode, or there's a link in the show notes for a brief, downloadable explanation, one page of the six tenets of intentional optimism. But here's the thing: that definition, the people that I do this work for, the pe the world, um, the world needs more curious, welcoming, and wise leaders, that's you. I believe the world needs more you. It describes who you are and why you're here. It describes why you're listening. Now, there are, and for any number of reasons, there are uh you may or may not be a client of mine. And there are some very common, I'm gonna call them excuses that I hear from potential clients, like people who come up to me after a workshop or a speaking engagement, or meet me at a networking event and say they love my podcast, but they never actually take any action on anything, or they may email me back and forth, or they may actually have a consultation call but never actually pull the trigger. And sometimes these excuses, these things are stated and sometimes they're not, but I'd like to share them with you because I want to know where you are. I want to know if any of these kind of come to the forefront for you. The first is, Andrea, I don't even know where to start. It just all seems so overwhelming. I get it. I got you. Just like a couple of episodes ago, Angela Foster said, if you stand in your closet and it looks like you got a closet full of clothes and you don't know what to wear, it's overwhelming, right? I got you. I can help you break it down. I can help you figure it out. Another one I hear is I'm afraid to do this work because of what I might find out about myself. There are no core there are no bad core values, my friend. There are none. This never really shows up in that blatant of a way. Nobody says, I'm afraid I'm gonna find out something I don't like about myself. Nobody really says that. They usually say snarky things like, what if narcissism turns out to be my core value? Well, there just are no bad core values. There may be ways in which your core values are dishonored and you act out in according to that dishonoring, or it may be a way that you have built up protection around your core value and therefore you act out in ways that are not helpful to others, but there are no bad core values. Last week I spoke with money coach Hannah Baer, and one of the things that she shared after doing the core value exercise several times over different areas of her life was that when you know what your core values are, you can lean into them and it makes everything easier. According to her, it makes it all flow really nicely. Another excuse I hear is I'm afraid to do the work because I'm afraid others will see me and be intimidated. Yep, they will. That's just the nature of human beings. There are people who are not willing to put in the work, and when they see you doing it, it is intimidating. If you want to grow and if you want to be a leader, you just have to own it. You just have to stand tall and say, I'm willing for other people to be intimidated. That will inform the way you act and live out your life principles, and um, it will inform how you treat them and give them grace, but you just have to own it. Another afraid is I'm afraid to do the work because it's hard. Yes, it is hard. It is also good. And you are also not alone. I thought when I was doing this work early on that I was alone, but I found out that I wasn't. I found out that people in my circles, people that God put in my life, people that I happen to cross paths with professionally, we're all doing the work. Anybody that's growing is doing some of this work. So you're not alone. For for starters, you have me. I'm here. But you're also not alone in your own circle. There are people that are doing the work with you. And it's hard, but the only way to to grow is to go through some of that hard stuff. And the older you get, I'm just gonna say this, the harder it will get. It's like unlearning a habit. The older you get, the harder it is to unlearn it. And one of the last excuse I'll share with you is, Andrea, I already know my core values. I don't need to do this work. No. That's all I have to say to that. No. 99% of my clients think they already know what their core values are. 100% of them are wrong. They might know one core value, but even if they know one or two of their core values, they're non-negotiables, very few people are honoring them. You might I'm I find a unicorn every once in a while who really knows them. I mean, if you've already done the work, if you've already done the core values work, then that doesn't apply. People who've never done it, right? But here's the thing: all of these excuses and scare quotes are self-protection every single time. Self-protection is real. It's big and it's a thing, it's natural and it's normal, but it doesn't work. When we are in self-protection mode, we are closed in. We are, I say, turtled in, we are inside our shell when we are protecting the vital parts. The thing is, though, the vital parts are what everybody else needs. So when we open up our arms wide, it does make us vulnerable, but it also means that number one, we see ourselves for who we are, others see us for who we are, and self-protection just it just weighs you down. It doesn't actually work, and it doesn't really protect you anymore. I'm gonna get to that in a second, talking about what all those self-protection layers do to your core values. My friend, there is no personal growth without some kind of deconstruction. None. It just isn't. You're deconstructing something if you're growing. And you need to understand that. It's not a big boogeyman that's out there that's like scary and hard to do and it's gonna like cause you to lose family and friends. It's just the work that we do, right? But the best personal growth comes when you allow the deconstruction process to walk hand in hand, if you will, kind of like yin and yang, with uncovering your core values in order to fuel, feel, and support the entire process. Now, if you go back and listen to that earlier episode, The Hidden Gem of Personal Growth, I will walk you through all the basics, the alternative names, the definitions, and everything. So I'm not going to do that here today. So if you really want all that before I walk through the the rest of this particular episode, pause and go back and find it or click the link in the show notes. If not, go back after this and kind of see what I said then. And you'll get to hear how I speak differently now than I did. So I speak differently now in December than I did in February. Because I've grown. I've done the hard work. I've deconstructed even more. And every time you deconstruct something, you find something else to deconstruct. It's like as soon as you do it in one area of your life, you find it in another. So let's talk really quick about why deconstruction is inextricably intertwined with uncovering and honoring your core values. I have five ways in which they are intertwined, the ways that we cannot pull them apart, okay? The first one is they are different sides to the same coin. All right, different sides of the same coin. With your core values, in order to see what your core values are, you must be willing to dig below the surface, not just your actions or your behaviors, the things that you value or your beliefs. You are looking for your motivations and your non-negotiables. To look underneath all those layers that you've been piling up in order to protect you from all the ways that your core values might get dishonored is dishonoring of your core values in the process. Right? That's what I was alluding to with self-protection. When you pile things on top to protect, then your core values never get to come out. Your true, um the true motivations that you have, you won't have they will be unavailable to you and unavailable to other people. So you've got to be able to look at your core values, but you also, on the other side of that coin, need to be able to do can deconstruction. Deconstructing is the process of shedding all those layers, of pulling back each and every assumption, belief, or conditioning to reveal what's behind it. My son is going to turn 16 next week, and he's in his second algebra class, and he is also a 16-year-old moody teenager, right? So I he came up with an answer to something yesterday, and I said, All right, I want to be able to respect who you are and what you've decided, but I need to understand why you made that decision. And he said, I just decided. And I said, All right, in math, in algebra, the teacher makes you show your work. You don't just get to say the answer is five. You have to show why or how you got the steps that you went through to show why five plus three plus eight minus the square root of 42 is five. Please, math people don't check that. I'm just making stuff up as I go. But deconstructing gives you the ability to see the work that you did and figure or not, figure out whether or not you want to keep it. Okay. It's the other side of that coin. So the more you honor your core values, the more confidence you have to deconstruct your assumptions, beliefs, and conditioning, your ABCs. The more you deconstruct your ABCs, and if you're not watching this on video, I'm doing this back and forth with my hands, the more you deconstruct your ABCs, the more your core values will shine through and the easier they will be to honor. Okay? So they are different sides to the same coin. They also, number two, they both show you what is important and what is not. With your core values, when you know them, you know what's important to you. It's very clear. These, when you really do the work and you get down into it, these are your non-negotiables and you get to choose to honor them. When you have your top three to five, every other thing or core thing that might be a core value it falls lower on the list, and you can see that they're not imperative. Many times when we get upset about something that turns out to be number 10 on our core values list, we realize that it's actually the dishonoring of something at the top of the list, but that's the thing that's triggering it, right? So it will help you discover that maybe something you thought was a core value really isn't. Maybe it's a belief. Maybe it's the opposite of that. There's that's a way to start looking at when we start working with core values. If people have a hard time starting, I say, well, what made you angry in the last week or two or every single week for the last six weeks? And then we start looking at the opposite of what those things are. With deconstruction, it's like cleaning out your closet. Remember with Angela Foster, she said, when you stand there in your closet and it's full of clothes, but you think you have nothing to wear, not only is it overwhelming, but you've got to find a way to start. So you have to pull out one piece at a time and ask yourself questions like, well, does it fit? If it doesn't, it goes in that pile. If it does, then I have more questions for it. Does it bring me joy? Does it make me happy? Is it appropriate? Meaning, have I changed work environments and I no longer need this business suit? Or have I changed work environments and yoga pants are no longer appropriate for the office? Or is it in style, right? Is it something from 15 years ago? I mean, if it's 30 years ago, it's probably back in style. But if it's from 15 years ago, not so much. So you need to make sure that, you know, they fall into that style category. But the other thing is, is it truly mine? Is it my style, right? It might be I notoriously did this with my mother. I, in an effort to fit in and in an effort to be accepted as a good daughter, I kind of accepted what my mom said was what I was appropriate for me to wear. And she bought me nice clothes. And living in Korea, we had access to beautiful things made there that were a lot more expensive here. Like I had Evan Picone and designer taste on a Kmart budget, you know. But anyway, um, what happened one day was it was in my early 20s, and I was living at home at the time, it was after college, and I went through my closet and I pulled everything out that it was not me, and I hauled them all into her room and I dumped them on the bed, and I said, These are yours. And she said, I don't understand. I said, Well, you've been trying to make me an a minimi for you, and I am not. This is my style, and I'm not doing that. She was so offended, and I don't blame her. It was the probably a really immature and ungracious way to do that, but I recognized that the style was truly not mine. It was truly the style of a 45 or 50-year-old woman, not the style of an early 20s, right? But the process of going through your assumptions, beliefs, and conditioning, just like the process of going through your clothes, it helps you see what's important to keep and what isn't. When your ABC is no longer fit, like I don't need to know everything about my son and um and determine every single step that he takes. I put him on the bus now, I don't drive him to school. It's like I've outgrown some of those young kid mom things, right? They just don't fit anymore. Or they're not bringing me joy, right? A belief that I'm not worthy or um or that I don't fit in or that I need to perform in a certain way. It doesn't bring me joy. It doesn't make me happy. Or maybe there's a belief that causes me harm or causes someone else harm. Like I might discover, oh my goodness, I have a racist belief. I didn't realize I even had it there. I had no idea that was hanging in my closet. Or it fit in with that color scheme. Oh, how did that happen? Right? Then I get to see what's important and keep it, and I get to let go of the things that are not, right? So the both, they both show you what's important and what isn't. Number three, they both help you disentangle perception from reality. With core values, um, I've learned that many times the perceived hurts that we have are just a dishonoring of a core value. For instance, I for a while, for a period of time, was in a group of ladies, and um, but I wasn't always included in the activities that they did. For instance, um, they would just go do things, they would not invite me, and then they would talk about it in front of me. And it was very hurtful. I chose to be hurt about that stuff. And my husband, in his wisdom, said, Andrea, would you have said yes? Or would you have made an excuse not to participate? Well, yeah, I because that doesn't sound like things that you would want to do. And I'm like, well, I know, but I wanted to be included. But what I had to see was that the reality of them knowing me and that I wouldn't be interested in those things was the reality. But I was perceiving it as a slight. I was perceiving it as something that that was hurtful to me. Now, did they do it in the best way possible, in the most kind, gracious way?

unknown 20:14

No.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

But I didn't respond the most kind, gracious way either. And in the work that I have done here, I am learning that it is actually rare that somebody else is trying to dishonor a core value. It's usually self-imposed stuff. Almost every client has that light bulb moment where they say, Oh, I am the biggest perpetrator here. Yes, I am. That's the way it works. Are there mean people? Are there people who try to punch your buttons all the time, like a 16-year-old boy in my house? Yes. But that doesn't mean that they're purposefully trying to dishonor your core values. So it helps you understand, when you know what your core values are, it helps you see what your perceptions of things are and what reality is. Now, deconstruction, on the other hand, when we deconstruct our ABCs, our assumptions, beliefs, and conditioning, we are usually looking at perceptions that the ABCs are perceptions developed over time through our experiences and our thought processes. So when you go to, quote, clean out your closet, you might find a belief that no longer works for you. And with deconstruction, you get to see, I'm going back to all my closet and math analogies, you get to see the work, which helps you understand how you got to that answer you came up with. For instance, if you find a belief that is hanging in your closet that is inherently racist and it just never occurred to you, and you didn't realize it, and it was one of those, oh my goodness, I just had no idea, the process of deconstruction allows you to look at where it came from, determine where in the equation that things went in that direction rather than the reality of honoring each individual as made in the image of their creator and inherently valuable, right? And down this process of dehumanizing them rather than humanizing them and making sure that every life is valuable and worth life focus. But then you can see what happens to the answer when you change that one element, when you plug in the right step, you can see, oh, now I know how I got to that perception rather than reality. So they also, both core values and deconstruction, help you disentangle perception from reality. They both, number four, help you develop your critical thinking skills. Everything I'm describing here is critical thinking. Your core values, understanding them, allows you to see your true non negotiables and how you can honor them. And from that point forward, you'll never be able to not see them, my friend. You will forever be aware of what it looks like to both honor or not honor your core values. When you implement and integrate your core values into your life and your work, you will automatically think critically. Logically walk through the yeses and the no's in the decision trees about what you do and why you do it, what you believe and why you believe it. It makes the critical thinking a much less, much less of a heavy lift, right? The process of deconstruction helps you step away from the emotions of dealing with your ABCs. When you're examining your ABCs, you are peeling back the layers, and there are going to be emotions that come out. There will be emotions involved. But seeing the layers allows that your frontal lobe, your thinking portion of your brain, where your executive functions are, to engage. Not just your emotional center, which is in your hippocampus. The process of deconstructing an assumption, belief, or conditioning will give you the ability to lay it all out, like I said, in the perception versus reality, and that is a critical thinking process. So these are, they're not, like I said, they're inextricably intertangled or intertwined. So they're not necessarily five separate things, but they kind of layer in on top of each other and they support each other. So they help you develop your critical thinking skills. And number five, they both contribute to your personal growth and health. What did I say about core values? The best personal growth comes when you know who you are and you honor your own non-negotiables and you're willing to do the hard work. This is foundational to core values, to my core values work. Your boundaries become clear, right? It's like understanding a house and the door is shut, and that's the boundary. Nobody has to put keep out signs, nobody has to put beware of dog signs, and you don't have to like tell people to step outside your boundaries. They know, because you have the strength, the confidence, and the wisdom to stand there in your own boundaries, and they're very, very clear. There is definitely a process and a learning process or an unlearning process to get to that place. But the core understanding your non-negotiables, your core values, gives you the ability to have clear boundaries. It also makes your decision simpler. I just mentioned here a minute ago, like this whole A-B process, like if yes, then go here. If no, then go here and ask this question, right? Your core values can be a filter. They can be that filter that you run your decisions through. And when you make decisions based on honoring your core values, it is just so much clearer and easier and simpler to do. But they also help your relationships become deeper and richer. I mean, seriously, my famous story that I love to tell about my own personal way that my relationships are deeper is my top core value is critical thinking. And I don't want somebody to tell me how to think, but I also don't want them to assume that I agree with them, right? Because I just might not. That's just the way it is. And I want the freedom to not agree. My mother would historically say, if you're watching the video, you can see behind me a picture. He's like, um, don't you, don't you think this is really pretty? And half the time I might. Half the time I might not. And what do I say? I'm in a pickle, right? I don't know how to say, well, no, I really don't like that. Well, why not? Right? She just wants me to admire the beauty of what she perceives to be this picture to be. My husband, on the other hand, um, who I will be married to nearly 30 years in May of 2025, would used to say things like, wouldn't you agree that? And he's basically trying to set the stage for a conversation, right? I'm setting the stage. This is the foundation. We agree upon these things, so therefore we're going to discuss this issue. And I finally, when I understood that my core value is being dishonored, every time he asked that, all I had to do was tell him. And now he says, if he he might slip every once in a while, but most of the time he says, So what do you think about this? And then we start the conversation. And we might lay the groundwork that we agree, or we might lay the groundwork that we're coming at it from different sides, but it makes our conversations and relationship deeper and richer. I'm learning to do that with my son, uncovering his core values, and with my husband, and we're doing it together as a family, and it's beautiful. So this is personal growth and health in so many areas of your life when you uncover your core values. But deconstruction, what I say at the very beginning of this episode, it is the best, the best personal growth comes when you allow the deconstruction process to walk hand in hand with your core values honoring to fuel, feel, and support the whole process. With deconstruction, as Adam Grant says, you shed the things, the beliefs, the assumptions, the conditioning that no longer serve you or maybe harm you or others. You let go of assumptions that fuel a perception of reality and learn to cling to actual reality or to see actual reality. And boy, do you lighten your load. All the protective layers that have been that you've been carrying on you, there's I know there's a show that I've watched where somebody just put on like every single pair of clothing item in their closet and it was hysterical looking, but they did it because they needed to go somewhere. It was, I don't know, it was a dystopian thing. So if you know what it was, if you know what I'm talking about, comment below or something on the on YouTube or email me and tell me, and you know, we'll put a a thing in the show notes. But if you lighten your load, it makes everything easier, right? We just talked about some of the excuses. It's hard. It makes people are gonna be intimidated, but when you lighten your load, it doesn't matter as much. It's not as hard. There's no reason to carry around all those ABCs that don't fit, that don't bring you joy or don't serve you. And I am curious to know now, with these five different hows of why deconstruction is inextricably intertwined with uncovering your and honoring your core values? They're different sides to the same coin. They both allow you to see what's important and what isn't, they both help you disentangle perception from reality, they both help you develop your critical thinking skills, and they both contribute to your personal growth and health. So what do you think? Are you still afraid of doing the work? Do one of those excuses still come up to the front of the line for you? If so, only you can decide when you're ready. But the good news is, only you can decide when you're ready. You get to decide, and it can be today. And if that is the case, I have lots of things. I just offered at the beginning of this episode Live to Lead and LeaderPass opportunities for you. But I have one other offer I'd like to share in addition to that, and that's core values coaching. I've got this still in a beta stage of the program. It's a combination of my core values digital course and six sessions of one-on-one coaching that will really help you dig deep, discover, and then integrate your core values. Now, by next spring, it's going to be a full signature offer, but right now, at the airing of this particular podcast episode, should be airing on December 2nd of 2024. If you're listening to it when it drops, you may have seen or heard about my Black Friday deals, which includes 30% off the Core Values Coaching Beta program. Y'all, that's a savings of nearly $300. And I have decided to extend the life of the coupon code Black Friday through the end of the year. So you've got till December 31st. This is your chance to do the work in a structured, thoughtful way with coursework and coaching sessions in which I help you discover your true core values and hold space for you to do the deconstruction necessary to learn how to honor them. I will teach you this whole process, will teach you the skills that you need to do the work on your own. And then next week, I'll be interviewing one of my core values coaching clients. She has like a star pupil. She has truly integrated and implemented hers in her personal life and her business. You do not want to miss her story. So click below the link, or just go to my website for easy access. There'll be a button at the top, or reach out to me personally if you just want to have a discussion about it. Maybe one of those excuses is like niggling at the front of your brain and say, Andrea, help me get rid of this excuse. I want to hear from you, and you can do that through DMing me on Instagram or LinkedIn, emailing me, Andrea at theintentionaloptimist.com, YouTube, if you're on there, if you're watching the video, like, subscribe, share, or comment. And if you're listening to this on any of the podcast platforms, rate, review, and follow. Because my friend, it is time to stand tall and own it. It is time to stand tall and own who you are, the work that you need to do in order to walk into 2025 whole, confident, curious, and wise. Because I can't say this enough, the world needs you. The world needs more curious, welcoming, and wise leaders. Leaders who understand their core values, recognize their strengths, and live by a clear set of life principles. This foundation enables you to lead with integrity, humility, and authority while mentoring the next generation. If this resonates with you, seriously reach out, right? You need to act on these things. When you truly know who you are, you stop imitating others and you start defining your own principles and priorities, creating a path for sustainable, impactful leadership. As you and I embody our own unique values and deconstruct the assumptions, beliefs, and conditioning that we've picked up along the way, all those layers that we've piled on top and all the armor that we've got, we inspire and empower others to do the same. We foster diversity and authentic leadership across generations. It is time to do this work. Join me. Until next time, we're going to