Season 2 Episode 1: Andrea Johnston
Welcome! I had the pleasure of sitting down sitting down with Andrea Johnston….
No One Tells You This… The Core Values Secret Every Woman Over 40 Needs to Hear
What if the key to living authentically after 40 isn’t about reinventing yourself, but finally honoring the woman you’ve always been? In this empowering conversation for women over forty navigating midlife transitions, career changes, or personal reinvention, core values expert Andrea Johnson reveals why most women don’t truly know their own non-negotiable principles — and how discovering them can transform your relationships, business, and life.
If you’re a woman in your 40s, 50s, or beyond who’s craving clarity, purpose, and confidence, this episode is for you. You’ll learn how core values are different from beliefs, why they never change over time, and how they shape every decision, boundary, and emotional reaction you have.
Andrea shares her journey of reclaiming her freedom, belonging, and authenticity after decades of conditioning — a story every midlife woman will relate to. She offers practical steps to uncover your true core values, align your life with them, and break free from the patterns that have been holding you back.
Whether you’re navigating a career pivot, starting a business, ending toxic relationships, or simply ready to step fully into your power, this conversation will help you:
- Identify your authentic core values and live in alignment with them
- Build confidence and self-trust in your 40s and beyond
- Release conditioning and perfectionism that no longer serve you
- Find community and support from like-minded women over 40
Your 40s and 50s aren’t the end of your story — they’re the beginning of your most aligned, purpose-driven chapter. Tune in now and take the first step toward living on purpose, on your terms, and in full alignment with your non-negotiables.
Welcome to Season 2 of the Life On Purpose Over 40 podcast! We are back and ready to help you live your best life. Ready to discover what truly drives your strongest reactions and deepest joys? Listen now, and take the first step toward living in alignment with your non-negotiables. Thank you for joining us.
Andrea’s Core Values Checklist
https://www.theintentionaloptimist.com/corevaluesexercise
Contact Andrea!
https://www.instagram.com/theintentionaloptimist/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-johnson-the-intentional-optimist/
https://www.facebook.com/andrea.m.johnson.180
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbUQ47fVQzItvM2NEAtLZ2Q
Check Out All Our Episodes Here: https://lifeonpurposeover40.com/
What’s Really Holding You Back from the Life You Deserve?
Discover Your Hidden Block, Your Power Zone, and Your Next Move
Chapters:
0:00 Core Values: The Ultimate Internal Guide
4:50 Introducing Life on Purpose Over 40
9:30 Andrea’s Journey to Core Values
16:35 Why Nobody Truly Knows Their Values
21:30 Where Core Values Come From
32:10 Deconstructing Conditioning and Finding Freedom
43:20 Supporting Women Through Transformation
51:00 Resources and Next Steps
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrea Johnson: 0:00
As women, we don’t function individually, we function together. When you start deconstructing your conditioning based on your core values, when you start deconstructing your assumptions, your beliefs and your conditioning, it’s not one area of your life, it’s everything. Almost every client I work with thinks they know their core values. Would you like to know how many of them actually know their core values? How many None?Caroline Balinska: 0:25
Welcome to the Life on Purpose Over 40 podcast, where empowerment, elegance and health take center stage. I’ll be your guide on this thrilling journey to outshine your past self. This is a podcast all about transformation. We’re plunging headfirst into exactly what health, wellness, style, relationships and career look like as a woman over 40. You’ll be hearing from all the most sought-after global trailblazers and experts. This isn’t just about learning. It’s about embracing your inner, fierce, fabulous self. Let’s get started. Hi, welcome back to the podcast. I have the lovely Andrea Johnson with me today and, andrea, it’s so great to have you back on my podcast.Andrea Johnson: 1:04
Thanks, Caroline. I’m excited to be here. We get started late recording because we have so much fun just talking.Caroline Balinska: 1:09
Exactly, we were actually talking on my other podcast, on my business podcast, and I wanted to have you over here because you get into the core values and today I really want to cover that, but I think we’re going to go in a few different directions.Caroline Balinska: 1:22
So let’s see where this conversation goes. You’ve got an amazing backstory. You were telling me last time that you’ve adopted your child. You have a menopause story as well. We got into that conversation as well, so we might even go in those directions. But really fundamentally, what you’re really passionate about these days is core values, and that’s what I really wanted to speak about today, because when it comes to women and as we are as women, we get stuck on the fact that we’re helping everyone else and we don’t think about our own core values enough. So today I really want you to dissect that and explain that. So maybe you give us a little bit of an introduction to who you are and what you’re all about.Andrea Johnson: 2:01
Sure, again, my name is Andrea Johnson and I am I consider myself a consultant, a I don’t know how do I say it An educator. I’m a little bit of an educator, I’m a coach, I’m a speaker, and I started out thinking I was just going to be a leadership coach, right and. But when I started getting down into the nitty gritty of why we lead and how we lead, the more I realized core values were important. And as I started looking at mine, I realized I had been dishonoring them for a really long time, or I had been kind of trying to fight out of the box for a long time, that I’d allowed myself to be put in that, and then I had kind of pulled the box shut over my head. You know, I mean, we all do that as women to a certain extent in different areas. But I realized that unless I was able to live in a way that honored my core values, I would never, ever be happy. And I have a history in my life of bulimia and depression and gastric bypass and, like we shared before, early menopause and adoption and lost my mother to breast cancer and all these things. Some of them are results of me not honoring my core values and not, or being in an environment where my core values were never honored, and then realizing at 50, 55, what they were and saying, oh my goodness, if I had known this when I was 20, if I had known this when I was 30, if I had known this when I was 30, if I had known this when I was 40, all of these things would have been. I hope I would have been able to take advantage of that information and do it differently. And so now it is kind of my life’s mission to help other people understand this about themselves earlier, so that they can make choices and life decisions and set boundaries and establish good relationships, all based on honoring who they are as humans.Andrea Johnson: 3:51
And that sounds so simple and it sounds so broad, but the reality is it’s something that we’ve been, especially in Western society, taught is not okay, it’s just not. And we’re taught there are things that we are supposed to, there are standards we’re supposed to hit, there are values, that things that we are supposed to value, there are quote values we’re supposed to hold. There are, you know, depending on what religious society you’re in, there’s morality codes. There’s all of these things that are external, and core values are the ultimate, internal. These are your non-negotiables, these are the things that if somebody crosses you in, that they’re either going to feel your wrath or they are going to break your heart right. They are the things that you’re willing to eventually cut off a relationship for or you are willing to go to the ends of the earth for, depending, you know, positive or negative.Andrea Johnson: 4:49
And when we are willing to recognize what those things are in our lives, then we are able to move forward in a way that is very, very different. As leaders, as women, as mothers, as bosses, as speakers, whatever we do, we’re able to live differently. Now, caroline, we all know people in our lives that do this. Naturally, there are a few unicorns on this earth that are really good at honoring their core values. It’s just they were built with this internal system that allowed them to have the kind of confidence that said that’s just a no-go for me, like I have a coach who taught me to say I’m not available for that conversation. You know, and that has been one of the more freeing things that’s ever happened for me in a coaching situation, because when I look around and I see people who are not available for that conversation, whatever it is that tells me they’re honoring their core values.Andrea Johnson: 5:43
And so we can get into what I believe core values are, what the definitions are, how we look for them and how I came to find that and how I help other people understand them. But I want for sure to say this thing Every single time I do workshops on this right. So every time I start a workshop I ask people so why do we not? Why haven’t we done this kind of work in the past? And inevitably somebody raises their hand and said because we’re? And says because we’re afraid of what we’re going to find Right Especially, I mean, I’m an American, so in American society, I’m from the South, so evangelical culture, you know, we’re taught that anything that comes from our heart or our own desires, we’re taught that that’s bad and that’s just the conditioning that we have.Andrea Johnson: 6:32
And I think that that is very much a piece of Western society, whether it’s American or not. And so what I want people to hear is your core values are what make you you. They’re not what make you good or bad. Good or bad is a whole separate thing and it’s really not subjective. It’s something that’s totally different. Your core values are what make you the special sauce that you are, if you want to use funny language, you know. So what I help people understand is that even if we look deep inside and say, okay, my core values are things I didn’t expect, that doesn’t mean that they’re bad.Andrea Johnson: 7:10
And I had one guy say to me, well, what if my core value turns out to be narcissism? And I’m like, really, so how is it that you want? Because I’ll tell you kind of the parameters of it. I said how would you want narcissism to be true for someone else? Right, because we’re not going to find. You know, there’s always somebody in the crowd that’s going to do that but we’re not looking for things in ourselves that we don’t want to find, that we wouldn’t like. We want to know who we truly are so that we can truly stand up and, as my podcast says, stand tall and own who we are to, just no matter how tall you are, because that’s what’s important.Caroline Balinska: 7:52
So that’s a brief overview. Yeah, I love it and it really hits home with me. We were talking off air just before that. I’ve been through a few things recently and that’s where I am.Caroline Balinska: 7:57
At the stage that I’m at is because my core values I realized how important they were after I had my daughter and it really hit home at that stage where I just said you know what? I do not want my daughter growing up the way I grew up, because what I saw in my childhood should not be something that we need to live with. And that’s when I decided to put my foot down and say what is it that I actually want for my life? And I realized that my core values were not aligning with the life that I had at that stage. Now I’ve been told I changed and I made it clear I haven’t changed fundamentally. Nothing about me changed. I just finally stood up and said this is who I am and this is what I believe in, and my core values don’t align with that situation and for that reason I need to step away from that relationship and I think it’s important that we as women, really make sure we do that, especially when we have children.Andrea Johnson: 8:52
Oh, agree, 100%. I have a son, right, so it’s like I don’t have a daughter to pass this stuff along to, but I have a son. It’s almost more important. It’s almost more important for him to understand. It’s not just because patriarchy doesn’t just affect women, it affects everyone. And this is the kind of system I’m talking about here, of this idea that there’s a winner and there’s a loser.Andrea Johnson: 9:13
And is where I love the work that I do. I absolutely love it because I help people understand that, those people outside of you that are looking at you when you do change the lines on your script, they’re going to say you changed, but the reality is your behavior has changed, right? Yes, my behavior has changed. The way I interact with the world has changed. I am finally honoring who I am inside and I haven’t done that for the last 50 years. Yeah, and that’s a really courageous thing to say. It’s a very hard thing to say, but it’s the kind of thing that will get you another 50 years, you know, because everything that you do from that point forward will become sustainable. It will become something that you can. Your energy will not be drained, your energy will not be sucked up by all of that it will be built upon and move forward in that way. So I just wanted to applaud that and say, yeah, you did change. Hallelujah, you changed right. You needed to change your behavior, the things you tolerated, the boundaries that you had, and now you’re saying so. Now I’m going to stay true to who I am and if you all can’t handle that, it’s okay.Andrea Johnson: 10:40
I had a counselor when I was a gastric bypass patient and when I was going through gastric bypass, I had this counselor who worked with me and my husband on some things and he did what we call family systems counseling. And that’s where you kind of I love this, yeah. So he basically said if you think of it this way, all the players in your family are on the stage and they all have the same, everybody’s working off the same script and everybody knows what their lines are. And he said if you change your and this happens in families with addiction and all kinds of stuff or abuse or whatever if you change the lines on your script and it says you’re supposed to stand here next to this person and say these lines, but you decide to exit stage, right, everybody else on the stage is going to say whoa, you are not following the script. What’s going on?Andrea Johnson: 11:27
You might get people throwing their scripts on the floor saying I can’t work with this person. You know what I mean. It’s just if you can put it in that perspective, that mindset seeing it as like a play, and what happens when one actor doesn’t follow the script. Everybody else has a choice. They can either say, well, what script are you working off of? I kind of like that. Or they can say I’m not working with you anymore. But we have to be okay with that, right, and not everything that we change is going to be quite that stark. I thought honoring my core values and doing some of the deconstruction work that I’ve done was going to alienate me from my family, and it hasn’t.Caroline Balinska: 12:09
Yeah, but you really then and we spoke about your partner last time, your husband last time that you know you’ve got a really good, solid relationship and you have an incredible man to begin with. So then that makes it okay. And I think, based on my past, I think that when you don’t have that, when you know in your gut that you don’t have that, then it also makes it really scary to move forward, because you also know you know what I know in my gut that what I’m going to be doing is not going to be okay on the other side. Yeah, and it might be with a partner, it might be in the workplace, it might be with your like you might have a. I’ve got a friend of mine. She’s got a mother with a, you know, terrible narcissistic disorder. So you know once you that’s hard, once you deal with people like that, then, yeah, you alienate people, but sometimes losing certain people is for the better anyway. And your you had a wonderful husband before that and you proved that that was okay to be you. And I see that now you know I’ve walked into the most incredible relationship. I cannot believe that it’s 10 times better than I could even imagine.Caroline Balinska: 13:19
I promised myself when I left my last relationship. I’m never, ever going to experience anything like that again. And I had my list of these. This is what I’m going to accept. And even what I got was even better than that. I was just like, oh my god, this is even better than I can imagine, because I stayed true to myself. And I think in the workplace I know friends like that, where they finally put their foot down and say, no, you know what, I’m not accepting that anymore. And then they think’m going to lose my job, I’m not going to be able to pay my mortgage, maybe I won’t be able to buy food, but then they find something even better on the other side.Andrea Johnson: 13:52
Yeah, and I think those are great stories, but perhaps we should give I would love to give like an idea. We’re talking like big heady stuff right now. Do you want to get nitty gritty? Yes, let’s go. So so what do you think core values are?Caroline Balinska: 14:08
Oh, now you put me on the spot. I’ve got my. I did my list a long time ago, but they’re really the things that you believe in that, the things that make you, I guess, feel good that you stand by, is that yeah?Andrea Johnson: 14:21
Sure, yeah, I mean so I. What I’m trying to get at here is everybody has a different definition, right, and where I define them in a specific way is that they’re your non-negotiables, they’re the line you won’t cross. They are the thing that if somebody had to say there’s this one thing about Caroline or there are these two things, just these are the things you got to know, this right, those are your core, probably your core values. Sometimes they’re expressed by other people in a negative way, like don’t do this to her, you know, but a lot of times they’re right. My son even asked me yesterday am I smart or kind? And I’m like that’s a trick question, but I’m like I’m going to describe you as kind and he goes thanks, mom, I’m not smart. And I said kind outperforms smart every single day. Buddy, I’m going to stick by that because he’s got a huge heart right and kindness is really important to him.Andrea Johnson: 15:17
So to me I say they are the non-negotiables and the principles by which you function without even knowing it right. These are the things that are innate to you function without even knowing it right. These are the things that are innate to you, but they have some characteristics. You may not be able to name them all the time, but they have ways of showing up in your life. For instance, if someone steps on it or dishonors a core value of yours, you’re going to know it. You’re going to react to it somehow. If it is touched in a beautiful way, it’s going to be like those lovely moments of joy, tears of joy. It’s going to be those kinds of things.Andrea Johnson: 15:49
But they’re also what I call reciprocal. If I want it for me, I also want it for you, right? So a way, when you’re walking through an exercise, of trying to discover what your core values are, if it’s not something that you want, just as bad for the person sitting across the table for you, even if they’re your enemy, if you don’t want it, just as bad for them. It’s probably not one of your top core values. It might be something that you value. It might be somewhere down on the list. So they’re reciprocal. They’re not usually tangible, so they’re not outside of you, they’re inside of you. They’re things like respect or honesty or transparency, and we can divide them into all kinds of different categories. On one of my free resources, I kind of divide them into I’m also a DISC consultant. So the four different personality types, between task, and there’s four quadrants between task and people, or between extroverted and introverted, and I kind of divide them into those quadrants and so if you find yourself to be more task oriented, you’re probably going to have core values that rely on those kinds of things.Andrea Johnson: 17:00
I have a client whose top core value is strategic, which to me sounds just crazy. I’m like really, and she’s like it has to be strategic, and I mean she’s had to leave meetings. She’s had to leave meetings. She shut down a business. But when she finally started honoring the fact that her top core value is being strategic and there is some kind of purpose to whatever it is they’re doing, and so that’s why I said she quit going to meetings because it kept getting hijacked by things that had nothing to do with the meetings I’m not participating in this.Caroline Balinska: 17:31
I think I have a little bit of that. I get into these meetings where I’m like you guys are wasting my time. What are we here for?Andrea Johnson: 17:37
And you know, a lot of times you can boil it down to things that are like it. That would be very task oriented, right, it’s like. But if you’re very people oriented, it might be something like respect, and in workshops I’ve been able to people say that respect is one of their top core values a lot, and so I’ll ask them what would it look like if somebody came in here and started disrespecting me and I can tell if it’s one of their, really one of their core values? If they say, well, I don’t know you, that shouldn’t matter, right, if it’s really a core value, it’s definitely my top.Caroline Balinska: 18:12
So I ended my relationship because of it and I would, if I didn’t know you. I’d be like do not disrespect those other people in the room. Like that, that to me, I don’t like that at all. Yeah.Andrea Johnson: 18:29
And I have a friend who will walk up to strangers on the street and say stop disrespecting that person. Like well, I know what yours is, you know, and so I think things like that help us to understand core values a little better. But a lot of times we start with things outside of us. I have. Will your people be watching this on video? Yes as well. Okay, so if you’re watching on video, you can see me holding on the little tiny piece of paper. For those of you over 40, maybe, but over 50, for sure you will know, this is from a Franklin planner. Okay, this is from the Franklin planner system from 1995. And it was when Stephen Covey bought out Franklin planning systems and started including one of his books Maybe the Seven Habits in the system.Andrea Johnson: 19:08
And I read the book and at the very back of the book the exercise was called figuring out your governing values, and this was the first step I took on looking at my core values. So I have this piece of paper that you can see. It’s a little shiny because it is laminated with packing tape. That’s how old it is, but it’s still around and it feels like it’s got all kinds of good, solid qualities to it, but these were what I considered at 27, 20, yeah, 27. So it’s over 30 years old. These were my governing values Things like peace and tranquility, self-control, honesty, family, physical health, friendship, nature, creativity. And the very top one because in this list they go down was freedom. Now, at the time, I need my glasses. Sorry. Back then this type of font was not too small.Andrea Johnson: 20:00
At the time, I said freedom meant I am not controlled by anyone else, by money or time, and I have no job. Now I’m going to be 59 in August. That is not the definition of freedom to me anymore, right? The definition of freedom to me today is I get to think for myself, right? Therefore, I get to make all my own decisions. Therefore, I get to choose whether or not I have a job, because there’s plenty of jobs I could fit into. There’s some part-time work that I’m doing that. It’s like I had no idea I was going to be back on the payroll of another university and, even though I signed a contract, I thought it was just going to be contract work and I’m like do I want this? I was like you know what? It really doesn doesn’t matter. I’m doing the work I want to do, right, so I’m honoring that.Andrea Johnson: 20:46
But it’s the more I have matured and the more I’ve learned, um, I’ve come to understand that some of these are things I value and some of them are principles in the way I want to live out my life, which I now call intentional optimism. But my core values are things like freedom of thought, belonging and authenticity, and it took me a long time to figure that out. I’ve done some work with, like I have a free resource and then I have a course, and then I have a coaching program, and I had a friend ask me to coach her daughter who was still not graduated from college. And this is a point that I also want to make about core values. They are innate in us. They are integrated into all of our relationships. Every decision you’ve ever made has touched on or somehow been related to a core value, every relationship you’ve ever had, every fight you’ve ever had, every joyful moment you’ve ever had. They go all the way back to your childhood, and when you can identify them, you can actually see them. You can look back and you can see where they show up.Andrea Johnson: 21:50
Right when I was three or four years old, my mom said. I literally said to her, and this is in the 60s, you’re not the boss of me, and back then that was what we called a strong little child or a bossy girl or whatever. But I look back and I say that was my freedom of thought, saying no, I get to decide. Now, a three or four-year-old yeah, somebody else has to be the boss of them. Probably it’s just like that’s how it works. But I can look back at that and say that was Andrea showing up and I had glimpses of that throughout my teenage years. But so much of what I was wrapped up in was I had to fit in with everybody. I grew up overseas so, and then I was in expat community, which meant I never really fit in anywhere.Andrea Johnson: 22:39
But being able to say today, I know that it takes a while to figure this out, because coaching that young lady who was just 20, it was very easy for her to spout off the things that were important to her family. And the more I dug deeper, the more I realized she didn’t yet have a good handle. And so I want us to hear that, as women over 40, this is the prime moment to figure this stuff out, because we have enough lived experience, enough good and bad things that have happened to us, and we have enough wisdom, we’ve been around the sun enough times that we know ourselves just a little bit better. And I think it’s super important for us to do this work as women over 40. Because this young lady I haven’t even she never scheduled her last and we cannot get this last coaching session scheduled because I just it just wasn’t resonating with her. But all my other clients, when I work with them, almost all of them are at least over 30, maybe over 40. And it is like light bulbs going off left and right.Andrea Johnson: 23:51
Oh, I was the one that was dishonoring my core values. I was the one that let them trample on that. I was, wow, I had no idea. That’s why this particular work thing was so upsetting to me. And you know, caroline, almost every client I work with thinks they know their core values. Would you like to know how work with thinks they know their core values? Would you like to know how many of them actually know their core values? How many? None, none, not a one. They might know one, but none of them have a good idea of a well-rounded understanding of who they are as a person. And you know our core values work together. They’re not. They’re interconnected.Andrea Johnson: 24:30
One of the exercises I walk people through is some kind of a visual representation of your top three to five core values. It could be that lady with strategic hers are kind of like these big arrows that point to one big arrow. You know it’s like they all lead to this and they’re pieces of that. Mine are more like a Venn diagram. They all come together under like three pieces come together to make Andrea. I’ve had some that were stair steps. It’s like this one cascades to that one, to that one, to that one, to that one, and that just kind of shows the uniqueness and the beauty of how we are each created completely differently. You and I could have the same top three core values and they would be expressed differently, defined differently, they would come from different experiences and so they would look very different in each of our lives. But that’s what core values are. I am doing all of the talking.Caroline Balinska: 25:24
Oh, no, no, it’s great, I love, love it. So I’ve got a question where do core values come from? If, like, if you’ve got two sisters or two twins, like imagine, I’ve got my best friends in high school with twins identical twins. They were very different. So where do core values actually come from? I know it comes from experience sometimes, but yeah.Andrea Johnson: 25:55
I think you’re born with them. Honestly, I think you’re born with a specific psychological profile that then responds to nature and nurture. I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I am a philosopher, theologian and leadership coach. I’m planning on going back to grad school and finishing my master’s, and one of the PhD options that I’m kind of looking at is from a theological or a God perspective.Andrea Johnson: 26:19
We talk about being created in the image of God and we talk about having God’s thumbprint on us or something, and we reflect back. A lot of religions speak that way too, not just Christianity or Judeo-Christian principles of religion, but I am very interested in kind of doing this like the Greek or the Latin word from Zemago Dei. It’s like what does the image of God mean in our lives? And I think my hypothesis is that these are things we’re born with because that’s how we were created. No matter what you believe on how we were created or where that comes from, I believe that they are that deep and that you can try as you might, but you will never change them. They are always going to be there. The way they are manifested in your life, the way they play out in your life, the way they show up makes a difference, and those can change. Right, the reason I don’t use the word belief is because beliefs can change. Beliefs change based on what facts we have at hand, where we are emotionally. Ask anybody who’s changed political parties. Right, that’s a belief system that has totally changed. But your core principles, your core values, they never change.Andrea Johnson: 27:34
I always start my workshops with if you tell me, starting off, that your core values are faith, family and country, we’re going to start over. So be careful when you do this exercise, because that’s a no answer. Right, those three, that’s a no answer. And I get a lot of pushback. I’m in the Bible belt. I get a lot of pushback for that. One person said well, faith is a core value. It’s core to me. And I’m like what does faith provide you? Right, I kind of help people beneath the surface, so I don’t think they come from anywhere. Right, they’re expressed in different ways, but I’ll say what does faith provide you? Faith provides you? What Stability, it provides you certainty, it provides you competence, it provides you comfort. So all of those things now. Now look at those words and tell me. You know that’s so.Andrea Johnson: 28:26
And then one guy said I’m sticking with family. I’m like, tell me about it. And he said, well, family is who I do everything with. Family is, um, I we’re on big group texts and we do all our vacations together. It’s like they’re extremely important to me. I said, okay, what is it you love about being with your family? Well, I belong there. I’m like, okay, let’s look at that word. Family is what is the expression of your belonging? So, when we look at where they come from, this is my own personal as I dig into it. This is my own personal belief that we are born with them and that they don’t really change. One might be more important in any given circumstance or situation, but I think that that’s where they come from, and I have yet to find something that really proves me wrong on that.Caroline Balinska: 29:16
No, no, no. It’s a little bit like when they talk about narcissists and where that comes from. Of course, you’re not born a narcissist, but you develop into a narcissist and that usually comes from things that have happened, your experiences, and that is why you know. A lot of the time they say narcissists come from something that happened, from their parents. That’s a lot of the time it’s their parents that have created them to become a narcissist, whether one of their parents is a narcissist or something happened, um, but that’s why you can have two brothers or two sisters, or a brother and a sister in the same home and one child ends up as a narcissist and one doesn’t is because their core values are what they are, but then they have developed into being a narcissist. And that’s why you said earlier, when you said about the man who said, oh well, it’s narcissism One of them, it’s like no, that’s not actually that’s a behavior pattern that you’ve learned, right.Caroline Balinska: 30:09
That is not like really.Caroline Balinska: 30:12
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, yeah, no, I find it so interesting. So, um, I guess what I really. Another part that I really like to understand is some people say you can only have like two or three. Some people say you can have four core values. How does that? And you just said a moment ago, sometimes like one overtakes another one and sometimes they change a little bit which one’s more important. So where do you sit with that? How many core values do you usually tell people to think about? And you know, I remember one time I worked with a coach and they told me to have 10 core values and then to have a list of 20 and then bring it down to the 10 main ones and then work from there.Andrea Johnson: 30:51
Yeah, and I think a lot of that is we all create systems that we try to help other people understand our stuff, right? So that’s a very similar process that I do with people, either through the free download or through my course or through my coaching, like I started here with nine, right, and I think that, as that’s part of the maturing process and the getting to know us process, there are things on here that I can compromise on right. So I think and it used to be that I would tell people just your top three, top three. And then I had a client who was absolutely adamant I have four and I am not budging. I’m like we’ll gate right. And I have come to learn that, just as we are unique in what our core values are, I think we are unique in what is important to us and how important they are. It may be this is like a 30-year-old woman it may be in 10 years that she’s only got two of those left Now it doesn’t mean that the other two aren’t still important, but they’re not the non-negotiables, right. So only you know what’s non-negotiable. It may be that you have one non-negotiable and everything else is like well, maybe I could compromise on that. But you know right. So I tell people somewhere between two and five, just because and this kind of goes with what you said Some people say this, some people say that, and I think it’s really important.Andrea Johnson: 32:11
The other piece that I do is I make people define all of them themselves. Like, yeah, you start out like if you walk through one of my, if you go through my course, you’re going to get a list of like 400 words to start with, to like kind of see if anything resonates. And when you walk through that and you pull out 30 and then you narrow it down to 10, 10 is an easy number for us to kind of work with. And what I help clients do or want you to figure out is are there any words that go together? Right, so if you have 10 or nine, maybe 3 relate to this and 3 relate to that and 3 relate to that. But I want you to define all of those words. Start with Google, start with chat, start with Merriam-Webster dictionary and say what is the dictionary definition? But what do I mean when I say this? And as you start defining the word, you might find that it changes. So we pull out the thesaurus and we look at antonyms and synonyms and things that might mean the same thing but have a better, a different nuance right To help you get more clear and more clear and more clear.Andrea Johnson: 33:21
That’s why, kind of having somebody to walk through it with you is helpful, but you can do this yourself over time. This is what I did. I didn’t have anybody to help me walk through it and so, as you do, that, it helps. You see, okay, in a situation, if I have four top core values, and they are, you know, respect and freedom and honesty and transparency or something, but in a situation I’m going to tolerate someone not being transparent, but I am not going to tolerate someone not being respectful. That tells you where it lies on your hierarchy right.Andrea Johnson: 33:59
But it may be that everybody’s respectful in a situation, but they’ve been lying the whole time, which we can argue whether or not lying is respectful or not, but it’s a transparency issue or they’ve just been hiding something. Well then, that one kind of rises to the top. So this is what I mean by it’s very difficult to say you’re top second. Third, you know we can do that and we love order, we love tying things up in a little bow, but none of us are truly like that. So I just tell people give yourself grace and flexibility and take a look at them and be willing to come back every six months or every year and look at them again and kind of go back over your experiences and say where have they shown up? Where did this one get dishonored? Or and this is another good exercise where have I been angry the last two weeks consistently? Because then you can say well, something’s being dishonored. So the opposite of that must be true, right.Andrea Johnson: 34:53
So it’s amazing, when people start looking at things that way, how quickly things will rise to the surface. But I had one person say well, don’t your core values change over time? And I’m very adamant that they don’t. But I will tell you, sometimes we will go deeper on them. Four years ago, I want to say, even in, I need to redo my course, it’s time to update it. But if you take my course, you’ll notice that I’ll say that one of my top core values is community. And I just shared what they were a minute ago and community was not one of them right. And I just shared what they were a minute ago and community was not one of them right. And so, because that’s the level of my own awareness at that time was that it was community and I was trying to build community. I started a Facebook group that had over 450 women in it, but it’s like this is not it, this is not community, this is not what I’m looking for.Andrea Johnson: 35:45
And the more I looked at building community and I thought that’s what family was for me community. And then going through deconstruction process, it’s like all weird. And I literally was doing a walk and talk with a coach friend and she said it sounds like you really just need to feel like you belong. And I’m like, yeah, where have you been for the last three years? I needed that word. So that’s why kind of having a conversation with other people is important, but even just being willing to revisit them. So now I can say it’s not community, it’s belonging. And I was trying to find belonging through community, yes, you know. So I don’t think they change. I think that there are times in our lives when three are going to show up as really strong and then one is going to show up as really strong. So we’re we’re, we’re changeable creatures. You know, it’s like we’re, we’re a little bit fluid and we adapt to circumstances and situations. And I think we need to be honest with ourselves that how we show up in those circumstances is going to change too.Caroline Balinska: 36:44
No, I think it’s like you said you know you’ve got those 10, that they’re all sort of there, and then that’s why it’s very easy to sort of say, well, there’s, there’s, there’s somewhere, but maybe they’re just not so important at that time. I’ve got two questions for you. I love everything that you say so for me. I’m like whoa, don’t forget my questions. Um one I want to talk about the deconstructive um situation that you brought up before and I want to you to explain that properly. My other question was about um. Oh, it was something about um. I’m gonna have to think about it, because I was getting so enthralled into what you’re saying that I was like my question doesn’t matter, because I’m like listening so intently to what you’re saying. I’ll think about what that was, but talk about the deconstruction that you were discussing earlier.Andrea Johnson: 37:33
Well, this is not something that I just walk into lightly, but from a bigger perspective, when we’re looking at our core values, we’re going to come up against what I call my ABCs our assumptions, our beliefs and our conditioning. Those things are literally what keep our core values from being honored. Okay, all these, and it’s like an iceberg. You got your assumptions at the top. These things that we just walk into a room and we assume everybody’s going to agree with us, or we walk into a room and assume we’re going to be accepted. And then there’s our beliefs, the things that are based on, maybe, the facts that we have at hand, or the way we’ve been brought up, or the things that we’ve heard on the news about certain people. You know, it’s like these are our beliefs that are based on not necessarily a lot of I mean, some of it’s based on really solid stuff, but it’s not always based on solid stuff. But what we find below that surface is all of our conditioning. Everything we’ve experienced, everything we’ve heard, everything we’ve read, all of the conversations happening on the bus next to us or in the taxi cab, or on the train, or in a classroom or in church all of that builds this giant iceberg that our beliefs and our assumptions sit on. And if we’re not willing to look at what those things are our little core values boat is going to come up against that and sink every time right, because, just like the Titanic, it was just a little piece that they could see and a little tear in the side of the boat and that behemoth went down. So when we start looking at our core values, I think deconstruction of any sort or maybe some people might call it unraveling of any sort is inevitable, because we’re going to start looking at places in our lives where we have allowed our core values to be dishonored, whether it’s in a relationship or in our religion, or in our job or in a community. And when we start looking at that and we start saying, well, how am I going to fix that, the action that we take is what I would call deconstruction. And for me, that started not necessarily I didn’t realize it was happening at the same time, but what I realized was my freedom of thought.Andrea Johnson: 39:59
Core value was completely at odds with the system in which I had been raised, and the system in which I had been raised is what you’re seeing a lot of in the United States right now is this very a conservative political system, a conservative Christian system that has very specific rules and very specific parameters within which you operate. I’m a very strong woman and I found it always like. This is why I developed bulimia as a teenager. It’s just I could not function in that. I didn’t know it. You know there was no. I can look back in my life and say nobody abused me. I am a blessed woman. I mean seriously.Andrea Johnson: 40:38
Nobody purposefully did things to me to gaslight me on purpose. But gaslit, I was right, nobody. I was in a missionary community. You know they were there with beautiful intention and the people I grew up with are amazing and I call these people my aunts and uncles. There was nobody that did anything to me on purpose. That was bad.Andrea Johnson: 41:01
The problem was the system was at odds with who I am as a person, was at odds with who I am as a person, and I needed to find a way to understand the difference between the belief system that I had and me, and I call that process deconstruction. Depending on who you are listening to this, that may be a nasty, dirty word or it might be a hell yeah kind of word. Right, it just depends, but most of the people in my community see it as a really bad thing Because if you deconstruct, like your faith or something, then you’re probably going to go to hell, like I know. But I wasn’t going to hell yesterday, so why would I go to hell today if you believe that you know? So it’s like we can get into a theological discussion if you want.Andrea Johnson: 41:44
But what I learned overall is that tearing down the conditioning, breaking off the pieces of that iceberg, taking down the scaffolding that’s built around the truth, is the hard, hard hard work that reveals the beauty that is there. Yeah, theologically or in my faith, I was willing to completely walk away from my. That reveals the beauty that is there, theologically or in my faith. I was willing to completely walk away from my faith if necessary. Now, for those of you listening, my husband is still a Southern Baptist pastor, so that would have been very difficult for all of us. But I needed to give myself permission to find out if the core of what I believed was real or was it the system that was built around it. And I now can say, oh, it was the system that was built around it, because me, me and Jesus, we good, and it’s just like there’s a beauty and a transparency and a depth there that I’ve never had before. I no longer feel like I have to defend anybody or anything, right. It’s like, hey, y’all do your conditioning based on your core values.Andrea Johnson: 43:00
When you start deconstructing your assumptions, your beliefs and your conditioning, it’s not one area of your life, sorry, it’s everything, because we touch everything. We are whole beings. Every single piece of our psyche is connected to every other piece of our psyche and it’s all connected in our behavior and the relationships that we hold. I am currently much less concerned with my theological or ecclesiological or whatever deconstruction. That’s not it. It’s now the social justice piece, it’s now the economics piece, it’s now the money mindset piece, all of it. But doing the work is hard, but the freedom that comes from that is just indescribable. And being able to be a little bit like a wild animal that was rehabbed or whatever in a sanctuary, and then somebody opens the cage and lets you out into this beautiful field. It’s like, what do I do now? They like cower down and it’s like I don’t know where to go now. And so I’m at that place where I’m really trying to figure out okay, well, what direction. How do I do this? And so my main direction right now is helping other people figure out how to do this.Andrea Johnson: 44:28
Because I used to look at people from my old perspective. I used to look at people who had come out of the closet as LGBTQ or had decided that they were an atheist. What did I see in them? I didn’t see a heretic. I didn’t see a deviant. What I saw was a very free person, interesting, yeah. And I remember thinking I wish I had that kind of freedom, I wish I had that kind of confidence. And now I mean I still wish I had all of it, because when you have all that conditioning, it’s a lot.Caroline Balinska: 45:06
It actually shows that your core value really is freedom. Yeah, because that you’re. You’re so happy for those people to have that freedom.Andrea Johnson: 45:12
Oh, my gosh. You know I’m, I’m. I do not have LGBTQ leanings. That is just not. That’s not who I am. As a matter of fact, we just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, but that’s so, that’s not.Andrea Johnson: 45:24
I don’t need that for myself, but to see someone else so free and to be able to just put their shoulders back and stand a little taller, say this is who I am, it’s like, yeah, you should run up and hug them and say I’m so proud of you. You figured out who you are, you know. And so if you have children, you want this for your children, right. Have children, you want this for your children, right. And so I have a 16 year old who is back outside mowing. I can see him doing it and it’s like I want him to embrace everything that he is and so trying to work. This is where it becomes generational, right. When I know and you talk about working with your daughter, when you know who you are, you are no longer going to continue that cycle of conditioning that would teach her to have to then break out of it later. You are no longer going to continue that cycle of conditioning that would teach her to have to then break out of it later. You’re going to teach her now, and so for me, I’m consistently trying to teach my son this is who you are, embrace it Right. It’s like we’re big football, american football fans.Andrea Johnson: 46:23
My husband went to University of South Carolina. We love watching football, but it took us a long time to realize that kid is not athletic. He’s adopted right, so it’s like he doesn’t have our genetic code that says this is what we do. So we’ve had to figure out a lot of things. He has been a car oriented kid since the day he was born. We’ve finally figured out that we both love Formula One. We all love Formula One, so we watch the races we love, and for me it’s like the travel. And so even just looking at jobs for him trying to figure out it’s not important that he does what I think he’s supposed to do to be a good son. It’s about making him the person that he was created to be, and when we have the freedom, when we’ve created in ourselves the ability to do that in other people, we will change the world.Caroline Balinska: 47:12
Yeah, it’s true, yeah, and, as you say, all of that, and I think of the amount of women, that the amount of women out there who are too scared to ever, or maybe never, go down that path because they have so much fear so they’ll sit in there, you know, inside themselves, and never do it. And then I think of all the women like you and I who just say no, no, enough is enough and I want something different. I want something more. And sometimes that’s scary. Like you said, you were really worried. Will that work with your family, you know, is there?Caroline Balinska: 47:55
going to be problems along the way.Andrea Johnson: 47:56
I laid on the floor right here and cried yeah.Caroline Balinska: 47:59
Can’t tell you how many times yeah and I went through something similar and I think that I don’t think many people will go through that and not have that negative fear, the fear. I think the fear is part of it. I still have it.Andrea Johnson: 48:16
I still have it. We lost my mother eight years ago. She was the curious person in our family, and the curiosity thing is what keeps you from getting too entrenched in that stuff, in any of it, and we miss her a lot for various and sundry reasons, but not the least of which is her curiosity. She was always curious, and so there are things I have yet to talk to my dad about. My sister and I do not agree on certain things, and it’s we’re learning to have the relationship that meets an intimate sister relationship that meets in places, that, um, that doesn’t necessarily talk about politics. You know that, um, and that’s hard for me because I’m a very integrated person, right? So what I’m having to learn is she tells me about the things that she would tell my mom. Yeah, this is her sharing herself with me. Oh my gosh, what a privilege, right, it’s like I’m finally learning how to do that.Andrea Johnson: 49:14
And what I want to say to all the women who think that is just too scary please find someone to help you do it. Please find someone to hold your hand. Right, I’m one of those people. Caroline might’m one of those people. Caroline might be one of those people there are. You might have a friend that is one of those people that will help you. But the other thing I want to say is not everybody’s going to have cry on the floor moments. The bigger fear is the fear of what might happen. My family’s never disowned me. My family’s never said you believe that You’re a lefty? Oh my gosh, I don’t want to be around you. They’ve never said it. I’ve always thought they would say it and they’ve never said it. So the fear a lot of times is conditioning that if we don’t walk this path we’re going to be excommunicated, and many times we’re not going to be excommunicated and many times we’re not.Caroline Balinska: 50:13
But even if we are, I’ve been there. Yeah, it’s okay because on the other, side of that is um the truth and then, or being authentically you, I think, is I think that’s more important than living a lie 100, 100.Andrea Johnson: 50:28
I love it. That’s two sides of the coin, though, right, it’s like. But I’m sure there are things you feared that never happened, oh, of course. And there are things that you feared that happened to me, that I may or may not have feared. It’s like we all have a different. I don’t know.Andrea Johnson: 50:44
I just think as women it is so important because as women, we don’t function individually, we function together. We function, and that’s been very hard for me because I was very much in condition to think that we pull ourselves up from the bootstraps, we do our own thing very male-dominated kind of mindset, and that’s not how women function. Women function together almost like a net, like know, like a spider web, and we nurture better and we do those things together. And intimate friendships with women always felt really odd to me because I just didn’t know how to do it. And so here in my 50s God I’ve. But now I’ve got these women who want to do those kinds of things and it’s like, oh well, that never occurred to me.Andrea Johnson: 51:27
Yeah, that we would help each other, that we would walk through that together, and that that actually builds our bond and it gives us, because we did this for one of the ladies in my group. We did it. We helped her clear some land that was her grandparents, you know, and she’s kind of doing Airbnb out or something. And when we were done working for like three hours, it was hard work, physical, we used chainsaws and all kinds of stuff it was amazing. Yeah, we were clearing out brush and we sat down and had like this raucous, uproarious, laughter kind of conversation that if anybody walking by would have been like what is there? Are they drinking in the daytime? And it was just this freedom, you know, being able to do that. So if you are afraid of this path, please find somebody like, find somebody that can help you and hold your hand. And if it’s not one of us, I’m sure there are friends in your, in your life that will help you.Caroline Balinska: 52:25
And sometimes it’s just baby steps, but it’s about moving forward. Yeah, taking that, taking action, absolutely.Andrea Johnson: 52:31
So, andrea, tell us more about how people can work with you, because you have, um, some resources people can get hold of and then also get in touch with you as well, I do, um, so if you want to be in touch with me, um, Andrea, at the intentional optimist the intentional optimist is the name of my business You’ll find that my website is named. That You’ll find me on Instagram and LinkedIn there. If you want to talk politics and that kind of stuff, maybe find me over on Threads rather than or Blue Sky is theology, and you can find me there. So the Intentional Optimist at all of them. But if you DM me through Instagram or LinkedIn and tell me that you heard my conversation with Caroline, then I will know that you’re not a spammer, right, and I’m happy to connect with you.Andrea Johnson: 53:15
On my website, right above my head, is a button I think. One of them says live to lead tickets, and I’ll tell you about that in a second, but the other one says free downloads. So I have an entire page of free downloads. One of them is a core values blueprint. It will walk you through the process of kind of the first steps of figuring out what your core values are. It’ll walk you through just kind of getting a high level. Further on down that page, you can see I have a core values course that will walk you through all of the 400 words, everything but the kitchen sink, dump it all in there and figure it out, and that’s a low ticket offer. And then I’m still in the middle of beta testing, a core values coaching program where you watch the videos from and you walk through the course. But then we have coaching before, like before the whole thing, and then we have a coaching call after each module to push back and walk a little bit closer through that and really help you. Everybody needs a different level of experience, so that’s still in beta testing. I would like to probably have about 50 in there before I shut that down and move on to like fully express it.Andrea Johnson: 54:18
But the other way you can work with me is I have a podcast Stand Call and Own it. It’s on all the places where podcasts are found. But because I am a leadership coach, I do put on some leadership conferences and if you’re in the central Virginia or Atlantic area, I have one in October here in the Charlottesville area. I have one in October in Lynchburg, virginia, and we’re talking about one maybe in Richmond. That is all women. So by the time this airs we will probably have that decided. I am hopeful that will happen. If it doesn’t happen this year, it’ll happen next year, and there’s an online version of that as well, and all of that is available on my website.Caroline Balinska: 54:56
Fantastic, andrea. I’m going to put all your links in the show notes so people can get ahold of you, no problems, and it’s been wonderful having you again. I love it, and I’m definitely going gonna get you back again, because I’ve still got so many questions and there was one that I was thinking of and I’m gonna ask you now next time, okay, but, um, I love it. I love everything you’ve got to say. I still want to talk about menopause. I still want to talk about, um, adoption. I still want to talk about a whole lot of other things as well. So there’s definitely going to be another episode coming up soon. Sounds good. Thanks, andrea, and thanks everyone for watching.