How to Define Your Top 5 Core Values When Starting Over in Midlife

Most of us spend our lives becoming who everyone else needs us to be. Eva M. Kennedy says the way back is not to become someone new, but to remember who you already are, and to start by naming your top five values.

Women of Color: An Intimate Conversation host Deneen L. Garrett has an intimate conversation with Eva M. Kennedy, a Chicago-based empowerment speaker, author of Just Leap and Inspirations for the Soul, and founder of The Power Summit. Eva is the creator of Remember Who You Are, a transformational experience that helps women reconnect with their identity, purpose, and power during life and leadership transitions. This conversation continues The Reclamation Series.

Key Takeaways

• Remembering who you are is more powerful than trying to become someone new.
• As we grow, we take on the titles and expectations that parents, society, community, and the church place on us, and we lose touch with the essence of who we are.
• When Eva left her corporate career, she lost the title and began looking internally instead of externally to find her purpose.
• Fear of the known and the unknown both hold women back. Eva leans on faith: take the step, and if it doesn't work out, you will learn something.
• Identify, define, and prioritize your top five values. They are your road map for every decision.
• The first step is simple: acknowledge that something is going on inside you, and write down "I want more out of life."

You Don't Have to Become Someone New

Eva's work began with her own experience and the women she coaches. She saw that so many of us are trying to become someone new when, in essence, all we have to do is remember who we are. As Deneen puts it, you don't leave yourself. You become a different version of yourself. But as we grow and evolve, we tend to take on what everybody else has put on us, and we become disconnected from the essence of who we truly are.

Performing for Everyone Else

Eva explains that we come into this world with value, and then we start taking on titles and expectations: go to school, get an education, get married, focus on a career. We end up living out how other people defined our lives should be. Somewhere in midlife, many women recognize the disconnect and ask, who am I? Eva uses the word performing deliberately. Before that stage, she says, we are still performing based on what we have been taught we need to do.

She also shares a story about how her own voice got quieted. Early in her career, she was the only Black person in a meeting with powerful VPs when someone wrote a note that said, "Eva preaches to us," and passed it down the table. She went back after the meeting to get the note. She didn't want to be known as preachy, and it quieted her voice for years. Today, as an empowerment speaker, she says she takes it 100%: "I own it. That's my style."

What Is Left When the Title Is Gone

When Eva left her corporate job in 2006, she gave herself permission to take five years off. She searched for her purpose, praying, running the lakefront, and crying out, "God, what's my purpose?" Without the title she no longer had that identity, and her confidence was stripped for a while because she had tied herself to it. So she started looking internally instead of externally.

Asked who she is with the titles taken away, Eva says: Eva Kennedy is a woman with purpose. She is a child of the Most High God. She is creative, she is loved, and she shares her love. Her purpose is to help women reconnect with themselves so they can claim their identity, understand their worth, and live the life they desire in the season they are in.

Fear of the Known, Fear of the Unknown, and Where Faith Comes In

Eva says the biggest roadblock she sees is fear and not understanding value and worth. Many women believe they have to earn their value, but it is inherent. She also shares something she learned: you make decisions either from love or from fear.

Asked whether the fear is of the known or the unknown, Eva says it is a combination of both. There is the fear of the unknown, the what-if of taking a step that doesn't work, and the fear of knowing yourself well enough to start questioning whether you are good enough. That is where faith comes in. If you believe, take the step, and if it doesn't work out the way you thought, you will learn something from it. She shares how that played out in her own story, from holding onto the program of a summit she attended in 2015 to declaring herself an empowerment speaker and eventually building The Power Summit under her own brand.

The One Step: Know Your Top Five Values

For the woman who has lost herself in everyone else's expectations, Eva's advice is to take one step. Sit down and acknowledge that something is going on inside you. Take a piece of paper and write down, "I want more out of life." Then take another step. If you don't know how to move forward, seek help, whether that is a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a mentor, or a coach.

The most important thing, Eva says, is to know what is important to you. Your values are your road map. When she was stuck and could not answer the question of what was important to her, she sat down and identified, defined, and prioritized her top five values. Now, when she has to make a decision, the first thing she asks is whether it aligns with those values. Most people cannot name their top five in order of priority, she notes, and if you are not making decisions based on what is important to you, other people are making them for you and you become who they want you to be.

She adds a reminder that we only come around once. So many women are waiting for perfection, waiting to lose a little more weight or save a little more money. But tomorrow is not promised, and now is the time. It is also not all or nothing. Often it is an "and," and there is a middle road.

Conclusion

You don't have to become someone new to move forward. You have to remember who you were before the world got its hands on you and build from there. That's the Dream Lifestyle® standard. Eva leaves us with this: know that you have value. You don't have to chase worth. You inherited it. Your life has purpose, meaning, and value, and only you get to decide what an amazing life looks like for you.

To hear the full conversation, listen to the episode today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is remembering who you are better than trying to become someone new?

According to Eva Kennedy, many women are trying to become someone new when all they have to do is remember who they are. As we grow, we take on the titles and expectations others place on us and become disconnected from our essence. Remembering brings you back to that essence instead of building yet another version for other people.

How do I identify my top five values?

Eva says she identified, defined, and prioritized her top five values when she was stuck and could not answer the question of what was important to her. She now checks every decision against them. She notes that most people cannot name their top five in order of priority.

What happened to Eva's identity when she left her corporate career?

When Eva left her corporate job in 2006, she lost the title she had identified with, and her confidence was stripped for a while. She took five years off, searched for her purpose, and began looking internally instead of externally.

How does fear affect reinvention?

Eva says fear is the biggest roadblock she sees, and it is a combination of the fear of the unknown and the fear of knowing yourself well enough to question whether you are good enough. Her answer is faith: take the step, and if it doesn't work out, you will learn something from it.