Jimsy Jampots #165 - What are your values?
In which I look at what's important, and make strawberry hearts
Things I think
I don’t have much tolerance for what I would, if I was in a bad mood, call “woo”. Actually, that’s not true: if I was in a bad mood I’d call it “faux-inspirational, snakeoil-adjacent bullshit, peddled by charlatans taking advantage of the unhappiness of people in a political system and economy that holds people down rather than helping them to grow.” But that’s a bit wordy, so I’ll just stick with “woo” for now.
Hopefully you know what I mean, though. Workshops by Caroline Calloway. Self-help books that talk about the importance of self-love or use phrases like “unlock your inner power” but are 90% illustrations or text in 72pt. Professional training courses where the advice boils down to “Just do the thing you’re scared of” without telling you how, or looking at the wider context of why you might be struggling. Instagram reels of pretty, thin women promising you that, yes, you can work from home for half the time you currently work while also somehow doubling your current income, and they’ll tell you exactly how if you give them money. DiSC, Myers-Briggs, OPQ32 and any other personality test that fits you neatly into one of a limited number of personas in order to solve all of your life’s problems. 95% of things which promise “Empowerment” - as long as you’re willing to pay for it (£5.99 for the first three months and £19.99 a month forever after, with a £50 cancellation fee).
Basically, anything that promises to make your life magically better, but has as much substance to it as candy floss. Schemes and courses and books and secrets that promise to change your life, in exchange for money. Things that, when you’re stuck and desperate, seem like lifelines. It’s Jack swapping his cow for magic beans, but instead of a beanstalk and a goose that lays golden eggs there’s a load of faux-feminist platitudes and a pyramid scheme. It’s Ariel swapping her fins for legs, but instead of having to get a kiss within three days to make all her dreams come true she just has to believe in herself hard enough. Hope is a powerful thing, and when people are sad and lost they’ll pay a lot for it. Taking advantage of that desperation instead of offering practical, tangible, accessible help is a despicable thing to do, and I have no time for it.
There are only two things in the realm of “woo” that I’ve ever gotten along with. One is Insights profiling, a thing we do at work where you answer fifteen minutes of really random questions and it somehow spits out a 20 page report on you that’s so accurate it sent one person in my training group to therapy, made another redefine his entire relationship to work, life and himself, and sent me on a mission to overhaul my confidence and work persona because I was so furious at how accurate the 20 pages of “She’s just really nice” were. I’ve done it twice now, and it’s been very accurate and helpful both times. I didn’t want to like it, but when it’s so disgustingly correct about everyone I have to at least respect it.
And the second thing was, surprisingly considering everything I’ve just said, a life coach. Way back when I was working at the NSPCC, food blogging and mostly fine but not really sure what I wanted out of life, my manager at the time and dear friend Holly was training to be a life coach and needed someone to do it for free so she could be assessed. I had nothing to lose and I wanted to help my friend, so I put scepticism aside and volunteered to be guinea pig.
I think it worked for me because it was so incredibly practical. We spent a few sessions unpicking what I wanted from life, and a few more sessions looking at how I could get it. That was it. There were no empty mantras, no “You go, girl! You got this!”, no unrealistic promises, no sacred pieces of wisdom imparted or secret tips given that were both so simple any idiot could do them and yet somehow also so clever that most people hadn’t thought of them - just a straightforward process of “What do you want? And how are you going to get it?”.
One of the first things we did when trying to answer those questions was look at what was important to me, and identify my core values. At the time it felt navel-gazing and was genuinely embarrassing to spend so much time thinking about myself, but it ended up being really quite revolutionary for me and my happiness: for every subsequent decision I made during the coaching, I could refer back to the values and see how they aligned with them, because if you’re doing things that don’t align with the things that are fundamentally important to you then you’re never going to be content, let alone happy.
Lots of techniques from those coaching sessions have stuck with me, but this one has become anchored in my brain: in subsequent years I’ve realised that every time I’m not feeling hugely happy about something I’m doing, it’s because it’s clashed with those values. I redo the exercise every couple of years or so to make sure I’m still on the right track. Remembering who I want to be and what I want from life is always helpful to guide myself down the right path, whether I’m wondering what jobs to apply for or deciding how to spend a Tuesday evening.
I’m talking about this now because coincidentally, the idea of one’s core values has come up a couple of times in the last few weeks: once in terms of someone feeling a bit lost and wanting to find their way forward, and once in terms of how you can trace potentially illogical decisions back to the values you hold closest to both your heart and your sense of self.
And it’s also been interesting to look at how things change: when I first did this back in (I think) 2014, my values were:
Growth
Helping others
Integrity
Pleasure
Hard working
When I did this just now, all of these values made it into my top 20. But the top five were:
Excellence
Enthusiasm
Kindness
Goodness
Strength
Which makes sense when you look at the context. When I first did this I was in my mid-20s, trying to achieve the next thing in my career, eager to achieve my potential and live my best life. Now I’m a mother of two, fairly established in the working world (even if I seemingly hop career path every five years), less hungry for all that life has to offer and more focused on doing the best I can at the life I have made. There’s definitely a thread between the two - integrity, hard-work and pleasure feel like bedfellows of enthusiasm, helping others links to kindness and goodness, excellence feels like a few stops on the journey down from growth - but they’re different takes on life, and making decisions based on the things I felt ten years ago would burn me out rather than satisfy me.
I ran a session with my team last year on identifying your core values, and I’ve put the worksheet here (with instructions) if you want to have a go yourself. And if you’re up for it, let me know what your core values are, and any revelations that come from identifying them.
Strawberry hearts
And now for something completely different.
Strawberries are at their best right about now, and this is my favourite way to prepare them. Basically, you can cut them into little hearts in a way that wastes less strawberry flesh, and can sometimes tempt exceptionally picky four-year-olds who take any excuse to not eat things into consuming them. At the very least, they look pretty in a fruit salad. It's a good trick to know.
First, take your strawberry and cut a V shape in the top of it, slicing all the way through to the other side.
You want to cut as closely to the green bit as possible while keeping that V-shape.
When you’ve done two cuts you should be able to lift off the top, like a little strawberry hat. I’ve actually done a fairly terrible job with this one. My core value of excellence is absolutely fuming.
Flip it upside down (onto the V you just cut) and slice as usual.
And voila! You have teeny tiny strawberry hearts. I lined a glass with these and filled the empty space with yogurt and more strawberries, topping with a crushed up chocolate digestive, as a special treat for Taron. He refused point-blank to eat it until one minute until bedtime, when suddenly he was ravenous and needed to eat the whole thing very slowly. But at least it looked pretty.
Things I liked
Whenever I’m at Euston, I cannot help but go into Oliver Bonas to kill time before my train, even though I can’t afford anything and end up irrationally obsessed by, say, a tiny pastel pink dish covered in cartoon llamas that costs more than a week’s food shop. This time, I’ve become obsessed by this yellow backpack - and subsequently, the very concept of a yellow backpack in general. Vinted is not giving up the goods yet, but I have faith it will.
Going through my semi-regular obsession with these. Chocolatey squares of any kind are delicious, but these Mornflake ones are the best. But they’re also £2.30 a box, so I’m eating these Aldi ones instead.
Well, that’s that for the week. Thank you for reading, commenting, emailing, messaging, sharing with friends, all of it - it all helps fight off both the voice telling me that this is/I am rubbish, and my “fuck it” teenage petulance that tells me not to bother writing because no-one cares. Hope you’re okay, lovely one. Take care.
Love, Amy xxx
Oh my god, the insights report! I did one at work earlier this year and it could have been titled 'back off, she's a biter'. My Dad, Husband and boss found it hysterical.
Amy I honestly just really love reading your writing again. I’m gonna do the core values exercise xxxxx