What value or principle matters most to you? Why?

We’ve always believed that forming a strategy is impossible until your clear on what your values and principles are. Without values and principles to guide you, making decisions can seem impossibly difficult. Given how important setting values and principles is to decision making we asked folks we admire to tell us about the values or principles that matter most to them.

Jenna Handloff | Herbalist & INNATE Traditions Postpartum Care Provider

Creating relationships within my Community is a foundation of my small business! When I took over Aspen Botanicals is 2019 it was already an established apothecary, but it was not nurtured within my community of Steamboat Springs. I have wholeheartedly put my attention and dedication of new business ownership into revitalizing the relationship between Aspen Botanicals and members of my own community, I want my community to know that they have a place to go to, locally, for holistic support, and meeting those who share the love of herbal wellness and self care is powerful! I have found that when we have options for our own health and wellness practices we are more productive members of our society. I want to encourage that kind of community growth. Read more>

Alisha Bashaw | Mental Health & Equine Therapist and Author

The value that matters most to me in life is kindness. It’s one of those values that gets a bad rap, and can so easily become synonymous with weakness, and I have built a small soapbox around this misnomer! Kindness is not people-pleasing or passive communication or taking the easy way out of things, but rather a deep and profound calling to really listen to what would be the best case scenario for all parties. It is sometimes rooted in making tough decisions when they are unpopular for the sake of everyone’s humanity in the process or to protect the integrity of a situation. It is a choice that is fueled by other realmy-ness that, for me, challenges the status quo. It invites elevation of the way things are typically done for the potential of them being even better. Kindness in today’s world is often not taken seriously, and those who frequent it can be seen as doormats. Kindness, in my eyes, is anything but that. Read more>>

Joseph Liberti | Artist

Integrity is the value that guides me. I aim to have what I say and do express my authentic self. When I express myself in visual art or music I strive to create authentic art from my heart and spirit, – not trying to be someone or something else to gain approval. When I live my truth moment to moment I am most peaceful, creative and loving. Read more>>

Avital Miller | Healing Breakthrough Facilitator, Award-Winning and Best-Selling Author, Internal Keynote Speaker, and Global Dancer

In the spiritual book that has made the most impact to me, Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda, Yogananda is staying at his guru’s ashram where there are tons of incessant annoying mosquitos. Somehow the mosquitos never bother his guru Swami Sri Yukteswar. Yogananda resolves the way to outwit the mosquitos is through peacefulness so he prevents himself from swatting the mosquitos. His guru catches him in the act and mentions the thought of killing the mosquitos also needs to be removed to fully embody peacefulness. When I lived at the yoga retreat center in the mountains of California as part of the dance/movement therapy weekend retreat I would lead, I also put together a big dance production involving many people performing and much marketing all over town. We had a huge rainstorm that weekend with much flooding and had to cancel the whole program. I was feeling the disappointment when a friend wrote how pleased everyone felt in the process of my efforts. It never actually happened and yet the energy I put into it had already inspired so many people. Read more>>

Gertie Breffle | Psychotherapist

I think that courage, curiosity, and exuberance have been the most important treasures I’ve carried in my pocket throughout my career, which of course I think my career originated in my childhood and life path and these three have been invaluable companions playing a critical role in it. I think the combination of these three have been a recipe for being tickled by wonder, insight, and deep appreciation for all the resilience, stength, wisdom, tenderness, and infinite qualities and depths of the human spirit I see embodied in all the little moments overcoming, longsuffering, and sweetness and stength of people I’ve worked with, interacted with, known, loved and learned through local/global community and storytelling. I think one of the most important elements of my work is to appreciate and draw on each person’s capacity to go through relentless suffering and have the audacity to continue on, to dare, to wake up and greet another day, to continue striving for dreams and to draw on their own courage, curiosity, kindness, and humor. Read more>>