Cutting Through the “Shoulds" — Values-Based Decision Making

Cutting Through the Shoulds: Making Decisions That Reflect Your Values

How many of your decisions are driven by what you truly want—and how many are shaped by what you think you should do? In this episode of Elevate Her, we unpack the hidden influence of "shoulds" and explore how to make decisions rooted in your own values instead of external expectations. Learn practical tools to identify borrowed beliefs, clarify what matters most, and confidently choose a life that feels authentic.

Key Takeaways

• Not every "should" is wrong—but every "should" deserves to be questioned.
• A true value remains even when no one is watching or judging.
• Goals are destinations; values are the direction you choose to live each day.
• Achieving goals without connecting them to your values can leave you feeling unfulfilled.
• Your happiest, most authentic moments often reveal your real values.
• Your values can change over time, and that's a sign of growth—not failure.
• Relief is valuable information. Pay attention to decisions that feel lighter, not just more impressive.
• External validation is natural, but it shouldn't become your primary compass.
• Small, intentional decisions strengthen your ability to make bigger, values-driven choices later.

Share this episode with an individual who's ready to stop living by someone else's expectations and start making choices that reflect who she truly is. Then ask yourself: What's one "should" you're ready to question this week?

Hosted by Theresa Gonnella, a pharmaceutical sales leader and transformational coach who has led large teams and helped shape national sales strategy. After an unexpected layoff in her early 30s, she moved to Italy, built a private wine label, wrote a book, and returned to corporate America with a new perspective on risk, reinvention, resilience, and success on her own terms.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Elevate Cur podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Godella, and I am so happy that you're here with me today. I want to start out this podcast with a question. And this question, I want to sit with you. So please don't breeze past it. How many decisions have you made this year? Big ones, small ones, because of a should. I should stay at this job because I've been there for 10 years. I should want this next promotion. I should host the holiday again this year. I should look a certain way. I should want a certain life. I should be grateful for this gift that was given me. But actually, I feel exhausted. Let's talk about cutting through the shoulds and talk about value-based decision making. Should is one of the sneakiest words in the English language because it sounds like a conviction, but it's usually a borrowed conviction. It's someone else's voice wearing your name tag. Today, with this value-based decision-making conversation, we're going to figure out what actually really matters to you, what matters to your values and how you make decisions around that. Distinct from what you've been told should matter, and how to start making focused decisions from a place of constant internal approval instead of constant external approval. This is deep work, but I promise you that it's also incredibly practical. Let's start by understanding where shoulds actually come from, because most of us never separated them out of our real lives or our real values. A should usually comes from a few sources. It might come from family, the expectations that you absorbed when you were old enough to actually question them. It might come from culture, the version of a good woman or a good man or a successful person that gets modeled everywhere from social media to your childhood dinner table. It also might come from comparison, watching someone else's choice look good on them, and assuming that that choice would also look good on you, too. Here's the test that I want to give you. And it's super simple. When you notice a should showing up, ask yourself if no one would ever find out, would I still want this? This question cuts through so much noise because a real value survives inside of that question. A borrowed obligation usually doesn't. So for example, I should want to climb higher in my company, survives that question for so many people and so many men and women. But for them, there's a real value in a good chase inside of that. But for other women and other men, that same sentence can dissolve the second you remove an audience. If no one would ever know or be impressed by this, would you still want that? Would you still want to climb higher in the company? And again, for some, the answer is unequivocally yes. But if we're no one were to know and no one were watching, for some, the answer may be unequivocally no. Sometimes the honest answer of being no is not a failure. It's just incredibly useful information you can actually act upon. I want to make a really important distinction here because people often confuse values with goals, and they're absolutely not the same thing. A goal is a destination to get promoted, to get married, to lose the weight, to write the book. A value is a direction, a connection, integrity, creativity, freedom, and security. They're very different things. And here's why this matters: goals can be achieved and can leave you very empty because you are chasing a finish line instead of a feeling. Values never get achieved. There's something that live inside of you, they're ongoing, they're everyday, regardless of the outcome. This is why so many individuals hit a goal. The promotion, the wedding, the size, the title. And instead of feeling done, they feel strangely hollow. It's not the goal that was wrong, not at all. It's the goal that was never actually connected to the real value underneath it. It was borrowed. Here's an exercise. Take any goal that you're currently chasing and ask yourself, why do I want to actually achieve this? So, for example, if you're working to achieve the next promotion or working to possibly lose 10 pounds, or working to build a little bit more muscle, take that answer and ask yourself, why am I doing this? Usually within two or three whys, you hit something that feels like a checkbox andor more like a genuine value. So it might be connection, respect, creative expression, security for your family, freedom over time. So once you find the root value by exploring the whys, you can actually evaluate whether the goal you have been chasing is the best way to get there, or whether it's just a version that everyone else told you that you want. Hopefully, you can make that distinction. Ask yourself why multiple times, and you may be able to get to that root value. So let's get a little more concrete. I want to walk you through a simple way to actually name your real values that are distinct from the ones that you've inherited. Think of three moments in your life when you've fully felt your best and most authentic self. Not most impressive, not most accomplished, but most yourself. It literally could be a random Tuesday. It could be something no one else even noticed. Now ask yourself, what was actually present in that moment? Was it creative freedom? Was it deep connection with another person? Was it a room full of people? Was it being quiet? Was it being performing on stage? Was it being useful to someone? Was it volunteering? Was it doing your deepest work? Was it gratitude practice? Was it working on a project at your day job? Be fully honest without managing anyone else's reaction. Those recurring threads are much closer to your real values than anything you'd write on a vision board because it sounds aspirational. Real values tend to be almost embarrassingly simple. Not I value excellence and impact. Sometimes it's just, I value having a couple hours in my evening, or I value being around the people that I don't need to perform, or I value being around people that I can just hang out in my sweatpants with my hair on top of my head and no makeup. It's very different for everyone, but it's really important to sort of dig inside of that within yourself. And here's something important for all of you who are listening. Women and men have spent many decades in caregiving roles, in careers, and marriages, and in communities. And your values are allowed to change. The value that organized in your 30s may be a little bit different than the values that you have in your 50s. A woman, for example, who's built her identity around being endlessly available to everyone else, is also allowed to discover, maybe at the age of 47, that she now values her own time more than values being needed. That's not selfish. That's growth catching up with itself and self-identifying those actual values inside. So let's talk about how we can actually use this in real decisions because knowing your values in theory and using them under pressure are two very, very different skills. Here's how you can filter and run any real decision through context. I want you to use this next thing when it comes up. Ask yourself three questions. Question number one: what does this decision look like from the outside? And what does it feel like from the inside? If these two answers are very different, it looks impressive from the outside, but it feels heavy on the inside. That usually is wearing a different value clothing and they may need to align with each other. So it's super important to take a look at that. Question number two, you can ask yourself, whose voice am I hearing when I imagine saying yes? And whose voice am I hearing when I imagine saying no? Is saying yes quiets a parent's voice or a former mentor's voice or a comparison to somebody on social media, but saying no is the option that actually feels like relief. Pay attention to that. Relief might be data. Question number three: When choice moves closer to the values that I name, not the applause that I get. This one takes practice because our brains are wired for social approval. It's not a character flaw, it's biology, but you can overwrite an old pattern by deliberately weighing the quieter pattern of values in over the louder, applaud based one. Hopefully that makes sense. None of this means that external validation is wrong. In fact, it's amazing to get external validation, especially from the people that we love and respect. It's normal and human to want people to be proud of us and especially those that we love. The problem is not about wanting approval. The problem is when approval becomes the only compass and not our own values being the compass. Very clear distinction between those two things. I want to be honest with you about something before we wrap up here. Making decisions from your actual values instead of external approval will oftentimes and or sometimes disappoint people. That's not a side effect. It's most likely almost guaranteed. I've spent years making choices designed to keep everybody comfortable myself. And then when I actually ended up moving to Italy, I made a lot of people extremely uncomfortable. And I had to follow my own value system and my own internal compass. And it was very difficult for me to see that a lot of people did not like that version of me. But I personally liked that version of me. So some people around you will need to take time to get used to this new version of you. So be patient with them, be patient with the process. When you start deciding from your own value systems, some of the relationships are going to stretch you. It's going to stretch them, but it's also holding a more honest version of you. And that in itself is a super beautiful thing. Here's how to reframe things that might help when you're faced with this, especially around a goal. The goal was never ever made to make anyone and everyone comfortable. The goal is to actually live the life that you recognize that you want. A little discomfort in people in the short term is a much smaller cost than the decades of quietly resenting a life built entirely out of other people's expectations. So not only when we look at the values that we have, but also the goals that we have, we have to be okay with being a little bit uncomfortable when we choose ourselves and we choose ourselves first. And it might not be what others want from us because we're now choosing a value-based decision. And practically, just start small. I talk about this on a lot of my podcasts about just starting small, so that you can actually build a habit around this. You don't have to completely overhaul your job, quit your job tomorrow, or you know, end the friendship tomorrow. You can be super practical about this. And that practicality will start building the muscle inside of your brain and start building confidence inside of you. It decline the invitation you normally would accept out of obligation. See how that feels. Work through that emotion. Choose the smaller, quieter version of a plan instead of the impressive one. Just notice how that feels. Value-based decisions are about creating that muscle and building that muscle. You build it in low-stake moments so that it's strong enough to hold you when there's really high-stake moments and high-stake decisions that arrive. So here's what I want you to take with you today. Not every should is wrong, but almost every should deserves to be questioned before you build your life around it. And what you still want, if no one is watching, is not in that should, you need to take a look at that. Trace your goals back to the values underneath them. And when a real decision comes, weigh that out in the quiet. Be honest with yourself about the answer. And then impress yourself and make the decision based on your internal values. Try this this week. Try running one decision, even a small one, through that three question filter. Notice what changes when you decide what your values are inside of your own internal audience. And when others respond or react, be patient. Notice that they're going to need to stretch in learning this new aspect of yourself too. So if this episode struck a chord, send it to someone who you think could also value from listening to this. I would love to also hear from you. What's one of your shoulds that you're ready to question this week? I'd love hearing these growth stories and these growth opportunities. So please come and share with us. Until next time, this is the Elevate Her podcast. Be bold, be beautiful, make value based decisions, and have an amazing week.