November 20, 2024 • 35 mins
Welcome to Coded in Gold with David Newson. Inspired by Kintsugi, the japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, this podcast explores the fractured yet beautiful pieces of our modern lives.
Today’s episode is all about family values. When we talk about “family values” it’s often discussed as one set of ideas. But the truth is that every family has their own distinct set of values. And it’s rare that it’s ever talked about explicitly but we all feel the lessons and patterns that we’ve picked up from the people around us. As we dive, in I want you to start asking yourself this key question: What are your family values?
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(00:01):
Hello, I'm your host David Newsonand welcome to Coated in Gold.
Inspired by Kintsugi, the Japaneseart of repairing broken pottery with Gold.
This podcast explores the fractured, yetbeautiful
pieces of our modern lives.
Drawing on my diverse careerand deep curiosity about business
and the philosophy of modern living,I dive in to compelling stories
(00:25):
and speak with high performing,multidimensional individuals
to uncover momentsof insight and learning.
So let's get started.
Today's episode is all about familyvalues.
As we dive in, I want you to startasking yourself this key question.
(00:48):
What are your family values?
When we talk about family values,it's often discussed as one set of ideas.
But we all know that the truth is thatevery family has their own distinct
set of values, and it's rarethat it's ever talked about explicitly.
But we all feel the lessons and patternsthat we've picked up from the people
around us.
(01:09):
I also have to acknowledge that the termfamily values is highly politicized.
And while I certainly touch on that,I don't want to get too caught up
in this discussion.
I'm much more interestedin how regular people think
about and practicetheir values in everyday life.
So when was the last time you sat down
and actually defined what your values are?
(01:32):
What goes into your decisions?
How do you show your valueswith your children?
With your parents, or with your friends?
Where do you even start with all of this?
Well, for most of us,we begin by looking at the values
that were instilled in us by our familieswhen we were kids.
What are the values that you were taught?
What do you keep?
What do you even move away from?
(01:53):
I think the best way to get startedis actually by telling a story.
Once upon a time, I was bornand raised into a large Mormon family.
I was one of five kids and my dadwas the bishop of our local congregation.
And for those of youwho may not be familiar with how
the Mormon Church works,a bishop is the highest ranking leader
within a mormon congregation,also known as a ward.
(02:15):
And now, obviously, I'm biasedbecause I grew up in this way.
But in the 1980s,it felt like Mormons owned
the words family and family values.
There were even public serviceannouncements that ran during Saturday
morning cartoons
that were representative of how our familywas supposed to move through our lives.
As a professional marketer now,I'm fascinated by the way that these ads
(02:38):
and other practices of the Mormon faithmight have shaped
my ability to analyzeand pitch to others in my career.
It's kind of one of those random momentsthat you realize in your career
that like, wow,this was shaped by my early childhood.
Know good luck today.
(02:59):
Children can
go to the dogs when families don't listen.
Listening is the beginningof understanding.
In my childhood, familyvalues, Mormons to me
own family values, not because they usethe right words or language,
but because they were so dedicatedto living it.
I was able to see up close and personalthe values of honesty, integrity,
(03:23):
hard work and respect for others,no matter their view or lifestyle.
Well,that last one in particular was harder
for some members of the churchand likely for all of us, Mormon or not.
Some people seem to
just be a little bit more judgmentalabout how others live their lives.
Some of the values of Mormonismthat I personally struggle with today
(03:44):
are traditional gender rolesand moral modesty and purity.
In a typical Mormonhousehold, men are the providers.
Women are the caretakers.
And being gay was absolutely not allowed.
This presented a problemwhen I was 19 years old,
and while gone on myMormon mission, I came out.
(04:05):
I'll dive more intothat particular journey at another time.
But after going through that long
and difficult journey,I developed a bit of a rebellious streak
and a strong skepticism for authority,which really clashed
with the value of moral modestyand purity.
After emergingfrom the very strict set of rules
I had been brought up underwhen I was coming into my own as an adult,
(04:29):
I began to wonder what my own valuesactually were.
What did they look, feel and sound like
if they weren'texactly what I was raised with?
Of course,this presented some tension with my family
in 2008 in California,where my sister and I were then living.
Proposition eightwas whipping up a frenzy within the state.
(04:51):
If you weren't in California at the time,you might not know
that Prop eight was a ballot propositionto fundamentally change the California
state constitution to define marriageas being between
a man and a woman, effectivelybanning gay marriages
that were already taking placewithin the state.
It was deliberately craftedto confuse voters where voting yes
(05:12):
was voting in favor of the ban and voting
no was voting against the ban.
There was intense campaigningfrom the anti-gay marriage side, perhaps
because so many on the other sideassumed that such a liberal state
like California couldn't possibly passsomething like this.
The Mormon Church in particularreached from the pulpit
(05:34):
to its California membersto vote in favor of the ban
and then I realized
that my sister and I were on oppositesides of the matter.
We argued about it, and though I hadat that point come out a long time ago
and thought I was totally healed,it opened a new wound
(05:54):
because my sister was following the valuesinstilled by the church,
and those values were in real time,violently clashing
with the values I wanted to live by.
I wanted to get married.
Maybe I wanted my own family.
Maybe.
Possibly.
When Proposition eight passed,
(06:14):
I feared that these values wouldn't
be possible for me.
Okay,I'll pick this story back up in a minute.
But I think we need a little palatecleanser.
Let's jump back in to another valuefrom my childhood.
Self-Reliance, provident living,and more specifically, disaster prep.
(06:35):
And this one is, you know, a little bitfunny when I reflect on it from my past.
But growing up,
our basement was filled to the brim with a12 month supply of food at all times.
And I remember learning early on thatthe second coming of Christ was imminent
and you needed to be preparedbecause in the last days
there would be disasters,natural disasters
(06:55):
that frankly aren't too far offfrom what we see now with climate change.
We needed to be ready for fires and floods
and the collapse of even our governments.
To be clear, it wasn't doomsday.
Every day we as Mormons just needed to beprepared to shelter and feed our families
because we were the ones who were goingto make it out on the other side.
(07:16):
Going back to my family's basement,we had huge storage containers of wheat
and rice and water with just a little dashof Clorox to ensure
it was preserved for long periods of timeonce the container was sealed.
Every summer, my mother would take fruitsand vegetables.
She had grown in our garden
and canned themso that they could be preserved.
(07:36):
We were living with a mini storehousejust downstairs,
intended for us to survivefor at least a year in any conditions.
Keep all of this in the context ofI grew up in a very small rural
town in upstate New Yorkthat had three nuclear power plants in it.
And so also having a storehouse of foodin your basement.
(07:59):
Given that context,maybe wasn't so strange.
This ties into another key Mormon value
actually from the storehouse of food
and making it out the other sidewith disaster prep to this one.
Your body is a temple in the church.
There's a belief that you must carefor your body as it stays
(08:21):
the same when you passon, so you better take care of it now.
This included abstaining from alcoholand even caffeine.
Now, my mother might kill mefor telling this story, but my dad
had this easy chair, probably a La-Z-Boyor something equally huge and plush
and he would come home from a hardday's work and kick his feet up.
And my mom, everthe good Mormon wife, would dote on him
(08:45):
and make sure his needs were metand she would bring him a tab cola.
And I don't knowhow many of you remember tab.
It was the trendy,
somewhat trendy soda of the 1980sand it definitely had caffeine.
Now there's a lot of differentinterpretations in modern Mormonism.
And what the word of wisdom,
which is the document that enshrines
(09:09):
some of these codes or ways of living
and what it actually meantsurrounding caffeine.
Was it just coffee and tea that weren'tokay?
Is soda an exceptionbecause it's a cold beverage?
There's some current flexibility there.
But in the 1980s for a bishop,it was an early sign to me
(09:30):
that sometimes these rules had been shown
weren't as hard and fastas maybe I was being told.
At the same time,I was being trained to proselytize
these values in preparationfor my mission in Brazil at the age of 19.
I was being preparedto tell everyone about our prophet,
a modern dayseer and revelator that spoke to God,
(09:53):
and that there were sacred templeswhere he would go and he would have
these conversations, and only the mostdevout could enter such holy spaces.
I don't mean to be disrespectful,certainly not.
But so much of my marketing and salesroots
come from my preparationto become a missionary.
It was my job to convince people
(10:15):
to change their livesin a fundamental way.
And I think it's interesting here,like I'm using
the term convinceand that might that might get
an allergic reactionfrom Mormons even today. But
I struggle with what word to choose.
(10:35):
I had to learn how people movethrough the world, what questions
they asked themselves, and how they madedecisions based on their beliefs.
Meanwhile, I was leaving my homefor the first time and discovering that
maybe, just maybe, what I was selling
wouldn't actually work for me.
(10:55):
Midway through my missionary journey,I was sent home for being gay
and my whole system of belief shattered.
Now I'm very lucky and grateful thatmy family didn't turn me away entirely.
But it was clear that I would haveto find a new path on my own.
I was lost for a while.
I had a hard time finding communitywith other gay people because,
(11:18):
well, self-loathingdoesn't really help you find community.
In the years after coming out,I had boyfriends and I had work colleagues
and mentors, but I had sort ofgiven up on the idea of my own family.
And then in my thirties,I realized I needed to get back
to one of the Mormon values
I actually found helpful,and that was caring for my body.
(11:40):
I was giving up some of the vicesI had developed since leaving the church
and decided to pick up long distancerunning, which turned into marathoning.
I started running races in San Diego,where I was living at the time,
and then that startedbranching out to other cities.
So I still wasn't changing my lifemuch in other ways.
(12:00):
I wasn't looking for a long term partnerthat was certainly
like off the tableat this part of my life.
And I wasn't thinking about familymuch either, frankly.
But at the San Francisco marathon,I met my now husband.
Now I'm not sure about fate,
but with us, life just sort of lined up.
He lived in San Franciscoand we initially dated long distance,
(12:23):
but I was in the middle of a careertransition and not that long into dating,
I just sort of decided I was goingto pick up and move to San Francisco.
And he was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We aren't living together yet.
Don't move here for me.
And I said, Hey, no problem.
I'm not moving there for you.
I was absolutely moving there for him.
(12:44):
And then fast forward,we move in together.
And that took some time, actually.
And then we started talking about family
and I'll never forgetwe were in the living
room of our apartmentin inner sunset in San Francisco.
And my husbandand I weren't keen on marriage
for a long time in our relationship.
We just didn't see it as necessarywhen it was just the two of us.
(13:05):
And I've actually liketalked to a lot of people, like,
okay, you're together, you're partnered.
What's the point in even being married?
So we didn't even really see itas necessary for us.
But as we started talking about kids
and having gotten through the other sideof the Prop eight debacle,
(13:25):
we began to see marriageas something of a countercultural act.
Actually, I won't speak for my husband,
but for me, certainlya bit of a countercultural act.
I have always had a little bit of thatin my personality anyway.
Here's this
thing that's been like enshrinedin huge organizations
and large swathes of the populationdesperately tried to stop.
(13:48):
All we wanted to do was live our liveslike everyone else
with the same legal rightsand responsibilities.
And let's be clearmarriage is a responsibility.
It's actually a legal contractwith a lot of big ramifications.
So why can't our relationship be protected
like everyone elsebefore we decided to get married, though?
(14:10):
A friend of my husbandsaid, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Be careful about former Mormons.
Once a mormon, always a mormon.
So they say.
I think what they were trying to say
is that our values are hardwiredinto us at an early age.
It's just it's not just taught.
It's taught and lived and reinforced.
And he wasn't totally wrong.
(14:31):
But by this point, I embracedthat there were absolutely things
I believed in from my Mormon upbringingthat would never, ever leave me.
Honesty, integrity, hard work,respect for others.
I was ready to take those valuesinto my marriage.
Now, getting to our wedding, my husband
(14:53):
and I decided to just elope at SanFrancisco City Hall.
We didn't want to go throughall of the trouble of a big wedding,
and I wasn't even sure who frommy family would even come.
Rememberthe sister who had voted for Prop eight?
Well, over the years,she had softened her stance and I think
not just a softening of a stance, butmore of a watching how we lived our lives
(15:17):
and that
relationship ship that had been injured
once upon a time during the Propeight debacle
had been repaired and we moved on.
And I think and you know, meand my siblings, we're a tight knit
group of five, and our relationshipswith each other are they matter.
(15:41):
I had a conversation.
I'll never forget this conversation.
I was having a conversationwith her on either
a Saturday, Saturday or Sunday
and letting her know, like our plans.
And I didn't feel hesitant in sharing.
Like I share many, many,many things with her over the years.
And so this was like a very normal thing.
(16:02):
It wasn't a super hyped up thing,but I did have some trepidation about,
oh gosh, just kind of sharing that.
Like, Yeah,we're actually going to get married.
I actuallydidn't know how it was going to land.
Anyway, I took the leap and I decided
to invite her to our wedding.
I guess you could call it a wedding,
(16:22):
but where we were going to elope at CityHall in San Francisco.
And she thankfully agreed to come.
She also mentioned another thing to me.
She said, David, you know,you should probably let Mom know.
Now, I hadn't even fought with my momabout gay marriage
because I was pretty certain,like what her stance was.
(16:44):
But I said to my sister, like, Really?
You think I should go ask Mom to, like,come to our gay wedding in San Francisco?
And she actually challenged meand she pushed me to reach out. And
again, I wanted
like, clarify my relationship,even with my mother, like,
speak to her often.
(17:04):
Wonderful relationshipconnected and close.
And yet in this way,
I just thought we were going to elopeand let people know.
After reading between the lines,she was actually saying,
Ask your mother because you might get
a different response than you think.
So I was still skeptical.
(17:25):
I called my mom.
I told her what was happening.
I invited her to come to the wedding and
she said yes.
And I couldn't believe it.
Even on the day.
I absolutely couldn't believe it.
Just imagine this.
Here was my sister that voted for Propeight in 2008
(17:46):
and my still devout Mormon motherattending my wedding.
And in fact, bothare the witnesses on our marriage license.
It almost sounds like fiction,but you just can't make up the truth.
The takeaway for me was to never give uphope as I was taught.
(18:06):
Don't judge peoplebefore they can show you who they are.
Okay.
So fast forward to today.
My husband and I have a sonwho is now six years old.
Prior to starting a family,my husband and I didn't naturally say,
Oh, what are our valuesBefore we have a child, let's
write them down and figure them outso we can like live a life
(18:30):
that adheres to a common,
shared way of seeing the world and being.
We certainly never thought about itin that way.
Never sat down and articulatedwhat our family values would be.
But raising kids reallybrings your values to the forefront.
As I've mentioned, I'm a marketer
(18:52):
and specifically I'm in the marketingto the wealth management business.
Recently, I was at a conferenceand I had a meeting with this
young entrepreneur who is startinga company entirely about helping families
articulate, documentand ultimately execute their values.
He asked questionslike What do your values look like?
How do you behave?
(19:12):
What role does each member of the familyplay in fulfilling that?
I thought this might be a compelling toolfor some of the clients I work with,
but of courseI also had to try it for myself.
So my husbandand I sat down with a coach to start
figuring out what our values wereand what they looked like in practice.
(19:35):
Now, before I get into whatthese values are,
I want to emphasize thatthese are just the values for my family
with our specific backgroundsin this particular moment in time.
Your values might look different.
They should look different,and our values may even change over time.
My child is only six years oldand what it looks like for him to live by
(19:55):
these values will change potentiallydramatically over the years to come.
We also created a vision statementfor our family and our vision.
Some folkslike, like to write it in sentences,
but it should be short and concise.
And I took a different approach.
I wanted them to be punchier statementsthat were like single words
(20:16):
with periods after them.
So the vision for my family is experience,
explore, impact, and our values
that align with that vision are kindness,
love, joy,
responsibility and purpose.
(20:39):
Let's start with love.
What does love like as a family valueactually look like?
You know, it's loving each other.
It is extending thatand sharing that love with others.
This one is seemingly straightforward,though there are different interpretations
of what love actually iswhen it comes to raising children.
Sometimes showing love is allowingchildren to go through difficult moments
(21:03):
and fighting the urge to, like, solve
all other problems,allowing them to build resilience.
I think it's very easyto want to be all things
for your child and to give them everythingthat they want.
But loving them also means for us,letting them
figure out for themselvesand holding boundaries.
(21:24):
You know, you have a young childthat's like pushing once, pushing twice,
pushing a third time.
Oh, Dad, can I have that set of Legoslike, Oh, no, not today.
We're not doing that.
Oh, Dad, can I please, please,
please have that set of Legos like,Oh, it's my favorite thing.
You really start to feel like, oh,my goodness, like I'm failing as a parent.
If I don't give into some of these requests.
(21:44):
And sometimes we find ourselves sometimesacquiescing like, okay, all right,
I guess it's fine, right?
But then we learn that no children
do so much better with boundaries.
And sometimes the tough stanceon having a boundary with a child
is actually really comfortingand provides safety for them.
But at the end of the day,
like when we were thinkingabout our family values around love,
(22:08):
what if love actually were our superpower?
You know, it's loving each other.
It's extending that love out
into and sharing thatwith others that we love,
whether it's in small moments or largesettings.
It's it's being a member of a communityand showing love and kindness.
(22:30):
Love is always, to us, unconditional.
It's not attached to something.
And I feel really strongly about that.
And I have this modeled quite well
in my own family growing up as a kid.
Love also changes as time goes on.
Like what it looks like,what it feels like.
(22:50):
It's flexible.
It's also always evolving.
Our next value is joy.
Now we are a busy family.
Yes, we are. We have an only.
I'm not quite sure how folksdo it with more than one actually.
Like hats off to you.
But we are a busy familyand our time together is always limited
(23:13):
and always changing.
We try to look for joy in all the moments
and set time for joysince our son has started school,
there are so many activities and eventsthat arise and we've begun looking
at every activity through the lens ofDoes this bring us joy?
If not, is this necessary for our family?
(23:34):
We also prioritize simple joys,even like just taking a walk in the woods.
Now I live in Portland, Oregon,so there is
lots of joy to be found in the naturethat surrounds us.
As an adult,I am also aware that expressing joy
doesn't necessarilycome naturally for me at work and in life.
(23:55):
Adults so oftenfeel like they have to put up a mask,
but that can end up shieldingsome of your joy and your light.
So I'm making a conscious effortto remember to bring that
mask downwhen I'm spending time with my family.
You know, there's timeswhere you have to add the professionalism
mask or the Oh,I'm talking to people at school mask
(24:20):
at home.
It's a time for those masks to come down.
And that sometimes isn'talways easy to do.
All right.
Next up is responsibility.
We are a multicultural family.
My husband is originally from China,and we've had to navigate Eastern values,
meeting Western valuesas we have begun to raise our son.
(24:42):
Speaking specifically to American culture,which I've known thoroughly
for my entire life.
There is a very individualistic approach
in American culture to the world.
In China,however, and many other cultures,
there is a much larger focus on collectivesociety and communal response ability.
(25:03):
And I think there's a lot to be takenfrom both approaches,
and they can even balance each other outwith a lot of harmony,
but sometimes actuallythese approaches clash and in our family,
responsibility comes up the mostwhen caring for ourselves.
I have to admit, quick tangent,I do not love making my bed.
(25:26):
I never have.
It's just not fun.
And I've never quite gottenover the drudgery of it.
So as an adult without a parentlooking over my shoulder,
I just got into the habitof not making my bed.
My husband, however, would reallyappreciate it if I made the bed
and we decided that it was somethingwe wanted our son to do as well.
So we were teaching him that when he wakesup, he has certain responsibilities.
(25:47):
You got to make the bed,
you got to brush your teeth,have breakfast, get ready for school.
You know,we all know routine is good for kids.
And we wanted him to get startedon his routine as early as possible,
but he was just not making his that dayafter day.
It was a struggle.
And one day I got up and I made my bed.
But miraculously, to me, I made my bed.
(26:10):
And my son went and made his bed.
And it was just like that.
Another aspect of
responsibility in our familiesvalues is being present
and not letting external stressorsimpact our home environment.
Like I work from homeand I have for a long time
(26:30):
and we have a rule in the House when Ileave my office and the door closes.
That is a symbolic ritualthat happens every day.
And when I leave,I am to leave work in my office
and move into the home environment
and not bring the stressorsfrom work into the family.
(26:50):
And that is really, really,
really challenging to do.
I actually think I'll be working on thatfor the rest of my life.
Also,responsibility means community at school.
Doing your part.
At my son's school, they have three rules.
Be kind, be respectful, be safe.
And I love that.
(27:11):
It's a simple way for kids to remember.
It's also a simple wayfor parents to remember,
and it's also a great reminderof how to move through the world.
Our next value is kindness.
I'm not going to lie.
There's an element of my personalitythat kindness can be really hard
for me sometimes, especiallyif I feel threatened in some way.
(27:34):
But I.
I try to stay mindful of kindnessand remember
that directnessdoesn't necessitate unkindness.
And there are times, especially whenI'm at work, I tend to be very direct.
I'm very matter of fact.
I love telling stories,and so I get very excited and energetic.
But at the same time,
if there's a project I'm working onand there is a need to be direct,
(27:57):
I am not going to shy awayfrom being direct.
But directness does notnecessitate unkindness because it's easy
sometimes for it to go off the railsand be perceived as, you know,
while the intense not to be unkind,it isn't not with me, not ever.
But it can come offsometimes as a little too direct.
I guess those areEast Coast routes for you.
(28:19):
For kids,
I think teaching kindness means impartingrespect and maintaining
the same set of standards at homeand with others.
I don't think the Mormons own the saying,but I remember learning it at church
and it was Kindness begins with me.
That was something my mother said overand over and over again.
(28:41):
I would hear it and at the same timethink, Gosh, yeah, okay, mom.
Now, as an adult, teaching a young person
or trying to teach a young person, well,I remember those things.
Modeling the behavior is perhapsthe most important thing I think I can do.
So I know at the beginningof this episode, I was telling you
(29:02):
how we had these five values,but before there were five,
there were seven, and we ended upwhittling them down to five.
But I actually wantto talk about all seven here.
And thisis one that didn't really make the cut
because we felt like it was incorporated
into some other elementsof our values, of our other values.
(29:25):
But I do want to talk a little bitabout grit, because it's important,
just like what is it even like?
Grit is just keep going,even in the face of difficulties.
You don't dwell on the struggle.
And I learned a lot about grit, actually,from my marathoning days.
A full marathon is 26.2 miles,you know, But somewhere along the journey
(29:47):
you are going to kind ofcave in on yourself.
And I remember reading about this and,you know, running articles,
running magazines at the time, butyour mind is literally going to tell you
to stop at some point in the racebecause your body is hurting
and your brain is going to start reallysending strong messages like, Hey, stop,
(30:08):
sorry, you're not listening.
Stop, stop, stop.
Legs are going to feelheavy, arms are going to feel heavy.
You're going to feel painlike you've never felt before.
Your back feels like it's goingto give out these sensations are different
for everyone, but literallythe brain is saying, Stop, please stop.
And it literally feels likethe whole world is caving in
and I'm going to need to stop and I'mnot going to be able to finish the race.
(30:33):
And for me, this happens
usually somewhere between Miles 17 and 19.
You never knowexactly when it's going to hit.
It's not like, oh, at mile 19.
It happens exactly then,but it happens somewhere along those miles
and it can really feel like, gosh,
I am at the precipice of failing.
(30:55):
I'm about to fail.
But I knew if I got to mile 19.2,I was golden.
I knew I'd finish and I'd finishedpretty well.
I read somewhere you just put one footin front of the other
and I even heard that even growing up,like when you're faced with adversity
or a struggleand you don't know how you're possibly
going to move,like from one day to the next,
(31:19):
you literally take one day at a timeor you take one step at a time,
or you take a minute at a time,an hour at a time.
You take what you need at a timeand you take it one step at a time.
Another family value of the seventhat didn't make it into the final one
because we felt like it was incorporatedinto some of the others is justice.
(31:44):
And for us, what that means is
we don't accept injustice.
We let people knowthey're mistreating us is not okay.
It also means that we advocate for otherswhen they are in need of help.
This feels incredibly challengingto live to me today in America,
(32:05):
there are so many injustices in the worldand it feels overwhelming
and it can feel nearly impossibleto make a difference in this way.
And yet this is somethingthat our family values
and that we're committedto instilling in our son.
So I just finished a fairly long monologue
about family valuesand specifically my family's values.
(32:28):
I hope I haven't been entirely talkingin a vacuum and that you all have been
following along and reflecting on your ownupbringings and your family today.
There are timeswhere I think very idealistically,
and I want to live in thisreally awesome world where I see love
and joy and experienceresponsibility and kindness
(32:52):
and see and recognize wisdom whereverit may be found and have the ability
to pick myself up and go forwardwhen it's not easy.
But it also can't go without saying thattaking the time to actually sit
and think about all of thisin an intentional
way was not easy.
We set four meetings 90 minutes apieceduring the business hours of our coach.
(33:16):
It was really challenging
for me to slow downin the middle of the day for 90 minutes
and to let myself go into this meetingand talk about our family values.
Even with a list of wordsto get us started.
It took a lot of practiceto shift my mindset, to get ready to talk
about these thingsand really dedicate the time that was
needed to be present
(33:38):
and readyfor these challenging conversations.
So that brings me to a few key questions.
How do you actually practiceand live your family values?
And how do you noticewhen you're off track
and how do you get back to a good place?
And all I'm going to say,
and I think this is true for everyone
(34:01):
living by your family values is hardand it requires self-awareness.
It requires open communicationwith those around you,
certainly with your spouse,with your child or children.
And for me,it's been an exercise in entering
and being willing to be vulnerableand a willingness
to even be called on your shitwhen you don't want to be.
(34:23):
That's how it shows up for me.
It's not always a fun exercise,but for family values to work in practice,
I think we need to have a willingnessto listen to our families
when they tell us we aren't doing our part
to uphold our agreements.
Before we go, I have one last word
on the political version of family valueswe've all heard so much about.
(34:48):
The truth is that real familyvalues are not one thing.
Your values are agreed upon by
you and your family,you and your community, you and yourself
really living
by your values is not about decidinghow others should lead their lives.
It's about decidingwhat you want for yourself.
(35:12):
Thank you for listening.
Decoded in Gold.
I've been your host, David Newsome.
You can follow the podcast on Instagram,YouTube,
LinkedIn and anywhere podcasts are found.
Take care.
Hello, I'm your host David Newsonand welcome to Coated in Gold.
Inspired by Kintsugi, the Japaneseart of repairing broken pottery with Gold.
This podcast explores the fractured, yetbeautiful
pieces of our modern lives.
Drawing on my diverse careerand deep curiosity about business
and the philosophy of modern living,I dive in to compelling stories
(00:25):
and speak with high performing,multidimensional individuals
to uncover momentsof insight and learning.
So let's get started.
Today's episode is all about familyvalues.
As we dive in, I want you to startasking yourself this key question.
(00:48):
What are your family values?
When we talk about family values,it's often discussed as one set of ideas.
But we all know that the truth is thatevery family has their own distinct
set of values, and it's rarethat it's ever talked about explicitly.
But we all feel the lessons and patternsthat we've picked up from the people
around us.
(01:09):
I also have to acknowledge that the termfamily values is highly politicized.
And while I certainly touch on that,I don't want to get too caught up
in this discussion.
I'm much more interestedin how regular people think
about and practicetheir values in everyday life.
So when was the last time you sat down
and actually defined what your values are?
(01:32):
What goes into your decisions?
How do you show your valueswith your children?
With your parents, or with your friends?
Where do you even start with all of this?
Well, for most of us,we begin by looking at the values
that were instilled in us by our familieswhen we were kids.
What are the values that you were taught?
What do you keep?
What do you even move away from?
(01:53):
I think the best way to get startedis actually by telling a story.
Once upon a time, I was bornand raised into a large Mormon family.
I was one of five kids and my dadwas the bishop of our local congregation.
And for those of youwho may not be familiar with how
the Mormon Church works,a bishop is the highest ranking leader
within a mormon congregation,also known as a ward.
(02:15):
And now, obviously, I'm biasedbecause I grew up in this way.
But in the 1980s,it felt like Mormons owned
the words family and family values.
There were even public serviceannouncements that ran during Saturday
morning cartoons
that were representative of how our familywas supposed to move through our lives.
As a professional marketer now,I'm fascinated by the way that these ads
(02:38):
and other practices of the Mormon faithmight have shaped
my ability to analyzeand pitch to others in my career.
It's kind of one of those random momentsthat you realize in your career
that like, wow,this was shaped by my early childhood.
Know good luck today.
(02:59):
Children can
go to the dogs when families don't listen.
Listening is the beginningof understanding.
In my childhood, familyvalues, Mormons to me
own family values, not because they usethe right words or language,
but because they were so dedicatedto living it.
I was able to see up close and personalthe values of honesty, integrity,
(03:23):
hard work and respect for others,no matter their view or lifestyle.
Well,that last one in particular was harder
for some members of the churchand likely for all of us, Mormon or not.
Some people seem to
just be a little bit more judgmentalabout how others live their lives.
Some of the values of Mormonismthat I personally struggle with today
(03:44):
are traditional gender rolesand moral modesty and purity.
In a typical Mormonhousehold, men are the providers.
Women are the caretakers.
And being gay was absolutely not allowed.
This presented a problemwhen I was 19 years old,
and while gone on myMormon mission, I came out.
(04:05):
I'll dive more intothat particular journey at another time.
But after going through that long
and difficult journey,I developed a bit of a rebellious streak
and a strong skepticism for authority,which really clashed
with the value of moral modestyand purity.
After emergingfrom the very strict set of rules
I had been brought up underwhen I was coming into my own as an adult,
(04:29):
I began to wonder what my own valuesactually were.
What did they look, feel and sound like
if they weren'texactly what I was raised with?
Of course,this presented some tension with my family
in 2008 in California,where my sister and I were then living.
Proposition eightwas whipping up a frenzy within the state.
(04:51):
If you weren't in California at the time,you might not know
that Prop eight was a ballot propositionto fundamentally change the California
state constitution to define marriageas being between
a man and a woman, effectivelybanning gay marriages
that were already taking placewithin the state.
It was deliberately craftedto confuse voters where voting yes
(05:12):
was voting in favor of the ban and voting
no was voting against the ban.
There was intense campaigningfrom the anti-gay marriage side, perhaps
because so many on the other sideassumed that such a liberal state
like California couldn't possibly passsomething like this.
The Mormon Church in particularreached from the pulpit
(05:34):
to its California membersto vote in favor of the ban
and then I realized
that my sister and I were on oppositesides of the matter.
We argued about it, and though I hadat that point come out a long time ago
and thought I was totally healed,it opened a new wound
(05:54):
because my sister was following the valuesinstilled by the church,
and those values were in real time,violently clashing
with the values I wanted to live by.
I wanted to get married.
Maybe I wanted my own family.
Maybe.
Possibly.
When Proposition eight passed,
(06:14):
I feared that these values wouldn't
be possible for me.
Okay,I'll pick this story back up in a minute.
But I think we need a little palatecleanser.
Let's jump back in to another valuefrom my childhood.
Self-Reliance, provident living,and more specifically, disaster prep.
(06:35):
And this one is, you know, a little bitfunny when I reflect on it from my past.
But growing up,
our basement was filled to the brim with a12 month supply of food at all times.
And I remember learning early on thatthe second coming of Christ was imminent
and you needed to be preparedbecause in the last days
there would be disasters,natural disasters
(06:55):
that frankly aren't too far offfrom what we see now with climate change.
We needed to be ready for fires and floods
and the collapse of even our governments.
To be clear, it wasn't doomsday.
Every day we as Mormons just needed to beprepared to shelter and feed our families
because we were the ones who were goingto make it out on the other side.
(07:16):
Going back to my family's basement,we had huge storage containers of wheat
and rice and water with just a little dashof Clorox to ensure
it was preserved for long periods of timeonce the container was sealed.
Every summer, my mother would take fruitsand vegetables.
She had grown in our garden
and canned themso that they could be preserved.
(07:36):
We were living with a mini storehousejust downstairs,
intended for us to survivefor at least a year in any conditions.
Keep all of this in the context ofI grew up in a very small rural
town in upstate New Yorkthat had three nuclear power plants in it.
And so also having a storehouse of foodin your basement.
(07:59):
Given that context,maybe wasn't so strange.
This ties into another key Mormon value
actually from the storehouse of food
and making it out the other sidewith disaster prep to this one.
Your body is a temple in the church.
There's a belief that you must carefor your body as it stays
(08:21):
the same when you passon, so you better take care of it now.
This included abstaining from alcoholand even caffeine.
Now, my mother might kill mefor telling this story, but my dad
had this easy chair, probably a La-Z-Boyor something equally huge and plush
and he would come home from a hardday's work and kick his feet up.
And my mom, everthe good Mormon wife, would dote on him
(08:45):
and make sure his needs were metand she would bring him a tab cola.
And I don't knowhow many of you remember tab.
It was the trendy,
somewhat trendy soda of the 1980sand it definitely had caffeine.
Now there's a lot of differentinterpretations in modern Mormonism.
And what the word of wisdom,
which is the document that enshrines
(09:09):
some of these codes or ways of living
and what it actually meantsurrounding caffeine.
Was it just coffee and tea that weren'tokay?
Is soda an exceptionbecause it's a cold beverage?
There's some current flexibility there.
But in the 1980s for a bishop,it was an early sign to me
(09:30):
that sometimes these rules had been shown
weren't as hard and fastas maybe I was being told.
At the same time,I was being trained to proselytize
these values in preparationfor my mission in Brazil at the age of 19.
I was being preparedto tell everyone about our prophet,
a modern dayseer and revelator that spoke to God,
(09:53):
and that there were sacred templeswhere he would go and he would have
these conversations, and only the mostdevout could enter such holy spaces.
I don't mean to be disrespectful,certainly not.
But so much of my marketing and salesroots
come from my preparationto become a missionary.
It was my job to convince people
(10:15):
to change their livesin a fundamental way.
And I think it's interesting here,like I'm using
the term convinceand that might that might get
an allergic reactionfrom Mormons even today. But
I struggle with what word to choose.
(10:35):
I had to learn how people movethrough the world, what questions
they asked themselves, and how they madedecisions based on their beliefs.
Meanwhile, I was leaving my homefor the first time and discovering that
maybe, just maybe, what I was selling
wouldn't actually work for me.
(10:55):
Midway through my missionary journey,I was sent home for being gay
and my whole system of belief shattered.
Now I'm very lucky and grateful thatmy family didn't turn me away entirely.
But it was clear that I would haveto find a new path on my own.
I was lost for a while.
I had a hard time finding communitywith other gay people because,
(11:18):
well, self-loathingdoesn't really help you find community.
In the years after coming out,I had boyfriends and I had work colleagues
and mentors, but I had sort ofgiven up on the idea of my own family.
And then in my thirties,I realized I needed to get back
to one of the Mormon values
I actually found helpful,and that was caring for my body.
(11:40):
I was giving up some of the vicesI had developed since leaving the church
and decided to pick up long distancerunning, which turned into marathoning.
I started running races in San Diego,where I was living at the time,
and then that startedbranching out to other cities.
So I still wasn't changing my lifemuch in other ways.
(12:00):
I wasn't looking for a long term partnerthat was certainly
like off the tableat this part of my life.
And I wasn't thinking about familymuch either, frankly.
But at the San Francisco marathon,I met my now husband.
Now I'm not sure about fate,
but with us, life just sort of lined up.
He lived in San Franciscoand we initially dated long distance,
(12:23):
but I was in the middle of a careertransition and not that long into dating,
I just sort of decided I was goingto pick up and move to San Francisco.
And he was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We aren't living together yet.
Don't move here for me.
And I said, Hey, no problem.
I'm not moving there for you.
I was absolutely moving there for him.
(12:44):
And then fast forward,we move in together.
And that took some time, actually.
And then we started talking about family
and I'll never forgetwe were in the living
room of our apartmentin inner sunset in San Francisco.
And my husbandand I weren't keen on marriage
for a long time in our relationship.
We just didn't see it as necessarywhen it was just the two of us.
(13:05):
And I've actually liketalked to a lot of people, like,
okay, you're together, you're partnered.
What's the point in even being married?
So we didn't even really see itas necessary for us.
But as we started talking about kids
and having gotten through the other sideof the Prop eight debacle,
(13:25):
we began to see marriageas something of a countercultural act.
Actually, I won't speak for my husband,
but for me, certainlya bit of a countercultural act.
I have always had a little bit of thatin my personality anyway.
Here's this
thing that's been like enshrinedin huge organizations
and large swathes of the populationdesperately tried to stop.
(13:48):
All we wanted to do was live our liveslike everyone else
with the same legal rightsand responsibilities.
And let's be clearmarriage is a responsibility.
It's actually a legal contractwith a lot of big ramifications.
So why can't our relationship be protected
like everyone elsebefore we decided to get married, though?
(14:10):
A friend of my husbandsaid, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Be careful about former Mormons.
Once a mormon, always a mormon.
So they say.
I think what they were trying to say
is that our values are hardwiredinto us at an early age.
It's just it's not just taught.
It's taught and lived and reinforced.
And he wasn't totally wrong.
(14:31):
But by this point, I embracedthat there were absolutely things
I believed in from my Mormon upbringingthat would never, ever leave me.
Honesty, integrity, hard work,respect for others.
I was ready to take those valuesinto my marriage.
Now, getting to our wedding, my husband
(14:53):
and I decided to just elope at SanFrancisco City Hall.
We didn't want to go throughall of the trouble of a big wedding,
and I wasn't even sure who frommy family would even come.
Rememberthe sister who had voted for Prop eight?
Well, over the years,she had softened her stance and I think
not just a softening of a stance, butmore of a watching how we lived our lives
(15:17):
and that
relationship ship that had been injured
once upon a time during the Propeight debacle
had been repaired and we moved on.
And I think and you know, meand my siblings, we're a tight knit
group of five, and our relationshipswith each other are they matter.
(15:41):
I had a conversation.
I'll never forget this conversation.
I was having a conversationwith her on either
a Saturday, Saturday or Sunday
and letting her know, like our plans.
And I didn't feel hesitant in sharing.
Like I share many, many,many things with her over the years.
And so this was like a very normal thing.
(16:02):
It wasn't a super hyped up thing,but I did have some trepidation about,
oh gosh, just kind of sharing that.
Like, Yeah,we're actually going to get married.
I actuallydidn't know how it was going to land.
Anyway, I took the leap and I decided
to invite her to our wedding.
I guess you could call it a wedding,
(16:22):
but where we were going to elope at CityHall in San Francisco.
And she thankfully agreed to come.
She also mentioned another thing to me.
She said, David, you know,you should probably let Mom know.
Now, I hadn't even fought with my momabout gay marriage
because I was pretty certain,like what her stance was.
(16:44):
But I said to my sister, like, Really?
You think I should go ask Mom to, like,come to our gay wedding in San Francisco?
And she actually challenged meand she pushed me to reach out. And
again, I wanted
like, clarify my relationship,even with my mother, like,
speak to her often.
(17:04):
Wonderful relationshipconnected and close.
And yet in this way,
I just thought we were going to elopeand let people know.
After reading between the lines,she was actually saying,
Ask your mother because you might get
a different response than you think.
So I was still skeptical.
(17:25):
I called my mom.
I told her what was happening.
I invited her to come to the wedding and
she said yes.
And I couldn't believe it.
Even on the day.
I absolutely couldn't believe it.
Just imagine this.
Here was my sister that voted for Propeight in 2008
(17:46):
and my still devout Mormon motherattending my wedding.
And in fact, bothare the witnesses on our marriage license.
It almost sounds like fiction,but you just can't make up the truth.
The takeaway for me was to never give uphope as I was taught.
(18:06):
Don't judge peoplebefore they can show you who they are.
Okay.
So fast forward to today.
My husband and I have a sonwho is now six years old.
Prior to starting a family,my husband and I didn't naturally say,
Oh, what are our valuesBefore we have a child, let's
write them down and figure them outso we can like live a life
(18:30):
that adheres to a common,
shared way of seeing the world and being.
We certainly never thought about itin that way.
Never sat down and articulatedwhat our family values would be.
But raising kids reallybrings your values to the forefront.
As I've mentioned, I'm a marketer
(18:52):
and specifically I'm in the marketingto the wealth management business.
Recently, I was at a conferenceand I had a meeting with this
young entrepreneur who is startinga company entirely about helping families
articulate, documentand ultimately execute their values.
He asked questionslike What do your values look like?
How do you behave?
(19:12):
What role does each member of the familyplay in fulfilling that?
I thought this might be a compelling toolfor some of the clients I work with,
but of courseI also had to try it for myself.
So my husbandand I sat down with a coach to start
figuring out what our values wereand what they looked like in practice.
(19:35):
Now, before I get into whatthese values are,
I want to emphasize thatthese are just the values for my family
with our specific backgroundsin this particular moment in time.
Your values might look different.
They should look different,and our values may even change over time.
My child is only six years oldand what it looks like for him to live by
(19:55):
these values will change potentiallydramatically over the years to come.
We also created a vision statementfor our family and our vision.
Some folkslike, like to write it in sentences,
but it should be short and concise.
And I took a different approach.
I wanted them to be punchier statementsthat were like single words
(20:16):
with periods after them.
So the vision for my family is experience,
explore, impact, and our values
that align with that vision are kindness,
love, joy,
responsibility and purpose.
(20:39):
Let's start with love.
What does love like as a family valueactually look like?
You know, it's loving each other.
It is extending thatand sharing that love with others.
This one is seemingly straightforward,though there are different interpretations
of what love actually iswhen it comes to raising children.
Sometimes showing love is allowingchildren to go through difficult moments
(21:03):
and fighting the urge to, like, solve
all other problems,allowing them to build resilience.
I think it's very easyto want to be all things
for your child and to give them everythingthat they want.
But loving them also means for us,letting them
figure out for themselvesand holding boundaries.
(21:24):
You know, you have a young childthat's like pushing once, pushing twice,
pushing a third time.
Oh, Dad, can I have that set of Legoslike, Oh, no, not today.
We're not doing that.
Oh, Dad, can I please, please,
please have that set of Legos like,Oh, it's my favorite thing.
You really start to feel like, oh,my goodness, like I'm failing as a parent.
If I don't give into some of these requests.
(21:44):
And sometimes we find ourselves sometimesacquiescing like, okay, all right,
I guess it's fine, right?
But then we learn that no children
do so much better with boundaries.
And sometimes the tough stanceon having a boundary with a child
is actually really comfortingand provides safety for them.
But at the end of the day,
like when we were thinkingabout our family values around love,
(22:08):
what if love actually were our superpower?
You know, it's loving each other.
It's extending that love out
into and sharing thatwith others that we love,
whether it's in small moments or largesettings.
It's it's being a member of a communityand showing love and kindness.
(22:30):
Love is always, to us, unconditional.
It's not attached to something.
And I feel really strongly about that.
And I have this modeled quite well
in my own family growing up as a kid.
Love also changes as time goes on.
Like what it looks like,what it feels like.
(22:50):
It's flexible.
It's also always evolving.
Our next value is joy.
Now we are a busy family.
Yes, we are. We have an only.
I'm not quite sure how folksdo it with more than one actually.
Like hats off to you.
But we are a busy familyand our time together is always limited
(23:13):
and always changing.
We try to look for joy in all the moments
and set time for joysince our son has started school,
there are so many activities and eventsthat arise and we've begun looking
at every activity through the lens ofDoes this bring us joy?
If not, is this necessary for our family?
(23:34):
We also prioritize simple joys,even like just taking a walk in the woods.
Now I live in Portland, Oregon,so there is
lots of joy to be found in the naturethat surrounds us.
As an adult,I am also aware that expressing joy
doesn't necessarilycome naturally for me at work and in life.
(23:55):
Adults so oftenfeel like they have to put up a mask,
but that can end up shieldingsome of your joy and your light.
So I'm making a conscious effortto remember to bring that
mask downwhen I'm spending time with my family.
You know, there's timeswhere you have to add the professionalism
mask or the Oh,I'm talking to people at school mask
(24:20):
at home.
It's a time for those masks to come down.
And that sometimes isn'talways easy to do.
All right.
Next up is responsibility.
We are a multicultural family.
My husband is originally from China,and we've had to navigate Eastern values,
meeting Western valuesas we have begun to raise our son.
(24:42):
Speaking specifically to American culture,which I've known thoroughly
for my entire life.
There is a very individualistic approach
in American culture to the world.
In China,however, and many other cultures,
there is a much larger focus on collectivesociety and communal response ability.
(25:03):
And I think there's a lot to be takenfrom both approaches,
and they can even balance each other outwith a lot of harmony,
but sometimes actuallythese approaches clash and in our family,
responsibility comes up the mostwhen caring for ourselves.
I have to admit, quick tangent,I do not love making my bed.
(25:26):
I never have.
It's just not fun.
And I've never quite gottenover the drudgery of it.
So as an adult without a parentlooking over my shoulder,
I just got into the habitof not making my bed.
My husband, however, would reallyappreciate it if I made the bed
and we decided that it was somethingwe wanted our son to do as well.
So we were teaching him that when he wakesup, he has certain responsibilities.
(25:47):
You got to make the bed,
you got to brush your teeth,have breakfast, get ready for school.
You know,we all know routine is good for kids.
And we wanted him to get startedon his routine as early as possible,
but he was just not making his that dayafter day.
It was a struggle.
And one day I got up and I made my bed.
But miraculously, to me, I made my bed.
(26:10):
And my son went and made his bed.
And it was just like that.
Another aspect of
responsibility in our familiesvalues is being present
and not letting external stressorsimpact our home environment.
Like I work from homeand I have for a long time
(26:30):
and we have a rule in the House when Ileave my office and the door closes.
That is a symbolic ritualthat happens every day.
And when I leave,I am to leave work in my office
and move into the home environment
and not bring the stressorsfrom work into the family.
(26:50):
And that is really, really,
really challenging to do.
I actually think I'll be working on thatfor the rest of my life.
Also,responsibility means community at school.
Doing your part.
At my son's school, they have three rules.
Be kind, be respectful, be safe.
And I love that.
(27:11):
It's a simple way for kids to remember.
It's also a simple wayfor parents to remember,
and it's also a great reminderof how to move through the world.
Our next value is kindness.
I'm not going to lie.
There's an element of my personalitythat kindness can be really hard
for me sometimes, especiallyif I feel threatened in some way.
(27:34):
But I.
I try to stay mindful of kindnessand remember
that directnessdoesn't necessitate unkindness.
And there are times, especially whenI'm at work, I tend to be very direct.
I'm very matter of fact.
I love telling stories,and so I get very excited and energetic.
But at the same time,
if there's a project I'm working onand there is a need to be direct,
(27:57):
I am not going to shy awayfrom being direct.
But directness does notnecessitate unkindness because it's easy
sometimes for it to go off the railsand be perceived as, you know,
while the intense not to be unkind,it isn't not with me, not ever.
But it can come offsometimes as a little too direct.
I guess those areEast Coast routes for you.
(28:19):
For kids,
I think teaching kindness means impartingrespect and maintaining
the same set of standards at homeand with others.
I don't think the Mormons own the saying,but I remember learning it at church
and it was Kindness begins with me.
That was something my mother said overand over and over again.
(28:41):
I would hear it and at the same timethink, Gosh, yeah, okay, mom.
Now, as an adult, teaching a young person
or trying to teach a young person, well,I remember those things.
Modeling the behavior is perhapsthe most important thing I think I can do.
So I know at the beginningof this episode, I was telling you
(29:02):
how we had these five values,but before there were five,
there were seven, and we ended upwhittling them down to five.
But I actually wantto talk about all seven here.
And thisis one that didn't really make the cut
because we felt like it was incorporated
into some other elementsof our values, of our other values.
(29:25):
But I do want to talk a little bitabout grit, because it's important,
just like what is it even like?
Grit is just keep going,even in the face of difficulties.
You don't dwell on the struggle.
And I learned a lot about grit, actually,from my marathoning days.
A full marathon is 26.2 miles,you know, But somewhere along the journey
(29:47):
you are going to kind ofcave in on yourself.
And I remember reading about this and,you know, running articles,
running magazines at the time, butyour mind is literally going to tell you
to stop at some point in the racebecause your body is hurting
and your brain is going to start reallysending strong messages like, Hey, stop,
(30:08):
sorry, you're not listening.
Stop, stop, stop.
Legs are going to feelheavy, arms are going to feel heavy.
You're going to feel painlike you've never felt before.
Your back feels like it's goingto give out these sensations are different
for everyone, but literallythe brain is saying, Stop, please stop.
And it literally feels likethe whole world is caving in
and I'm going to need to stop and I'mnot going to be able to finish the race.
(30:33):
And for me, this happens
usually somewhere between Miles 17 and 19.
You never knowexactly when it's going to hit.
It's not like, oh, at mile 19.
It happens exactly then,but it happens somewhere along those miles
and it can really feel like, gosh,
I am at the precipice of failing.
(30:55):
I'm about to fail.
But I knew if I got to mile 19.2,I was golden.
I knew I'd finish and I'd finishedpretty well.
I read somewhere you just put one footin front of the other
and I even heard that even growing up,like when you're faced with adversity
or a struggleand you don't know how you're possibly
going to move,like from one day to the next,
(31:19):
you literally take one day at a timeor you take one step at a time,
or you take a minute at a time,an hour at a time.
You take what you need at a timeand you take it one step at a time.
Another family value of the seventhat didn't make it into the final one
because we felt like it was incorporatedinto some of the others is justice.
(31:44):
And for us, what that means is
we don't accept injustice.
We let people knowthey're mistreating us is not okay.
It also means that we advocate for otherswhen they are in need of help.
This feels incredibly challengingto live to me today in America,
(32:05):
there are so many injustices in the worldand it feels overwhelming
and it can feel nearly impossibleto make a difference in this way.
And yet this is somethingthat our family values
and that we're committedto instilling in our son.
So I just finished a fairly long monologue
about family valuesand specifically my family's values.
(32:28):
I hope I haven't been entirely talkingin a vacuum and that you all have been
following along and reflecting on your ownupbringings and your family today.
There are timeswhere I think very idealistically,
and I want to live in thisreally awesome world where I see love
and joy and experienceresponsibility and kindness
(32:52):
and see and recognize wisdom whereverit may be found and have the ability
to pick myself up and go forwardwhen it's not easy.
But it also can't go without saying thattaking the time to actually sit
and think about all of thisin an intentional
way was not easy.
We set four meetings 90 minutes apieceduring the business hours of our coach.
(33:16):
It was really challenging
for me to slow downin the middle of the day for 90 minutes
and to let myself go into this meetingand talk about our family values.
Even with a list of wordsto get us started.
It took a lot of practiceto shift my mindset, to get ready to talk
about these thingsand really dedicate the time that was
needed to be present
(33:38):
and readyfor these challenging conversations.
So that brings me to a few key questions.
How do you actually practiceand live your family values?
And how do you noticewhen you're off track
and how do you get back to a good place?
And all I'm going to say,
and I think this is true for everyone
(34:01):
living by your family values is hardand it requires self-awareness.
It requires open communicationwith those around you,
certainly with your spouse,with your child or children.
And for me,it's been an exercise in entering
and being willing to be vulnerableand a willingness
to even be called on your shitwhen you don't want to be.
(34:23):
That's how it shows up for me.
It's not always a fun exercise,but for family values to work in practice,
I think we need to have a willingnessto listen to our families
when they tell us we aren't doing our part
to uphold our agreements.
Before we go, I have one last word
on the political version of family valueswe've all heard so much about.
(34:48):
The truth is that real familyvalues are not one thing.
Your values are agreed upon by
you and your family,you and your community, you and yourself
really living
by your values is not about decidinghow others should lead their lives.
It's about decidingwhat you want for yourself.
(35:12):
Thank you for listening.
Decoded in Gold.
I've been your host, David Newsome.
You can follow the podcast on Instagram,YouTube,
LinkedIn and anywhere podcasts are found.
Take care.
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