Episode 40: Defining What Matters - Aligning with Your Core Values

In this solo episode, Dr. Laura Suttin shares how she identified her four core values—purpose, connection, empowerment, and joy—and how they became the compass guiding her decisions, boundaries, and energy. 

You'll hear how to uncover your own values, spot where you’ve drifted, and take one simple step to realign.

Inside the episode:

• The wake-up moment when success felt empty
  
  
  
• How to name your values (and why it’s harder than it sounds)
  
  
  
• A gentle journaling exercise to reconnect with what matters
  
  
  
• How values lead to better boundaries—with less guilt
  
  
  
• Why joy isn’t optional—it’s essential
  
  
  

📖 Want the full journal guide? It’s included when you purchase The Purposeful MD, Creating the Life You Love Without Guilt. Learn more at thepurposefulmd.com/book

Link to James Clear Core Values list: https://jamesclear.com/core-values

Transcript

0:08

Welcome to the Purposeful MD Podcast. As a physician, you've sacrificed so much of your life for other people, your patients, your family, your friends, and your colleagues. What would it feel like to spend time doing what you enjoy and to live without guilt? I'm your host, Dr. Laura Suttin, a family physician, certified coach, and business owner. If you're a medical professional on a journey towards your most purposeful life, a life with more time and energy, and ultimately more joy, then this is the podcast for you. Hey everybody, welcome to the Purposeful MD podcast. It's me, Dr. Laura Suttin, today is a solo cast episode, and we're gonna take some time to ask ourselves a really big question, and that question is, are you living in alignment with what matters to you? So we're gonna talk a lot about what matters to you, specifically core values, and we might think that this isn't really important, but in my personal and professional development journey, building my business, really understanding what are the priorities in my life, it is so important for me to really understand what my core values are and then to live by them. I go through this exercise with a lot of my clients and they find it really, really helpful, so I'm gonna go through this exercise with you. So I'm gonna ask that question again, because I wanna call out a couple things. Are you living in alignment with what actually matters to you? Now, not what matters to other people, not what matters to society, or to your family, or to your patients, but what matters to you? Now we think about core values, maybe as, maybe words on a poster when we've joined a new organization, joined a company, started a new job, they teach us what the core values are, and so sometimes this can kind of feel a little bit cliche, but there's a, there's a reason that our values are so important. And the reason is that once we know what our values are, once we identify their, our values, then all of the decisions in life just become so much easier, and those values really become the lens through which we make decisions. Then we don't have to wrestle with our decisions as much. We don't have to decide over and over again. So if we decide first and foremost that these are the things that are important to me, when those conflicts come up and we have to really think about what are we gonna do? What are we gonna say? How are we gonna act? Then if we can go back to those core values, the decision's already made for us and it really reduces our decision fatigue. So I've noticed in my own personal life and in working with my clients that a lot of times we get overwhelmed. Not just because we're doing too many things, but doing the wrong things. We're doing the things that don't matter to us. And so when we can understand what those are and start to live more in alignment with our values, everything shifts and it's beautiful. So I'm going through a rebrand process right now. I am introducing the Dr. Laura Suttin brand, and I'm rebranding Purposeful MD. So you're gonna hear more about that on this podcast. Part of the process is identifying what are the core, core values of my business and what are my personal core values? Ideally, those are gonna be aligned, right? Because if my business values and my personal values don't match, then I'm gonna feel a lot of tension. Have you ever felt like you join an organization or a team or you're in an environment where something's just off? Might be a values mismatch. Maybe the values that you have personally are out of alignment with the values of the organization or the environment or people or in relationships. Not just romantic relationships, but any type of relationship with somebody when maybe we have different priorities. That's usually a mismatch in values. And so once you see it, you can't really unsee it. It's a really beautiful tool. When, when I was with my previous job and doing all the things, practicing single momming, all the things I was really on paper, I was very successful. I was very productive. I was respected by my team, by my community. But internally, I was just exhausted and disconnected, and I was wondering, why doesn't this feel good when this is what I've wanted my whole life? So once I started my personal development work, started working with a coach and eventually built my business, I really got to the root cause of what was the problem that I wasn't living according to my own values. I was living according to expectations that other people had of me. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of reflection, a lot of journaling. Like I said, working with my coach, a lot of realignment, a lot of lived experience, and a lot of really understanding what doesn't work for me as much as what does work for me. So working with my coach, working with a business mentor, I have landed on the four values that guide my life and my business. They are purpose, connection, empowerment, and joy. And I have a sticky note with these values by my monitor. I can see it right now, and it's just such a beautiful reminder for me of why I do what I do whenever I have to go back and make a decision about something, whether that's big or small, and then I can ask myself, does this align with my values? Does this align with purpose, connection, empowerment, and joy? I'll dive into each of these a little bit so you can see why I named my business Purposeful MD, is one reason why purpose is one of my core values. And so I'll spend a couple minutes on each of these, so purpose is really about being true to you, being true to yourself, being authentic, living a life that you want to live. The tagline of my book is Creating a Life you Love without Guilt, and also feeling that we are in a community with each other, that we have a shared purpose, that we're seen and valued for who we are. Connection really with me is about being present, connecting with myself, connecting with other people, with my family, my clients, my friends, and my patients. I realize that a lot of times when I'm just feeling off in this world, a lot of times it's a disconnection with myself, and so that understanding has been so impactful for me. Again, talking about community, that's something that's really important of me. Really important to me is that community understanding that we're all interconnected. There's a beautiful concept that I've learned from a colleague called Ubuntu, and it's an African philosophy that loosely translates to,"I am, because we are", and really this, this concept that we're all interconnected and anything that I do is gonna impact the world and vice versa. Empowerment is my third core value. That's really about reclaiming my voice, reclaiming my time, and my choices. That one has become so visible to me and has just come to light so much in the building of my business, and I get to say no to what doesn't align with me and say yes to what does, and it's such a beautiful thing. I also help other people do the same thing. Not everybody has to own their own business and work for themselves full-time to feel empowered. That is not the case at all, but when I'm empowered, I can help empower my clients. And joy is really the result of all the other three. All, all the other three core values. So if I'm connected with my purpose, feeling connection with myself and my community, and empowering myself and others, I feel joy. And I'll tell you that joy didn't always come easily for me. I, I didn't always feel like I could feel joy. And so allowing myself to feel true joy, and not feel guilty about it is a real beautiful gift. So I landed on these four core values through a lot of work, really understanding what it's, what's the friction in my life, where, where's the tension and where I might've felt resentful, or drained, or out of sync, a lot of times that's when we know when our values are being violated. So let's take a few minutes and do an exercise. So if you can write some things down, take some notes. If not, if you're driving or walking, then just go back and listen to this and do the exercise. I think you're gonna really, really find it helpful. So write down five to ten values that matter the most to you. So I'll put a link in the show notes to a list that I really like. It's from the author James Clear. You can also Google core values, but any, any list that you have of, of just a 25, 50 core values that you find that resonate with you, choose five to ten of those that matter the most to you. So go ahead and once you have your list, now you're gonna take that list and rank them in impor, by importance. So which are the ones that speak the most to you? One being it's most important, and then either five or the last number being the least important to you. Now, for each of those values, you're gonna give each of them a rating. How aligned are you with each value on a scale of one to five? One is not highly aligned and five is very highly aligned. So as an example, if you rank nature as a high value for you, maybe it's your one or two and you're living in a high rise in Manhattan, that's probably not a, a lot of alignment. There's nothing wrong with living in a high rise in Manhattan, but if you value nature, it might not be the best choice for you. You might feel some tension there because you're not living in alignment to that val, to that value. So take a look at your list. Are there any that are ones where you're not in alignment or fives where you are? Are there any where you want them to be fives? Are there gaps that you see that you might want to explore or close those gaps? Do you need to give yourself permission to live out that value more fully? And I can tell you if all of us lived at our core values in ways that just brought us that joy, then the world would be a better place. There's nothing selfish about living out our core values, when we can do that, it's a gift to the world. There's a quote in my book that I wanna share with you here, and it is, if you're not clear on your why, you will give your time and power away to other people's priorities. If you're not clear on your why, you give your time and power away to other people's priorities because we don't know what our priorities are, and that starts with our values. So there's a quote from psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy that I just love that really defines boundaries and it is a boundary, is something you say you will do and it requires the other person to do nothing. A boundary is something you say you will do and it requires the other person to do nothing. And I love that because when we are asking somebody to do something, which should be like a request that's relinquishing control, the outcome is dependent on whether or not that person will do something. But if we're setting a boundary, we are stating that we will do something and we have all the control. So I'll give you an example of boundaries and action and how those tie into values. So my daughter just graduated high school and she's going off to college. With her senior year this last year, I really valued the connection with her wanting to spend time with her. So I set that as a value early on, and it allowed me to decline certain social functions, certain activities so that I could prioritize my time with her. I didn't have to be making those decisions all the time'cause the decision had already been made. So for instance, if you value joy, how are you spending your free time? Are you spending your free time doing everything for everybody else and not doing anything that brings you joy? What might it look like to give yourself permission to say, I'm gonna do something that brings me joy. If you value connection with your family and, but you're doing charts every evening, instead of sitting down to dinner with them, what might it look like to put those charts away just for a little while? Doesn't have to be big decisions. There's another quote that I love from James Clear. I mentioned him with his values list. In his book, Atomic Habits, and he says, every action that you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. So those small actions add up and those are votes for the person that we wanna become. We can take those small steps towards the values that we want to live aligned with. Everything just works out so much easier. So your takeaway is, pick one of those values that resonates with you, but maybe you're not living in as much alignment with it. No judgment here. What is one tiny thing that you can do this week to honor that value? What would it look like in a small way? Doesn't have to be big. What is one thing you can do to honor that value? Take a few minutes and journal and then take action, and whatever that looks like for you, whether you need to put it in your calendar, whether you need somebody else to support you in that action, then do what you need to do to take that action and move closer to your values. I hope you found this episode helpful. I would love to go deeper with you. In my book, Purposeful MD, Creating the Life You Love Without Guilt, there are a ton of journaling prompts, a lot more discussion about boundaries. The book is available on Amazon, online retailers. I always encourage local shopping if you don't have a local bookstore near you, Bookshop.org is a great local bookshop. Online they also have eBooks. The audio version of my book is also available on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I would love it if you shared this episode, if this was helpful for somebody who might just be feeling a little bit outta sorts. And don't forget to follow the podcast, rate, leave a quick review. It really helps us to grow the podcast and grow this community and helps other people to find the podcast. I'm so happy to spend this time with you, and I wish you all the best of luck. While I am a physician, the information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your own healthcare provider before making any significant changes to your lifestyle or routine. By listening to this podcast, you are not creating a physician patient relationship. Thank you for listening to the Purposeful MD Podcast. If you like what you hear, please rate and review the show. Please also visit my website, www.thepurposefulmd.com for free downloads or to discuss working with me as your coach.