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Tony: Where we explore the intersections of personal and professional development.

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John: Welcome to another episode of The Present Professional. Today, we're here to talk to you about Barrett Value Center's Seven Levels of Consciousness. And this is a model developed by Richard Barrett and inspired by the work of Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs that's been tested over two decades of real world experience. and a bunch of organizations that they've worked with. And we think it's really interesting based on a lot of the topics that we've presented here on our show and the way that they align. And this model identifies seven areas that comprise human motivations. And it's coming from basic survival at one end to service and concern for future generations at the other. and we're taking some of these words and some of these descriptions from their site and from some of the theoretical backing to the model that the way that it aligns with the hierarchy of needs is really taking Abraham Maslow's work to I feel like a more applicable level when it comes to individuals, when it comes to leaders, and when it comes to looking at organizational culture and evolving that culture based on things that really motivate us and based on real values that we have. So how does this apply to you? We want to take you through each of these and our experience and how we feel about each of these different levels of consciousness and talk about how different times of our life and maybe reflected each of the levels. so that you can feel that some of them may resonate with you, see where you're at, and then talk about steps to move up, move up in these levels of consciousness to really broaden our view. And when we really expand our view, our worldview, and how we see the world and our place in it, all of the problems become smaller. All of the things that feel immediate, here and now, shrink. They don't become non-existent, but you just have such a greater view of all of the possibilities in front of you. And that's what we want you to see with your life. That's what we want you to see with your career, is the possibilities in this field in front of you, and that comes from leveling up your consciousness. And if you're not moving up in levels of consciousness, then what are we really doing here? Are we just here to, you know, have fun, make some money, you know, watch football, eat food, and then, you know, have a family and then move on, next generation. I think if we really spend some time in having something to tangibly look at, to place yourself and your consciousness and your mind in a state of being at any moment in time, like it can give us a benchmark for moving up and seeing life with that greater vision, taking a step back, making our problems look smaller, and really seeing our place in the world and I'll go say the whole universe. So as we move through each of those, I'm going to have Tony introduce you to the steps of the model and say that I'm really excited to see where this conversation goes. I think it's a really interesting topic.

Tony: Yeah, it is interesting topic. And I'm sure in the show notes, people will be able to see the graphic and see the model like, um, for your own eyes, but we'll kind of describe it on the podcast today. But, you know, the beautiful thing is that this is rooted in values. And so what you'll see and what you'll find in this episode as well as the next is that we're going to go through the Baird model from an individual standpoint and for leaders as well. So if you're a leader in your organization or in your business or in your community and you want to transcend to the next level, we'll talk about that in the next episode. But for this one, we'll kind of talk more from an individual standpoint. And the thing about these values is that Either way, whether you're conscious or you're unconscious, the value still exists. You're still living and existing in this spectrum of the bare values model or this spectrum of life. But the more conscious that you are, the higher that you're able to kind of go through the model as you walk through it. So when you start, as John was kind of mentioned in the beginning, you're starting at the basic survival level. And for the purpose of the model, for the individual standpoint, that would be viability or ensuring stability. So you can look at ensuring your life, ensuring your financial stability, safety, health. That's kind of the beginning, just like the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where it tells you that your physiological needs and your safety needs are primary. For the bare values, it kind of packages those together and just kind of puts your survival, your basic level of life in that whole level one. Level two is your relationships. Building relationships, satisfying your customers and business, satisfying the people that you love and the people that support you, having real true connections, as well as respect for the people that you're working with and them respecting you also. being a good listener, open communication. So you think about consciousness and you think about even emotional intelligence. This is kind of when you talk about that. So social aspects of emotional intelligence, you're building relationships is kind of lies here in the second value box. And when I talk to people about the bear values model, I think we skip over the relationships and we're like, yeah, I'm a good relationship builder. What's the next one? And reality, we aren't always the best with relationships. I think that we all have room for improvement, and we think we have relationships at a certain level. But I think it's also important to see the two-way street, see how you are viewed by others. If you are truly respected as a leader and a human being, are you actually a good listener, or do you just think you're a good listener? And those questions and those thoughts kind of bring it back to consciousness. So the third value box is performance, which is achieving excellence, your quality, your results, your competence, your self-esteem, your productivity, your efficiency, even how you are actually viewed in your work. Is your work excellent or on the pathway to excellence? The fourth one is where things kind of transcend, and this is where you either go up into the next set of values that are higher, or you kind of do the work to improve one, two, and three. And that fourth box is evolution, courageously evolving, having accountability, transformation, being innovative. Continuously learning, having autonomy, empowerment, empowerment for yourself, empowerment for other people, agility. And I think this is where you really can pause and say, OK, where am I? Where am I seriously when it comes to evolving? Am I a continuous learner? Do I hold myself and others accountable? Am I actually transforming into a new human being or a different human being? Or am I not? Am I kind of stuck and stagnant in one place? And if you ask yourself these questions and you get true, authentic answers that may say, hey, I'm not where I want to be, you have the ability to go back down to the performance and the relationships and maybe even the viability level one so that you can improve, so that you can go to five, six and seven.

John: and i think that five six and seven are where we want to be that's the master for level but you gotta master one two and three four first right i mean i feel that it's it's worth saying that one two and three there are your foundation and you know you're shoring up the foundation and you know maybe sometimes it gets a crack in it maybe sometimes it gets a little bit weaker you know it leans on one side a little bit and then you got a shirt up So I think that there's, it's not like I have, I've achieved the foundation and now I live up in five, six, seven, right? I think that the stability relationships and then your achievement and like moving forward in your, in your contribution there, it's foundational to feeling like you're moving forward in life and it's really it's directly correlated to a coaching theory and a theory that really supports a lot around coaching and self-determination theory and what that says are three needs are right is to be Competent, so know things, understand where we're going, competent in our work, competent in what we like to do in our lives. Relatedness, so with relationships here. And then autonomy, so the ability to make our own decisions and move forward. And that's a big thing that we work with clients on is, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. We're not life consultants. We're utilizing these tools to help you come up with your own answers so you have the autonomy to move forward and live that. I love how well this correlates with coaching psychology as well. Moving from one, viability, two, relationships, three, performance. Performance and evolution, I feel like, are a lot of the autonomy and competency. So there's just a lot of overlap with some really foundational theories for coaching as well. So I just wanted to point that out and stress this foundation is something that we have to come back to and pour a little bit more touch-up concrete on every once in a while and make sure that that's all stable as we move forward into the higher levels. So I'll let you continue on that.

Tony: No, it's important that you point that out. And, you know, as you were talking, it made me think about my own self-reflection and how I agree with you that 1, 2, and 3 are the foundation. And even as this is, you know, the top of a new year, it's the perfect time to reevaluate your 1, 2, and 3. You know, for me, I'm thinking, OK, how can I go back to one, make sure that my stability is ensured, you know, and make sure that I'm doing the basics of life in a way that is stable and not that it's not stable. But how can I ensure stability? That's what number one says, not just being. stable but ensuring stability even as you go and enter into a new year with new things, new opportunities, new visions, new etc. How are you ensuring that what you're taking on and what you're doing is stable? Then going back to the building relationships and then reevaluating how good or not so good I've been as a person in terms of my ability to manage relationships and then going deeper. Like being an even better friend, being an even better partner, being an even better human being and then looking at the work that I do and going back to make sure that it is excellent and working even doubling down on the work, doubling down on the research, doubling down on the reading, doubling down on Projects, you know, etc. And so I think as you I think a part of consciousness is going back to those one two and three then entering into four Which is the evolution state and then as you see five six and seven as I mentioned are there are even more higher levels and so five is alignment which means to be authentically or have authentic expression and have openness your level of creativity your level of integrity your passion trust honesty transparency and so when i've talked to people i think they see that when they're like yeah i'm pretty much a transparent honest trustworthy person it's like. Well those are easier to say your behavior is that but it's taking that fifth one and compounding it on top of four three two and one is not just hey are you an open creative authentic person. It's like, yeah, yeah, sure. What's six and seven? Because I'm trying to get to the highest levels and just move on. But it's really doubling down on your ability to be in alignment with all of it, your performance, your relationships, your viability. And then, of course, six is collaboration, cultivating communities, community involvement, partnership, mentoring, coaching, employee fulfillment if you are a leader in a corporation or an organization. I'm in seven is contribution i think this is where we are wanna be is how we contribute to society living with purpose being of service thinking about the future generations vision social responsibility and you're just long term perspective of life so. Packaging that up man. I think these are our beautiful ways to work to beautiful things to work towards beautiful things to achieve and aspire to want to have going from insurance stability all the way to living for purpose beyond yourself right and I think it moves along this spectrum and

John: where at the beginning and as you're moving through the foundation and as you move up in the levels of consciousness, I noticed that it really moves from a more self-centered or self-centric point of view to more self-transcendent. Like you move outward and that's that's why that's why I talked about in the beginning as your perspective just shifting to have this broader view of The beauty in the background and like your place in this in this mass world and as you move up in those levels You start to see that you start to and you start to value that right? You're let your place in this long term, you know how you're setting things up for future generations It's not just me, me, me, but when I'm only concerned with ensuring my own stability and surviving, it's me, me, me. So it's like having the strong foundation enables us to think we, we, we. What do we want to do here together? And as we move through these and as we start to get more of that self-transcendent perspective, We're gonna have times that bring us back to stability, you know, we're gonna hit roadblocks life's gonna throw things at us that are not fair right and You know, it's like what do you do then? You know, it's and that's where that's where these being values and not qualities is something that I feel is more sustainable and Right and I think when when you were describing say the authentic expression or the alignment category five and it was saying, you know, we're working with clients and you're working with people that say well Oh, no, I have I have integrity and you know, I'm creative creativity passion I'm trustworthy. I'm honest. Okay, like so those are qualities, right and So it's like, okay, we can all have those qualities at times, and we can also have not so supportive qualities at times. But then I think moving that word from quality to value, like creativity is something I value, or my organization values. Transparency is something that I value. Okay, now give me an example. How do you live that? How do you live transparently? How do you, how does that come up in your communication? And I think that's where this levels of consciousness chart and spectrum, or I guess hierarchy is really going toward is, you know, what are you actually embodying? Are you living it in daily life? when we're talking about cultivating communities, you know, you're moving up that level six, seven, and you don't need to be there to be a great human being. And it's like when you're living there, when I'm focused on community involvement, when I'm focused on a, successful, bi-directional, equal, fulfilling partnership. When I'm thinking about my team, my organization, how people feel and are they fulfilled in that moment, and it's what are the actual actions? How am I embodying that in my everyday life? How am I planning for it in my business cycle? Right, like I think that is the difference and how these levels of consciousness can actually be lived at for a long time is Understanding how they're actually woven into the fabric of our lives as opposed to just qualities that we can exhibit sometimes because of course I can exhibit you know a partnership with anyone I shake hands with every other month and It's like, oh yeah, no, it's great to see you, my partner. But it's like, how am I really exhibiting that in my day-to-day life? Values versus qualities.

Tony: I agree with you. And the first one being insurance stability. It's easy to get stuck right there. It's easy to get caught up in number one. And that's probably where most people most people get stuck, because it's not easy to take care of yourself or take care of your family if you're the head of household or whatever it may be. I mean, just surviving is a workload in itself. And, you know, when you look at the rest of the values, they are all about other people. especially like when you really take two into account and then you start to double down on three, four, five, six, and seven. Achieving excellence, that also has to do, you also have to take into account that how well are you managing your relationships? Not just the work that you do, but if you're building relationships, how well are you managing them? And until you are able to master the ability to manage those relationships, you need to go you need to continuously go backward and work and work that level two in a way where when you move on to level three you're carrying people up with you as opposed to going up the ladder and then going back down to one. You go up the ladder and you achieve more success and then you go back to ensuring your personal stability and then you have to start over again. No, you should be able to carry people that may not be able to Stand on their own especially if you are a community leaders are aspiring to be a leader of other people you will have people who baby stuck in the number one. Bucket and not able to just consciously move forward but your example should truly do that and i think that's where number four sits. is where you sit there in that evolution bucket or the evolution category is the value of courageously and continuously evolving and you ask yourself, where am I when it comes to others? Where am I when it comes to my ability to make others transcend too? Not just myself, because then that's insurance stability again. You have to really monitor your selfishness and make sure that you're not only thinking about me like you kind of mentioned earlier. And, you know, I love the seventh box, living purpose and contributing to society. And, you know, as you kind of work through life, you know, I was talking with someone maybe a year ago and we were just talking about where people are in terms of why people give to charities, why people give to foundations and community, create community partnerships. You know a lot of people are at that point where they wanna leave a legacy and when you think about leaving legacy you think about what's gonna happen to. Your name once you leave this earth people start to really deeply think about that. But sometimes you could have thought about it earlier on if you had this model in a way where you see where the end goal is. Like you mentioned, watching football, drinking beer, having a family, going to work, that's fine. But to think about at the end of all of this, where I want to take my family, where I want my legacy to be, what do I want to leave behind? If you're marching towards that on a daily basis, you can start to slowly fill in those other buckets as you go through life, as opposed to getting to the end of life and now you're just, you're like doing everything you can to fill up number seven. You could be filling up number seven as you're marching through three, four, and five, even if you're not able to truly give that long-term perspective just yet.

John: I love that. And to double down on that, You can be living in the higher states of consciousness at any age, at any income, at any level of seniority within your organization, at any place in this world. You can start living by these values, these higher level purpose values, anywhere in your life. You don't have to wait until you are a leader. You don't have to wait until you're an executive to then start creating communities and thinking about everyone else around you. You can go lend a hand today. You can go get involved in your community this weekend. Whether you're working a nine-to-five, whether you're going through school, you can join an organization at school. There are so many different ways that you can get involved in things in your life to be able to start self-transcending, to be able to start thinking other-centric and moving out of this me me me there's you know in its stability I think a lot of these in I think a lot of the things instability can be all perspective based as well I think if you I think you can live within your means you can feel comfortable in different places, especially here in America. Sure, there are really bad things and systems and people in not so supportive places. But I'll tell you what, I've seen so much charity and altruistic behavior from folks that Don't have anything. You don't have to have everything to then start to give because giving is going to give back to you no matter where you are in your life. And just to give, it doesn't have to be financial. Give your time, give your effort, give your strength, your stability, just a little bit, here and there, this weekend, once a month, once a quarter. Think about things other than yourself. higher levels of consciousness, it's not just, you know, transcending to some other realm, right? You're moving into a state of a supportive mindset. Like, you will be happier the more that you move outside yourself.

Tony: John, what do you think about that third level where it's talking about performance and achieving excellence? Like, how would you coach someone who is working on one and two, maybe they're doing good and they were trying to just go up the ladder here of the consciousness seven levels, and now they're entering into three, and it's talking about achieving excellence. How do you unpack that in a way where you can walk them through I don't want to say models, but walk them through a coaching scenario that can improve their performance.

John: Oh man, this is the first two things that come up for me right away are thinking about what's been getting in the way of their results. Were they feeling incompetent about something? And, you know, just and then once they start to unpack certain things like that, there are likely limiting beliefs or environmental structures that they have in place that are really holding them back from achieving the excellence that they want to achieve. And then. I start to pull on anywhere in their life where they've experienced excellence, where they've experienced success. Pull in some of those mastery experiences so that we can use that energy of times that they experienced success to start pulling out different pieces of what supported them then. So it could be anything, completely unrelated. We could be talking about putting together a presentation for your board or an executive team, and then talking about a mastery experience that you had in theater, and talking about what supported you there when you got up in front of the crowd. And we could pull from different things within the environment and within their own mindset from that mastery experience that could be in a complete different area of their life, and pull it into finding success in delivering that presentation. Right, so it's all about kind of taking that energy and moving it into Anywhere that you've experienced excellence How do we pull any of those components to work towards the goal that you want to achieve here? So it's fostering that energy and then knocking down roadblocks in front But also again that bigger view it's like the roadblock looks a lot smaller when you see on the horizon and But when you're laser focused in on the roadblock in front of you, that's all you see. And a lot of times that change in perspective and seeing things from that wider view, it just does it for you. And then you just step over the roadblock. I hope that answers your question.

Tony: It definitely does. And it sounds like, you know, you kind of package what has worked for a person. And not only that, but realizing or helping the person realize that we all have had moments of excellence. We all have had moments of high performance in some way. Like even if it's taking you back to your third grade spelling bee, or you won or got second place or you've outperformed your own what you thought you could you know or even if it's uh you uh running track you know in high school or or cross country or anything like pulling those moments where you have had success and and bringing them into the current situation and seeing what worked and unpacking that. No, I like that a lot. And I think that that's very helpful for people who are checking out the podcast and listening. And maybe you're at a place where performance is something that you want to take to a higher level in this new year. And John just definitely gave some authentic nuggets to do that. But, you know, take us up on a coaching session, you know, contact us, you know, contact John, contact me. Let's talk about how to even go to the next level in your evolution state. And I just wanted to plug that because performance is definitely key. I was having a conversation this weekend and someone was talking to me about how she's at a place where, you know, she's killing it at work, but it takes a lot to kill it. And I think what the root cause of it was habits and performance and things that she was doing outside of work that would make her feel as if work was harder. But really, it's the energy that you're bringing or the energy that's happening to you outside of work that you, you know, work is your safe place. It's your playground because that's where you thrive and survive. But the external factors outside of work was kind of creating limiting beliefs that didn't exist. And so, you know, that's why I wanted to ask that question because, uh, you know, there are a lot of people out there in that same boat. We're high performers, we do good at work, but, you know, how do we bring in other aspects of our life and iron those things out so we can move forward and really ultimately become a contributing conscious leader?

John: And I'd say moving into that middle stage, you know, above foundation and just below like living purposefully in your evolution, stage four, man, that is a coaching engagement. You know, just think about the words there that he uses to describe this. accountability, transformation, innovation, continuous learning, autonomy, empowerment, agility. These are all things that are fully encompassing of a coaching engagement. And so like being in this state of evolution, like always having a coach is a it's a superpower. You have someone focused on, you're hiring someone to focus on your evolution, where you've taken a step back, where you're taking a step forward, how to alter and utilize different mindsets to step into different challenging arenas. It's in having that, It's an edge. It's a huge edge on competition. It's an edge on life and It's just man.

Tony: I will never not have coach never It's crucial, you know, I think think back to my first coaching session ever it was probably while we're in 2023 and It was probably seven years ago, and that was when I really fell in love with, like you mentioned, the evolution part, and now that's the coaching session. You can think that you're doing well, and you may need someone to not only not just validate your performance or validate what you're doing, but help you kind of talk through the transformational process that's occurring. And that is where coaching is so crucial. And that's what coaching did for me. It helped me really, I will say, validate some of my thoughts, some of the things I was working through. And really, even then, like seven years ago, helped me kind of align and complete things that that may have been roadblocks at the time or even Just having an honest conversation with a third party, someone who had no skin in my game, it didn't matter whether I survived or failed. It was fine, but she was able to really unlock things that really helped me even then, seven years ago, and to today. And so to your point, I will continuously seek coaching and continuously work with coaches, even as a coach. Even as a person that works with people on a daily basis and helps them through various different performative measures i want to say issues but performative things that can happen in their personal professional development so i just want to double down on that and i love how you plugged it right there at the evolution part the number four if you really want to take it to another level. You really should go with other people. We have other people in your camp that can support you and they can help you get to that fifth, sixth and seventh state. I guarantee you people who are operating in that seventh contribution state have a lot of support. They have a team. They have people that are rallying around them that they have. I will even say hired probably to make sure that they can fully live that out.

John: Yes, man. And, you know, once you fortify the foundation and you start working on these different things in your life, I mean, you're here listening to this podcast. You are already taking steps to evolve. You're taking steps to continuously learn. And, you know, once you sure up your foundation, you're moving through this continuous learning steps. and you're wondering what's next, it's probably time to take a risk. Whether that be putting yourself out there, starting the business, doing the thing, getting the investors, getting the loan, starting the creative project, writing the book, whatever it is, and if you feel like you're here, you've been continuously learning for some time, and you've been living at this stage for, Take the risk, do the thing, go express yourself, involve yourself with others, move outside of me, me, me and into we, we, we. There's so much available for you and I am excited for what the present professional community will create moving forward. So we are here week after week to bring you topics like this, models like this, so that one might fit exactly what you need at this moment in your life. So keep evolving my friends, take the risk, go out there and do the thing, and we'll be here to support you the whole way. So check us out at the presentprofessionalpodcast.com and anywhere that you get your podcasts. Ratings and reviews really help take us to the next level, so anywhere you're listening, please drop a rating and review, and we will see you next time, my friends.