Honoring Our Values
“What if we could work from anywhere.”
This is what Brandon was telling me long before the world shut down back in 2020. He would tell me that as long as he could connect to wifi, he could literally work from anywhere—emails, projects, meetings—he didn’t need an office to get things accomplished. He wanted to be able to travel and do all the things and be able to work at the same time.
To be honest, I thought he was crazy. I thought, work is work and travel is travel. It was difficult to imagine a world where you could do both.
When everything shut down and we had no choice but to work remotely, it really opened our eyes—opened my eyes—to what is actually possible. We had a small taste of what it could look like to work whenever from wherever. So as we redesigned our lives and realigned to our values, we got a clear picture of how we wanted to work and play and realized we can do it all at the same time.
This past week we took a midweek trip to Washington, D.C. (more on this trip to come). Brandon had a list of projects to work on during the car ride and he had one meeting scheduled on our first day of travel. We knew we could delay our departure time or we could take the meeting on the road. Brandon did his research and found a place along our travel route. We planned our trip accordingly, made it to the stop with plenty of time to set up, and the kids and I took an extended lunch break while Brandon was on his meeting.
What we have found is that work and play can most definitely go together. We have learned that when you are aligned to your values, you make decisions that allow those values to come to life and to be a part of your day-to-day. When it comes to work and play, it turns out we are getting better at both—work isn’t holding us back from the things we want to do and play isn’t just a one-time shot on a vacation.
When we made the big move in 2020, we had no idea how our work lives were going to be impacted and would potentially change. What we did know is that we were not going to continue living our lives revolving strictly around work. We were speaking life into our values and were ready to live them out.
The truth is, we hold the power to live our days in the way that suits us best—in a way that honors our values and who we are. The truth is, when we know who we are and we know what we value, the life we want is closer than we think!
