The Conscious Edge podcast episode 110 with Alecia St. Germain and Jonathan Dugger on aligning your business with your values

Why Your Business Still Feels Like a Struggle Even When You’re Doing Everything Right

June 23, 2026
Energy & Soul Alignment

You can follow every system, every coach, and every piece of good advice and still end up with a business that doesn't feel like yours. That happens when the strategy is out of alignment with your values and your purpose. Aligning your business with your values, and using mindfulness as the bridge between what you believe and how you actually act, is what makes growth feel sustainable instead of forced.

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Aligning your business with your values sounds like something you do once, at a retreat, with a worksheet. You name your why, you write the mission, you move on. And then somewhere after the coaches and the courses and the strategies everyone swore by, you look up and the business you built doesn’t look much like the one you actually wanted.

That gap is what Jonathan and I get into here. Your values don’t usually fail you in some dramatic moment. They drift, while you’re busy following someone else’s roadmap. We talk about why you can follow every right step and still feel off, how your values evolve as you grow, and why money amplifies whatever is already running underneath you. I share some of the soul purpose work I do, and Jonathan opens up about a reframe that changed how he carries his own sense of urgency.

What We Cover

 In this episode on aligning your business with your values, you’ll discover:

  • Why following the right system or coach can still leave you with a business that doesn’t feel like yours
  • How to tell the difference between a value that’s truly yours and one you’re holding to keep yourself safe
  • Why your values evolve as you grow, and how to redefine them on purpose instead of by accident
  • How money amplifies whatever is already running underneath you, your purpose and your self-protection alike
  • What soul purpose work is, and how one reframe can turn pressure into something closer to joy
  • The STOP practice for checking alignment in real time, before you speak or decide
  • A few simple journaling questions for a quarterly values check-in you’ll actually look forward to
  • Why your time and money struggles tend to ease once you tend to the deeper capacities first
Why isn't it enough to follow the right systems or coaching to guarantee results in your business?

Because a system can’t produce results when it’s pointed in a direction that isn’t yours. I see this with individuals, small businesses, even whole company cultures. There’s a forced narrative or directive in place, and underneath it the actual values are saying something different. That gap has a name, dissonance, and you feel it as stress, poor sleep, that icky feeling after a meeting that looked fine on paper. You can follow every right step a coach gives you and still get results you don’t want, because no strategy can outrun a misalignment with your values. Aligning your business with your values is what lets a good strategy finally take hold, instead of grinding against something you can’t quite name.

How do you know the difference between values and self-protection?

This is where it gets subtle. Sometimes what you’ve identified as a value is actually a self-protection value, something you hold to keep yourself safe rather than because it’s fully who you are. A true value might be that you’re kind, honest, genuine. On top of that, you might hold being always prepared and always professional, the version you present so you stay accepted. The tell is in your body. If you feel resentful, depleted, or icky after living out a value, it’s worth asking whether you’re being kind for your own fulfillment or using kindness to manage how others feel about you. People pleasing is often kindness turned into a safety strategy. Acknowledging that doesn’t make you less kind. It lets you be kind from a clean place, which sometimes means saying no.

How do you realign your business with your values once you've drifted off course?

You start by accepting that you will drift. Life experience, other people’s advice, a coach’s system, even a tool, all of it can pull you off course, and the value driving you doesn’t disappear, you just disconnect from it. So you build in regular alignment testing. Jonathan suggests simple journaling: what felt out of alignment today, what felt icky, what brought joy, what felt aligned. At minimum, do a quarterly values check. Where are the disconnects, what are they costing you, where’s the alignment, and what’s it producing. In the moment, you can use STOP: stop or pause, take a breath, observe, proceed. The observe step is your mindfulness window to test whether what you’re about to do actually fits your values. It feels like over-analysis at first. With practice it becomes as natural as breathing.

Why does money amplify whatever is already going on in your business?

Money is an amplifier. Whatever you are, it makes you more of it. If you have strong values and a clear purpose, more money tends to expand your impact, you give more, you build more of what you believe in. But the same thing happens with whatever is running underneath you. In Immunity to Change, we talk about big assumptions, unconscious beliefs your mind holds to keep you safe, the ones that shape your behavior and your results even when they contradict your values. If one of those is “if I let go of control, my business will fall apart,” then the more money your business makes, the more controlling you become, unless you teach your brain something different. That’s why I pair values work with the nervous system work. Strategy alone won’t touch it.

What is energetic capacity, and how do your values connect to it?

Capacity is how much you can hold, and energetic capacity is about where your energy goes and whether it’s being generated by alignment or drained by misalignment. When you spend your days doing things that fit your values and your purpose, your energy regenerates. When you’re out of alignment, the same tasks drain you, no matter how productive you look. That’s why values aren’t a soft topic to me, they’re the foundation of your energetic capacity. Most entrepreneurs try to solve for time and money first, I don’t have enough hours, I don’t have enough money. What I’ve found is that those ease up once you tend to the deeper capacities, emotional, relational, and energetic. Handle how you hold your energy, and time and money start to fall into place.

Truth has always been one of my core values. It still is. But if you’d asked me to define it ten years ago, I would have given you a much simpler answer than I’d give you now.

Somewhere along the way, mostly through age and experience, that value got refined. I came to see that two truths can coexist and still be in conflict with each other. So these days I’m less interested in pinning down the one objective fact in a situation and more curious about each person’s experience of the facts. Same value. Deeper definition.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about values work. You don’t do it once. At a retreat Jonathan and I ran, we spent real time helping people name their values, and then we watched those definitions evolve as the conversation went deeper. Someone would say autonomy, and by the end realize the word they actually wanted was closer to feeling empowered to make their own choices. The value didn’t change. Their understanding of it did. This is where aligning your business with your values has to start, because if the definitions are fuzzy, everything you build on top of them will be too.

Why the Right Advice Still Leaves You Stuck

If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably done some version of purpose work. Simon Sinek’s start with why is everywhere, and it’s a good start. The trouble is what happens next. You start implementing strategies, you follow this coach and that framework and the business advice everyone’s repeating, and little by little you drift off your own values without noticing. You end up building something that doesn’t look anything like what’s actually aligned with who you are.

Jonathan put language to it that I keep coming back to. When there’s a forced narrative or directive in place, and there’s dissonance between the values you say you hold and the behavior actually showing up, that’s the breakdown. It happens to individuals, to small businesses, to entire corporate cultures. We are surrounded by dissonance right now, people and groups saying one thing and doing another.

You can’t out-strategy that gap. Aligning your business with your values is what lets a good strategy finally take hold, because a system can’t deliver what it promises when it’s pointed somewhere your values aren’t. This is exactly what came up in Jonathan’s episode on the first six months of buying a business, where the takeaway people kept repeating back to him was how much it helped to hear it’s okay to do it your own way. Sometimes the reason something isn’t working is that you’ve stopped listening to yourself.

The Difference Between a True Value and a Self-protection Value

Here’s where it gets subtle, and where most surface-level values work stops short. Sometimes a value you’ve named isn’t really a value. It’s a self-protection value, something you hold to keep yourself safe rather than because it’s fully who you are.

Jonathan described it well. Your true value might be that you’re kind, compassionate, honest. Sitting on top of that, you might hold being always prepared and always professional, the polished version you present so you stay accepted. Underneath the surface one is the real desire, to be loving, helpful, genuine. It can take some work, with a coach or in a room like our retreat, to peel back the layer and find the value underneath the value.

Kindness is the example I reach for most. When someone highly values kindness, it can show up as people pleasing, which is really a safety strategy. I need everyone to be okay so that I’m okay, so that I belong. When that person realizes they’ve been using kindness as a way to stay safe, they don’t suddenly become unkind. Kindness is still their value. They just stop crossing into resentment and martyrdom to live it out, and they start to discern the moments when the genuinely kind thing is to say no.

“Money is such an amplifier. Whatever you are, it just makes you more of it.”

Money Amplifies Whatever is Already There

We brought a money conversation into that retreat on purpose, because money is such an amplifier. Whatever you are, it makes you more of it. Strong values and a clear purpose, and more money tends to expand your impact. If generosity is real for you, you become more generous.

But the same is true for whatever else is running underneath you. In the Immunity to Change work I’m trained in, we talk about big assumptions, unconscious beliefs your mind holds to keep you safe. They shape how you feel, what you choose, and the results you create, even when those results contradict your stated values. Layer money on top of a big assumption and it amplifies that too. If somewhere underneath you believe that letting go of control means your business will fall apart, then the more money your business makes, the more controlling you become, unless you teach your brain something different.

That’s why I never treat aligning your business with your values as a soft, do-it-once topic. I pair the values work with Immunity to Change, which is psychology based, because that’s what addresses the rewiring that has to happen for who you are on the inside to match how you show up on the outside.

 “Mindfulness is your bridge in every single moment.”

Coming Back into Alignment is the Real Practice

Knowing your values isn’t enough on its own, because you’re going to get pulled off course. By life, by advice, by somebody’s system or process. So the practice is realignment, and it’s ongoing. Aligning your business with your values isn’t a one-time decision, it’s something you come back to.

Jonathan is a big believer in regular alignment testing, and it can be simple. Journal a few questions: what felt out of alignment today, what felt icky, what brought joy, what felt aligned. At a minimum, run a quarterly values check, both for yourself and your business. Where are the disconnects, and what are they costing you? Where’s the alignment, and what’s it producing? It’s uncomfortable the first few times, and Jonathan has watched whole companies turn quarterly value alignment sessions into something people actually look forward to.

In the moment, there’s a practice he leans on called STOP. Stop or pause, take a breath, observe, proceed. The observe step is the mindfulness window, the place you test whether what you’re about to do actually fits your values before you do it. Jonathan, who’s lived with impulse control challenges since childhood, uses it to respond instead of react. It feels like overthinking at first. With practice it becomes as automatic as breathing.

Why Purpose Isn’t Optional

Underneath all of this is purpose, and purpose isn’t a nice-to-have. I’ve followed the research on longevity for years, and the Blue Zones work on the world’s longest-living communities keeps surfacing the same thing. People need a reason to wake up in the morning. You can read more about that here. It drives happiness and satisfaction at any age, and the body and the brain do better when there’s purpose behind them. I’ve come to believe the body starts to break down when it doesn’t have one.

Purpose can also be an evolving thing. When I do a soul purpose reading and someone is what I’d call a younger soul, with lots still to learn, they often feel purposeless early in life, and I tell them that’s okay, that’s actually the assignment for now, to experience the world and take it in. The reading work is its own conversation, which I get into fully in the episode on the soul map underneath a purpose-driven business. What I’ll say here is that pairing soul purpose with the science of Immunity to Change is what lets the energetic and the psychological meet. One names who you’re here to be. The other rewires the protection patterns that get in the way.

“The body breaks down when it doesn’t have a purpose.”

What Energetic Capacity Actually Means

When I talk about capacity, this is what I mean. Aligning your business with your values is, at its heart, an energetic act. Building capacity is getting into energetic alignment, filling your days with what doesn’t drain your body or your soul, learning to lead yourself through your emotions, staying grounded in your relationships, and handling the money piece without losing your sense of safety. Most entrepreneurs try to solve for time and money first, because those are the ones that scream the loudest. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough money. What I’ve seen, again and again, is that those two ease up on their own once you tend to the deeper three. We went deep on this in our episode on energetic capacity and leading from alignment, and it’s the same truth here.

So if your business feels like a struggle even though you’re doing everything right, this is the place I’d look first, before the strategy. Whether the strategy is actually in service of your values and purpose, or working against them. Mindfulness is the bridge that keeps you connected to the answer, moment to moment. As Jonathan likes to put it, you can’t align unless you define. The defining is worth the effort. It’s the most important work you’ll do, as a business owner and as a person, and it’s the most overlooked.

Resources and Links Mentioned

Want to keep talking this one through? Come hang out with us live in Podcast Club at consciousedge.com/club.
RSVP Here for Podcast Club

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Full Transcript Here

Alecia St. Germain 00:00
Hey, before we get into the episode, I want to tell you about something I'm trying called Podcast Club. Here's why. If you've been on social media, even at all lately, you might have noticed that everything is starting to sound and look the same. It's not about having real conversations anymore, it's about performing for the algorithm, and half of it sounds AI-generated. So I wanted to try something different. Podcast Club is like book club, but for this show. Once a week, we'll get together live on Zoom, and actually talk. What do you want to go deeper on? Where are you finding that you feel resistance, and how can you take what you've been listening to and actually apply it to your life. It's for women who listen to this podcast and want to be in real conversations with other women like them. If that's you, head to Conscious edge.com forward slash club, pick the days that work for you. I'll save your spot, and I can't wait to see you there. If you are an entrepreneur, you have probably done some sort of values work, purpose work. Simon Sinek is really big on start with why, and even though that's the way most people sometimes start to develop their business, it's very easy to find yourself drifting off of your values, and as you start to implement different strategies, and you follow different coaches and different business advice, sometimes you find yourself starting to build a business that doesn't look anything like what is in alignment with your values? So that's what Jonathan and I are going to dive into today. Hey, you leader, entrepreneur, business owner, solopreneur, whatever you call yourself, we know you're a visionary business builder, wealth seeker, looking to combine a passion for doing good with leading consciously. It's time to shift from a traditional focus of pure wealth accumulation to one that integrates well-being and fulfillment. You're here for a purpose, and it's time to shine your light. So, here we go. Welcome. welcome back to the Conscious Edge podcast. I'm your host, Alecia St. Germain, founder of The Conscious Edge, and we have been having these conversations for so many years, Jonathan and I, that we decided to start a podcast, so it's been a lot of fun, and I'm so happy that you're here for another Mindfulness Matters.

Jonathan Dugger 02:46
I'm happy to be here as well. Little congested, but a little congested. Yes, coming back

Alecia St. Germain 02:52
from

Jonathan Dugger 02:53
Iceland.

Alecia St. Germain 02:54
Iceland, and what would you say about Iceland for anybody who's like, "Oh, I've always wanted to go there.

Jonathan Dugger 03:01
Definitely follow that dream impulse, whatever you want to call it. It is a magical place, a special people similar to some places I've been. I think of the Scottish Highlands and parts of Ireland, but also very unique in its own magical way. So go cool, definitely, go,

Alecia St. Germain 03:22
go, that's cool. So we're going to talk today about energetic capacity and how your values fit. I brought this idea up to Jonathan. I do something called Soul Purpose Readings, which I will link that episode in the show notes for you, but that's on an a real energetic level. Some people would cross that over into definitely like a woo category, but it's really fascinating to me, because Jonathan and I have these conversations where we both walk with one leg in the spiritual sort of unexplainable things and one lane in the science, and science sometimes explains or runs so parallel. I like how you

Jonathan Dugger 04:08
said leg and lane,

Alecia St. Germain 04:10
leg and lane. Yeah,

Jonathan Dugger 04:11
there's something to that.

Alecia St. Germain 04:17
And so, yeah, one leg in each lane. That's, I think, that's what I was trying to say. Welcome to our podcast, where sometimes we get very tangent, tangential, is that a word,

Jonathan Dugger 04:29
tangential,

Alecia St. Germain 04:30
tangent,

Jonathan Dugger 04:31
tangent, tangential.

Alecia St. Germain 04:34
Anyways, if you are new here, thanks for sticking around for the silliness, but if you are new here, we love to talk about all things, everything. Nothing's off the table, but we cover everything that is involved in being a human, having a business, and that whole entire experience that we go through, from the personal side to the spiritual. Side to the business strategy side, and nothing is off the table, which is what I love, and that is really how our conversations for the last 20 years have gone. So we put these episodes out every single week, so if you enjoy today's episode, make sure you hit the follow or subscribe button from wherever you are listening, and I have to tell you, Jonathan, just your episode on what your first six months were like after buying a business. I have had so many people reach out to me and tell me how much they loved that episode. It was so helpful, and the biggest takeaway that everyone kept saying was I just really appreciate that you told me it's okay to do it my own way, and I just feel like that is so in alignment with today's topic, which is around values. I'm going to talk a little bit about soul purpose, and so I think you and I both agree one of the main points we really wanted to land was that you cannot just follow the process or the system or the coaching and then the results come if it's out of alignment with who you are and what your values are.

Jonathan Dugger 06:22
Yep, and that's the breakdown of a lot of with individuals, with businesses, with whole corporate cultures. When there is a forced narrative or a forced directive that is not being fed by, or that's being there's dissonance between the values that are supposed to be in place or that you have identified and are in place and what the behavioral outcome is, so I think we can get to some of those kind of specifics related to the disconnect and that dissonance, because boy, we are we surrounded by dissonance these days.

Alecia St. Germain 07:03
Well, and there's a lot of studies that I have been following for a while around longevity and how it is essential when you look at Blue Zones, and I'm losing the word for it, but people need a purpose, and in no matter what your age is, it drives your happiness and satisfaction and fulfillment in life, and it drives your will, and it keeps people younger when they have a purpose. The body, it's fascinating to me, the body breaks down when it doesn't have a purpose.

Jonathan Dugger 07:45
Body and the brain break down, and the brain, yeah, absolutely,

Alecia St. Germain 07:51
that's so fascinating to me. So I think the thing you really wanted to land was like we need solid values and purpose. So, where do you want to go with that piece. I think that a lot of things, a lot of people start at a surface level, but I don't think they go really deep.

Jonathan Dugger 08:10
Yeah, it's interesting because we live in a culture of superficial and we're surrounded by the superficial, and we also get a lot of direction, external direction, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but we take that as gospel, we take that as what we're supposed, that's our directive, that's our roadmap, and until you spend some time and energy and effort, and it can take a lot of time, energy, and effort to put yourself out there, get to a place of vulnerability, and dig into what really drives you, i.e. your core values, until you can work on that definition and those levels of definition, and we're often following someone else's narrative, whether it's from a cultural level, or a company level, or a coaching level, even without that integration of what we truly believe to be core. So one of the things we did at our retreat was spend quite a bit of time identifying values and then defining them, but then redefining them through the process, because that is an interesting piece that you and I were just talking about before we started recording today, is our values. I don't think they necessarily change, but they do evolve. They evolve with our life experience and with our just getting a range of things to compare and contrast to, in terms of people and places and behaviors and experiences, so if you do a good job of truly defining your core values, so that your purpose, those things that drive you, your why, those are all different ways to identify that. I don't think those really change, but how they present. The context around them, the behavior that comes as a result of being driven by those values may change, but I think it's more getting more experience and getting being more willing to redefine, and that's one of the things we talked about in the retreat, and that I encourage my clients is to go through periodic reevaluation of your values and any sort of what is connecting and then what's disconnecting and then the whys of that,

Alecia St. Germain 10:32
so when we talk about just the work of finding the whys and finding the values, so and I wanted to dig a little deeper on that one from what we did at the retreat was everybody went through and they did an exercise to find their values, so you could do any exercise. I mean, there's so many out there that you can go through and do your values, but what was fascinating was we then went into a conversation because there was a big piece of a money conversation we wanted to bring, and the money is such an amplifier, so whatever you are, it just makes you more of it. And so, if you have really strong values and you layer money on top of that, and you know what your purpose is, your purpose, I believe your purpose is going to expand, and you're going to have more impact. If you believe in generosity, you're going to be more generous, but in the same respect, when you have your value system, and then you layer on a system of self protection, like we talk about in immunity to change, which is based on the idea that the unconscious has a big assumption that big assumptions that are there for self protection, and these are thoughts that happen unconsciously that inform how you feel, what behaviors you choose, and ultimately the results you create that are sometimes counter to the values that you have, and so if you lay your money on top of big assumptions, it amplifies those too. So, if you feel like if I let go of control, then everything, my business will fall apart. The more money your business makes, the more controlling you become if you don't teach your brain something different.

Jonathan Dugger 12:18
Yep, that's exactly right.

Alecia St. Germain 12:20
So, we went through and we identified some big assumptions that were related to money that might have been influencing the values that people chose, and some people realized, oh, that's not really a value of mine, that's a self-protection value, that's like a value I hold to protect myself, not because I am fully expressed as a human.

Jonathan Dugger 12:47
It's interesting, too. Those sometimes those self-protection values fall around a true value. So, your true value may be that you are the kind of person that is kind and compassionate and honest, you may hold that core as that's who you want to be, so you may hold an artificial value of being always prepared and always professional, and our this isn't as good of an example as I want, but it's all coming up with at the moment, but you hold that as sort of your surface value that you present to everyone else, and you tell yourself, but underneath that is this true desire to be loving, to be kind, to be helpful and to be genuine, but it might take removing some of those layers in some kind of work with a coach, or like in our retreat, because I mean, I think I'm trying to remember one of the breakthroughs that I personally had in that retreat, but it was something related to that, where I had held a word as a value word, and I realized it wasn't that, it was something deeper than that, and we had several people in the retreat that, that did that, that their language evolved from, well, I'm not, it's not exactly autonomy that I'm looking for, it's the sense of self, the where I'm empowered to make my own choices, it became more specific because they had a definition and then they redefined it when clarity came through conversation and some self work that we did within the confines of that retreat

Alecia St. Germain 14:30
and I think what that lends to when you think about kindness and somebody who highly values kindness and helpfulness and a lot of times that can come through in like people pleasing, which people pleasing is a self-protective mechanism in like I need everyone to feel okay and be okay to protect my safety, like so that I belong, and so what I have found in this work is that some. One who realizes that they are using people-pleasing kindness, essentially kindness as a manipulation tool to be okay, that they don't like suddenly become not kind, it's still their value, they are still so kind, but they're doing it without crossing over into being resentful or being a martyr, and sacrificing themselves in order to be kind, they're doing it because truly being kind fulfills them, and they can discern, okay, this is the kind thing is actually for me to say no,

Jonathan Dugger 15:38
yes, it's also that's super interesting that you brought up that example, because I see this and disconnect from all the way from a corporate level to the individual, the entrepreneur, and to the individual small business person too, in the within their business, where they'll have, we can even just use kindness. I want a core value of my company to be that we are kind, we are thoughtful, and we stay in integrity with what we do and the products we provide or the services we provide. Well, you can see resentment build where, like you said, kindness or some of those positive attributes are being used in some sort of manipulative way, because there's dissonance, and this is one of the places that mindfulness became so powerful as a bridge between that core value and whatever the behavioral output is. This time in the middle, we assess what's going on before we behave, before behavior presents itself, or after something is done, but it feels icky, because the body always knows your brain may be telling you, well, this is what I'm supposed to do, or this is the most professional thing to do, or this is getting me to the next, making sure I keep this client, so I'm going to say these things, or do these things, well, if you feel stressed, you're not sleeping well, you just feel icky after an encounter with a particular client. Well, your body's telling you there's a disconnect, there's dissonance there. So, learning to pause in the middle and asking yourself questions like, is this truly aligned with the value of kindness, am I truly being kind for the right reasons, and that may sound like a lot of breakdown and analysis between here and there, but that's where the practice comes in, where it becomes instantaneous, you give yourself five seconds before you speak, before you make an offer, before you add a value, try to add a value proposition to a negotiation, or like you said before, you decide to say no, because often acknowledging that stepping back from something or stepping out of something because it is misaligned with what you're trying to accomplish is the most powerful way to acknowledge and to reinforce your value, values as an important driver to what you're doing, is saying I'm not doing this or I'm not working with this person.

Alecia St. Germain 18:16
Okay, so for fun, you're familiar with sole purpose. Let me just briefly explain. So, soul purpose is something that I'm trained in doing. It is a combination of being trained, but also having some intuitive gifts that, like, work together with this thing, and it's the ideas that your name is encoded with challenges that you're going to experience in this life, talents that you have, goals like what you're here to accomplish, or the goal is what you're here to learn, so funny because our society defines goal as like a tangible outcome, and soul purpose defines goal as what you're here to learn, what's the lessons to take away, and then encompassing in that is also soul, like what is the soul's purpose here, like why are you here, how much in your experience between soul purpose and like your, because I did your sole purpose reading, and your values, did you find them aligned, like just if you were to go with like your scientific sort of psychology-based values,

Jonathan Dugger 19:36
very much so, especially when I allowed myself to be vulnerable and to acknowledge that there was some things that were a little hard to hear from a standpoint of maybe self protection is the right way to say it. One of the things that jumps out at me right away is, so there's the concept that that sort. A, you could call it reincarnation, or reinventing of the soul, coming back and trying to complete something. Well, part of what came out of our conversation is my soul is on its last cycle, so there is meaning that I fought the good fight, I've finished the race, I can go on to whatever's bigger and beyond. You're not that your soul disappears or energy never dissipates, it just changes form. So that's physics. So I first, when I was taking in that information, I was like, no way, there's more, I've got other things to do, but then I started really digging into that, and I got to a place of joy with it, because one of the things you said to me was one of your reasons that you're even though it's doesn't seem like your personality all the time, of being more introverted and eating these places and times of peace, you really are a driver, like you have these things you want to accomplish, you've got these things, and you've done so many things in this lifetime that our friend Eric says I must be a vampire or something, because I've done all these things, but that's related to this, it's my last spin on the planet, I've got these things that I do feel some sense of pressure or purpose driven pressure, yeah, urgency, there's the word to get accomplished, or at least to attempt, it's almost like bucket list items, so it's these things, and when I took it in that format, it completely changed my self-induced pressure behind it into a place of fun, and it's like this trip to Iceland that was a bucket list item, but I went in the context of my oldest god since graduation trip, and it's great. I've always wanted to go to Iceland, so it's.. I'm having a difficult time putting this into words, but it was a perspective shift from the standpoint of something that I had probably seen as a more of a negative from a place of pressure to something that still is there's an urgency there, but it's from a place of joy now, for the most, like

Alecia St. Germain 22:18
relishing in the moment,

Jonathan Dugger 22:20
yeah,

Alecia St. Germain 22:21
so a lot of clients that have that kind of code that comes up, essentially your name gets decoded with certain things, and it's all in the ideas that God or spirit or universe gives your parents, your name creates a sound, create is creation, and so, so I'm not probably doing it justice, that's why I say I'm going to link the sole purpose reading here the episode I did on that, but what's interesting is the clients who have that this is my last trip around the sun, it doesn't matter to me what your belief system is, you can subscribe to whatever religion you want, I am of the belief that whatever you believe, if it works for you and it supports you and it helps you do good things here on the planet, then it is good, like, for you. So take that with a grain of salt. And I believe that even if you're falling into, like, to me this is like the imprint that God puts on your life, and how you show up here. So, the people who have that urgency in their life, a lot of times they are ones who accomplish success, like by standards of society, very early. And what happens is, when your soul is born into your body, you are here. You have to learn how to be human, and it was like, why we make so many mistakes early on. Why we take the hard way. It's like our soul is like trying to figure out, how do I live in this human world? And I always joke, how I have to stay at home, my human needs to eat, my human needs to go the bathroom, because my soul is like, let's just keep creating, and so many times those what someone might call an old soul, they will just intuitively know and transition into more purpose-driven work much faster. Yeah, they will take more chances, they will experience more things, they will be laser focused on what they're doing, and that urgency feel can become an intensity that is self sabotaging, like the human mind, the brain. When we talk about big assumptions, will layer on a component of self protection that takes that urgency and that time that you should be relishing and taking risks and taking those chances, and it puts a level of intensity on it that makes it pressure, and it makes it unenjoyable, and it makes you afraid to make mistakes. And so that's where the work comes in, that's why I love the sole purpose work, you do the values work, but I pair it with the immunity to change, which is very psychology based, because to me that takes the human mind and the science of how it works and addresses the rewiring that needs to happen to bring it into alignment with how you want to be expressed in that soul or energetic level.

Jonathan Dugger 25:27
Yeah, I think that was the other piece when you initially did my reading that I thought was just from the sort of the observer, the scientist standpoint. There was so much alignment, even from a language standpoint, of if you read one of my standard testings that I've done for personality in the past, when, as a grad student, or whatever, the different times I've been tested with various instruments, some of the descriptions of personality attributes for me, a lot of them were very similar to language that was in the sole purpose descriptions, not generic stuff. This is very specific to how you respond in certain situations, how you evaluate crisis, and what you find as rewarding, and what you find as drudgery and tough to get through, very similar, like I went back, there's a standardized personality assessment called the MMPI, and I still had that old report, the last time it's been 20 years since I've took it, but so I actually mapped some of those things to certain sections of the MMPI, and it was amazing to me how relevant it was, like how similar it was in some respects,

Alecia St. Germain 26:49
and this is the moment where I tell everyone I don't know why it works, I don't know how it works, I just know I have not had, I've even had people say to me, you told me this was like one of my goals, one of them specifically was like I was going to be physically building, I was going to take a vision and I was going to be physically building something, and I thought you were crazy, because that was not the path she was on, and she reached out to me, she goes, one year later I am building residential assisted living facilities.

Jonathan Dugger 27:22
Yep,

Alecia St. Germain 27:23
so I mean, like, again, I don't know why. What I do know is that it makes my world more beautiful, and when I get to do that soul purpose reading with another soul, and I get to like intermingle and connect with that soul, it feels like such a privilege, and to get to know a human at that kind of level, and it's such a heart connection, and I love doing it. So, I think that people don't spend enough time in their values, and that can look like whatever you want it to look like. If you want it to be at the sole purpose level, if you want it to be at the science values driven level, I love it all. I'm here for it

Jonathan Dugger 28:03
all, but you need

Alecia St. Germain 28:05
it, and you need a purpose, because the body does better, the brain does better, it all works better with purpose. So then we've talked about doing the work to realign when we talk about like big assumptions that are layered on, and it's not just enough to know your values, because you are going to get pulled off course by life experience, by other advice, by something a coach told you to do, somebody's system or process, or AI, or whatever. Is there anything you'd add to, like, do the work to realign.

Jonathan Dugger 28:42
I am a big believer that, especially the more chaos you're in, the more dissonance we live in, and we're surrounded by it now. I think this, in my lifetime at least, this is the most I have seen as examples, and maybe it's just because my awareness has increased, I'm paying more attention, but we have so many people around us, and so many groups around us that are saying one thing and doing another. They're obvious, the blatant misalignment in extreme examples from the standpoint of politics and religion, and all the subjects that you just try and stay away from, and you know, different in family dynamics to keep from having arguments. There's so many exaggerated examples of this around us. So I think it's even more important now than ever to do regular alignment testing, and that can look show up a lot of different ways. It can be simple journaling with asking questions on a daily basis. When you journal of what today felt gross for me, what just felt out of alignment, what today brought joy, what today felt in alignment. Just asking simple questions like that, and it may take you a while to get comfortable with. With really digging into those kind of questions, but that's all it is. Practice is getting because the value driving that being driven by purpose doesn't go away, it's always there, but we disconnect from it constantly because of a variety of reasons. So, at a minimum, I think everyone, individual and business, should do a quarterly assessment of values. Where are the disconnects? What's, and what are those disconnects causing? Where's the alignment, and what are the results of those alignments? And you'll again, it may be uncomfortable, maybe the first couple of times that you do it, but when you get in, I've seen this within companies. When you get in, a make it part of the process. I've seen it become an actual thing that people look forward to, like whole companies that now have value alignment sessions at least once a quarter that look forward to that type of engagement, because it is an opportunity to explore what's working and what's not, and the whys of it. So,

Alecia St. Germain 31:08
what's fascinating to me is when I sit across from someone who is very much in the doing, and they're very analytical, and like they just like the facts, are the facts very dry, and I don't perceive them as what I might call warm and fuzzy, or fluffy, or like I used to. I used to want to do this work with them, and I would feel like I'd have to tread so lightly because I didn't want them to perceive that this wasn't valuable and that the coaching that they were getting from me, like that was my own big assumption, my own fear of not being seen as valuable for what I was providing, and I have learned to just lean so hard into that, because it makes them so uncomfortable, and yet they are so grateful. Like, I loved this. This was so helpful. I'm having ahas. I feel totally different about something, whatever it is. I lean so hard into it, because that's what they want. They want to be uncomfortable, they don't want it to stay in that comfort zone. So I think the reason I want to bring that up is because if you think your team or someone around you isn't going to be open to this, even though you might prescribe to it, lean into it, because it shifts a team, it shifts the way people connect, and let that name the discomfort. Yeah, this is uncomfortable to do this, and it's also amazing.

Jonathan Dugger 32:48
Absolutely, and we've talked about it in a lot of different episodes, but when you have a place where that feels like failure, that feels like dissonance, there is that discomfort. Ask the questions, where is the lesson in this? Where's the gift in this, and it's amazing when you change your have that perspective shift. It's amazing the insights and clarity that can come. So one practical place to start this with yourself, and you could even do this in team environments, is whenever you're approaching something that that even before you approach it feels uncomfortable or potentially uncomfortable or you feel like it's a big decision or it's a big step or it's a hard conversation, use what the acronym stop S T O P, so s stop or pause, t take a breath, o observe, p proceed, and during the observation the o of observe, that's your mindfulness time to test value alignment, is this a upcoming conversation feel difficult because I'm approaching it from a place that isn't right for me. I'm coming from a place of I've got to make my quota at work. I've got to check this box when my values say I need to do what's best for this customer and for myself to stay healthy and to stay in alignment. Initially, it may feel like, okay, I'm having to overanalyze this, but all it takes is practice to get to where that's just part of the process, and because I've always had struggled with some impulse issues as a kid and as an adult from ADD, ADHD, whatever you want to call it, but some of that neuro spiciness. One of the things my lack of impulse control was on my report card, it came up as talks too much, can't sit still, all those things. So I still struggle with some of those things when it comes. Comes to reacting instead of responding, so I, I have worked incorporated this as part of my process, where I take a beat, I observe what my body's doing, what my brain's doing, where's is there a disconnect, is there a misalignment, and then I proceed. Now I don't do it perfectly by any means, I still have some impulse control issues that those don't go away, it's just learning to manage them. So the more practice you get, though, the more it becomes a part of a process response, just like breathing, and you learn to take that pause and that place of observation before you proceed, before you behave, and it can make a huge difference, and if you do that at a company level before any sort of dramatic shift, and maybe that time of observation is two days of conversations as groups, it's not in the instant, but it's still part of that process,

Alecia St. Germain 36:00
yeah, yeah, so man, I think we need to do a whole nother episode. Maybe we'll do this one next, because I was, as you were talking about that, it was like stopping and thinking about if something is aligned or not aligned. I believe that our current society has put so much emphasis on boundary setting that we're using it as an avoidance strategy. I

Jonathan Dugger 36:30
just had this conversation yesterday with somebody,

Alecia St. Germain 36:33
so I do think that the next Mindfulness Matters episode we record it would make sense to talk about that, because someone will, I can already see some someone saying this isn't in alignment with my values, so I'm going to set a boundary, or I'm going to, I'm going to avoid this, and I'm going to call it a boundary.

Jonathan Dugger 36:56
Yeah, that's the key, right there, is calling of it's really avoidance, but you're calling it a boundary because you just don't want to deal with it. You're checking out,

Alecia St. Germain 37:06
yeah, and it's breaking, and it goes back to an episode we did quite a while ago on protecting your peace, like maybe choosing your peace, and there's like also a difference between choosing your peace and avoiding it,

Jonathan Dugger 37:22
yeah. Well, and the irony is that keeps you in a constant state of dissonance, which is actually disrupting your peace. You'll never find a place of peace as long as you are living in a state of dissonance. So,

Alecia St. Germain 37:36
yeah, yeah, so any last words around, because we're gonna continue this conversation. Any last words, though? Specifically, three key things, if you could take nothing else away from today, is one, you need solid, you need to understand your values and your purpose, and sometimes your purpose is an evolving thing. One of the things that sometimes comes to me when someone is a younger soul, like, still has lots of lessons to learn, is they will feel very purposeless for the beginning part of their life, and part of what I say to them is, like, that's okay, that's actually your purpose right now, is to not have a purpose and just experience the world and take it all in and later on that drops in, but to have that connection to your values and your higher purpose to do the work to align and realign to take into account that there are things that happen in our younger years as humans that put a layer of self protection on us, and that is where the mind starts to sabotage the soul work. It starts to get in the way of what your purpose is. And the third thing being mindfulness is your bridge to in every single moment. Mindfulness is not a thing that you do once in a while, it's really a thing that you do in all moments when you're really practiced at it, and you will stay more in alignment with your values. You won't find yourself going off course, and then referring back to what you said, like in that episode on buying a business, that sometimes the reason that something's not working the way that it should is because you aren't taking the time to really connect in and listen to yourself and maybe your values,

Jonathan Dugger 39:28
trying to live off of someone else's,

Alecia St. Germain 39:30
yeah, trying to live off someone else's, or what someone else said should work, and really trusting yourself, leaning into your intuitive abilities, and giving yourself the space to experiment and move into alignment with yourself, anything you would add to that?

Jonathan Dugger 39:46
Just a statement that it helps me remember, just, you know, I like mnemonics, and so you can't align unless you define, so that defining piece, it's worth the work, it's. Worth the effort, it's worth the time. So take those steps, and it doesn't happen overnight. It's something that's a process, so but yeah, just start that work if you have it.

Alecia St. Germain 40:10
Yeah, and it's the most important work I think you do as a person, as a business owner, but as a person too. And it's the most overlooked. I don't know how else to land it anymore, clearly, but

Jonathan Dugger 40:25
I agree.

Alecia St. Germain 40:26
You have to do this kind of inner work, and who you are as a person, how you relate. I talked so much about capacity. How you build capacity is getting into an energetic alignment, like things that don't drain your body, and they don't drain your soul, suck your soul. How you handle your emotions, which is how you lead yourself, your emotional capacity, how you interact with other people, your leadership with other people, and being in relationship with other people, and the financial piece, and the time piece, which is the thing that most entrepreneurs try to solve, is like, I don't have enough time, and I don't have enough money. Those things fall into place really easily when you handle the other three.

Jonathan Dugger 41:16
Absolutely. So, super good point to end on.

Alecia St. Germain 41:21
So, with all of that being said, sending you so much love.

Jonathan Dugger 41:25
Be well, everybody.

Alecia St. Germain 41:27
Thanks for listening to the Conscious Edge podcast. Make sure you subscribe and take a moment to be kind and share this episode with someone you care about. Leave a review to help us bring more compassionate leaders building businesses and creating wealth to the table, and for show notes, head over to Conscious edge.com forward slash podcast. This podcast and the linked materials are presented solely for general information, educational and entertainment purposes, and should not be taken as personal or medical advice or any kind of mental health treatment. Please consult a medical or mental health professional if you feel you need such services. Please be advised that all investing and entrepreneurial endeavors involve risk, and the use of the education and information on this podcast and linked materials is at the user's own risk.

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