How do you know if something is aligned with your values?
If you’re approaching this from a cognitive, top-down framework, the first step would be to identify your values.
Companies usually engage focus groups and have brainstorming meetings to come up with a list of values.
For example:
- respecting all clients,
- creating seamless client experiences.
- sourcing ingredients from sustainable providers.
An individual might read through a list of values and pick those that sound good to them.
Here’s the problem:
The values you choose from a list are rarely your actual values. They might be aspirational, or they might just be the values you think people would expect you to have.
The Real Source of Your Values
The real way to know what your values are — and whether you’re aligned with your values — is to listen to yourself.
Specifically, the signals from your body and the words that come out of your mouth.
Your Body’s Intelligence
When I was in high school I got frequent stomach aches. They largely went away when I was in college and law school. But then, at the start of my career as a lawyer, they returned. I went for test after test and never got a diagnosis.
Once I left the law firm and switched careers, those symptoms went away.
Years later, after learning more about how the body/mind connection works, I finally realized that my body had been trying to talk to me — but I wasn’t listening.
The Energy of Your Words
Have you ever had a bad day where you just want to rant about life?
Often, we are forced to be the polite versions of ourselves: to mask and perform as if everything is ok — even when it’s not. We subdue our expression to avoid inconveniencing others.
It’s not until you are in a space with someone you trust that you feel safe enough to let out what you really think or how you really feel.
That unencumbered truth may not sound good or read well on paper, but it contains vital information. Your rants and raves are guideposts to your values.
When we feel angry and upset, it’s because something came into conflict with our values.
Mercury Cazimi in Taurus: Clarity Around Your Values
Several times a year, Mercury meets up with the Sun for the renewal of its synodic cycle.
Mercury is the messenger planet, and it’s moment with the Sun brings clarity, insights and messages.
When Mercury and the Sun meet up in Taurus (May 14, 10:34 am ET, 23º48’), it’s talking about what we value and how we hold our ground around those values.
The values we speak about in Taurus are not the esoteric values of corporate board rooms, but the values that express themselves through our material plane: our bodies, our finances, our material comforts, how we stabilize and regulate, and our sense of ease and pleasure.
Listen to Your Body and Your Words
If you’re expecting these insights to drop down as a voice from beyond, you might miss them.
In Taurus, Mercury speaks to us from the ground up: through the body and through the words we speak when we feel safe to fully express ourselves.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...