Shownotes:

Values are one of the most important things for me. Not only does it make you a better person, but it’s what you are known for as well. Sometimes, our own values get compromised even if we don’t want to just because we don’t want to offend this other person. But hey, just because we are friends or partners, doesn’t mean we’re required to agree to them even if our values say otherwise. It’s perfectly okay to have different opinions and values.

Hello and welcome to the Traveling Introvert. Today I want to talk about standing by your values. Recently ... I'm part of a lot of Facebook groups. And one of the Facebook groups I'm in wanted to encourage other members to meet with each other, so they could have in person meetups, which was great. And so, I made a little comment going, "does anyone do any virtual ones?" Not all of us might be close to everyone else. Some people live in remote places, we were all over the world. Does anyone do a remote one? And to my surprise, when I looked the next day, because I try not to be on Facebook too often, there was a lot of replies and responses that people wanted to do this. So, over the time, took about a week, we managed to arrange to have a virtual meetup. We knew what we wanted to talk about and who was going to be there. And it was through Zoom. It took a little while. People liked using Facebook to communicate and some people offline at the time and online.

And instead of sending a calendar invite, we had to double check who were actually meeting. And there was a couple things. But I made the question, so I wanted to attend this meeting to see what would happen. I wasn't sure if it was something I wanted to commit to on a regular basis, because I'm very careful about the kind of things that I commit to on the regular, and whether it is a useful time for me or whatever it is that I want to do, and whatever my goal might be. So I attended the meeting. And as normal with a meeting that is a bunch of people who've never met before, we go around and we talk about what we do, where we are, our background maybe, that sort of a thing. And we went around and I realized that one of the participants was part of an MLM, a multilevel marketing company. She didn't say so specifically, but she mentioned that this particular product had changed her life and that she needed to find two other people to buy it, and then she kind of took that back.

But that was a big clue to me that this was a multilevel marketing kind of company. And the meeting continued and we all talked about different things. And I just didn't really get a good vibe from most of the people in the group. They were fine. There was nothing very specific. I just ... The MLM thing bugged me. And also that was the person who's Zoom account we were using. So then the end of the meeting came, we helped each other as much as we could, and we had the discussion of whether we were going to meet again. We were going to meet again, but we were talking about different things. And again, this person used it as an opportunity to say how much her life had changed, which is fine, but it was due to this particular product, what they were doing, and how wonderful it was. But she's out to help people, which is good. Her core belief is to help people, which is a wonderful thing.

So at the end of the call we logged off, and I sat and I thought, and then I went and had a discussion with a friend. And I said, "I just did this thing, and this person, she's part of MLM and we're supposed to meet together and be accountable and help each other in various ways. And so if I was part of this group, I would be helping this person with their MLM business. Which is not really what I want to do, but I'm the one that started this particular discussion and I feel bad dropping out." And they said, "there are other people in the group, there's like five of you. You are not the head of it. You're not even using your Zoom account, you're using somebody else's Zoom account. And if you don't feel comfortable doing this, then don't."

So I ended up writing an email to the one person who I considered that I would want to keep in touch with and I said, "hi, I really enjoyed meeting everybody. I think I'm going to be dropping out. I don't think this is a good fit for me. Plus one of the members has a business that I don't agree with." I didn't mention what it was. I just said it's a business that I don't agree with. Only to have that person email me back and say, "hey, actually I didn't think it was a good fit for me either. I will also be dropping out. Thank you for your honesty." So just by me sort of reaching out and saying, "I don't feel quite great about this", and sticking with my values and beliefs, I ended up making a better connection with this other person. So, that was my story for today. It was just stick with your beliefs, because people will recognize it. Thank you for listening, this is Janice at thecareerintrovert.com helping introverts amplify their voices through podcasting, publishing, public speaking, and personal branding. If you have any questions, email me at Janice@thecareerintrovert.com.