I travel a lot. Not because I have to, but because I like travel. I get my best ideas on planes. But I don't fucking fly coach, because that's not properly valuing my time. I lose a day either side, and I want to be present with my family when I get back.

I don't do TV. I don't cook or clean. I don't do acquaintances. I don't have an abundance of friends. I'm happy not to return phone calls from all the ladies at school who invite me to lunch. I don't care what people think any more because otherwise I'm just filling your diary and don't do anything for myself. You have a choice: care about what other people think or care about what you think. If it doesn't suit your values and it doesn't excite you, just don't do it.

That sounds really self-serving, but it took me a long time to get to that point—because I always care what people think.

I was always a victim of tall poppy syndrome. That's an Australian expression. The saying goes that in our culture, tall poppies get cut down. If you stand out too much above the crowd—if you're too different, too successful, achieve too much—people don't like it. Our natural desire is to cut down the tallest poppies to the same size as all the other flowers in the field.

But I can't help sticking out. I've had to get comfortable with the fact that I don't want to make the same choices as everybody else when it comes to how I do business or what type of mother I am. I can't let myself care if other people don't like it.

I know how to make these calls because I know what I value most. If I didn't know my values, I wouldn't feel as confident about how to spend my time and where to put my energy. I'd feel guilty about all the things I don't do, because I'd be worried about what I'm “supposed” to do instead of worrying about what actually matters to me. But I'm happy with my choices because I know they align with the things that are core to who I am.

KNOW YOUR VALUE

Before you can apply your values, you need to recognize your value.

I think knowing your value is about self-worth and self-respect. It's not necessarily about believing in your worth or value in a monetary sense (although it could be in certain situations, like if you're negotiating a job or a deal). It's more about understanding your own strengths and responding when you're expected to be part of something that doesn't play to those. If you know your own worth, if you value your time and energy and skills properly, you'll be able to say no with confidence. Knowing your value gives you the courage to walk away from things that aren't right.

It also gives you the courage to step up. You'll rise to a challenge, because you have a realistic sense of your own talent that tells you that you should be capable. You'll be brave enough to show up emotionally in your relationships and be vulnerable, because you recognize the value that you bring to those people and interactions.

When you recognize the things about yourself that are most valuable, you make room to express them and say no to other things that don't maximize your value. You know what's valuable to your family and your business, so you focus on doing those things. You let other people fill in the gaps where you don't bring as much to the table. Knowing your value helps you prioritize and make the best use of your time in all areas. Is the best use of my time cooking, or spending time with the kids? Is it being a control freak at work or empowering others and sticking to what I do best?

Knowing your value means having a realistic understanding of what you have to offer in every area of your life, and how best to offer it.

NAVIGATE LIFE ACCORDING TO YOUR VALUES, NOT YOUR PLANS

Women love plans. Don't we?

I mean, we write fucking birth plans—as if that's something you can plan for. You might think you're totally dedicated to a drug-free birth, but when you're in the moment and you're in actual pain, you might want to change the plan. Having a birth plan is like the ultimate example of the way we like to plan for things we can't control.

The same goes for life. You plan and you plan and then shit hits the fan, you're screaming in pain and you want to change the plan. Or the situation is out of your control and your plan goes out the window.

Having a birth plan, a life plan, any kind of set-in-stone plan—that's a great way to set yourself up for disappointment.

That's why I talk about values over plans. It's fine to have a plan. But when the plan turns to shit you need to know how to roll with the changes. You want to be weaving your way through life, being challenged, navigating those challenges and changes with confidence. The best way to operate is to know your values so you can make good decisions in the moment.

It's futile to write a life plan that lists everything you think you'll want and need for the rest of your life. You'll usually end up being wrong, pursuing a list of achievements you set up when you didn't know what you didn't know. At different phases of your life your priorities will shift, but your values will always be there to guide you.

What you prioritize in your twenties will be different from what you prioritize in your thirties and forties. In my twenties, my big thing was that I had to be asset-rich, which to me meant owning property. That was the only tangible investment I understood. Then I got into my thirties and realized, wow—the best thing I can invest in is actually myself. Shit, that pays a way bigger dividend! So my perspective on assets and investment shifted.

In my twenties, my work life was just about imagining what it would be like to have a sustainable business. In my thirties, when I'd achieved that, it was about getting the business to serve me: finding ways to have flexibility and take more time off, especially because I had small children. I don't know what I'll want in my forties. “Making it all less complex” seems to be the theme so far.

My preferences around where I want to live have shifted. In my twenties the dream was a penthouse within walking distance to live music and bars. In my thirties it was the family home with the white picket fence and open space for my kids. In both cases it was about having a home that honored the things that were most important to me during that phase of my life.

I'm not fixated on being able to draw an exact picture of what my life will look like in the future; I just know that I will always live where it serves me best. I will always invest in things that I'm passionate about. And I probably won't follow the path that's easy and comfortable; I'll always be more likely to do what excites and challenges me.

HOW TO DEFINE YOUR VALUES

If you do an honest audit of how you spend your time, who you spend it with, how you fill your space, and where your money goes, it will reveal what you value most.

If you do the values audit and feel like you're spending your time, money, and energy on things that aren't fulfilling to you, this reveals something important about your values. It shows that you've got an underlying value that's overriding other values. Something bigger might be edging out the things that you really wish you could honor.

For example, your underlying value might be about wanting to fit in socially—you want to conform to what other people are doing and fulfill their expectations, so that drives your choices, even if it means choosing things you don't truly want. Or maybe you're temporarily ignoring one value in pursuit of another (for example, compromising on your family life because you're chasing financial security). If you have values in some areas that are in conflict with values in other areas, one or the other will get squashed.

When I do a values audit of my work life, it reminds me that I really value personal growth. When I spend time in my businesses, I want it to be spent around people who think differently than me. I like working with people who intimidate me a little bit with their intelligence. I like to be the little fish, and I keep changing ponds.

But I've already mentioned that I value asset-building as well. The way I approach business is really annoying from an asset point of view, because if I stayed longer in each company I'd still be there when it grew really big. But I like working in startups. I know that asset-based wealth is a really good idea, but I'm not going to accumulate it at the expense of growing and challenging myself.

(Plus, I'd rather work with good people than rich people. I've earned the right to not put up with dickheads. That's a better reward than a fancy car.)

So I've got a values conflict that I have to negotiate all the time when I make business decisions: Often what's best in terms of building an asset isn't the best in terms of me continuing to grow, not going insane from boredom and not having to work with dickheads.

It's okay to have values that work against each other, as long as you're aware of it and make intentional choices. We'll talk about how to handle conflicting values later.

For now, we're going to start with a basic exercise to audit your values. You can do this broadly across your whole life, or you can revisit it and do it in a focused way for each area of your life.

WHEN VALUES COLLIDE: BEING AN EMOTIONALLY SOPHISTICATED WOMAN IN AN EVER-CHANGING LANDSCAPE

It's easy for me to talk about living according to your values, but I haven't always done this well. It's taken me a long time to get to a place where I know how to integrate and feel unapologetic about that.

I think back to when I was in my twenties and had my own marketing agency. A lot of my clients were large corporates. They always assumed I had a boss, because I was so young, and I never corrected them. I just let them treat me like I was less important. And I changed the way I dressed and acted to operate in their corporate world. While I was in marketing I simultaneously had a singing career, and I used a different name and kept it from my clients. Some of them had heard of the singer Claire Trentain and assumed she was my sister, and I never corrected them about that, either.

There was this funny instance where I was performing at a football game as the half-time entertainment, using my stage name, of course. One of my marketing clients was in the crowd and he called me and said, “Oh my God, your sister's up next!” I was backstage ready to go on. The client had told everyone in the corporate box that he knew my sister and he had $500 riding on it. He said, “Can you get her to turn to our corporate box and say hi, and I'll split the money with you?” I thought I was definitely caught—but I got out there, turned to the corporate box and said hi to their accounting firm by name. He still didn't know it was me. And he did give me half the money!

I don't hide that side of myself any more. Now I show up; I know I'm different, I know I use the opposite side of my brain to a lot of my clients. I embrace it and explain to them how that's going to benefit their bottom line.

Recently I had an experience where I ended my working relationship with somebody because she'd done a few things that told me we had a values mismatch. When I had a conversation with her about it she got defensive and tried to talk me out of the reasons I felt we weren't a match, as if they weren't right or didn't matter or something.

That's like when you tell somebody about an emotion you're having and they try to explain why you shouldn't be feeling like that! Your feelings aren't negotiable and neither are your values. You don't have to justify them to anybody who doesn't agree; just recognize that you value different things than they do.

When you start living by your values in every area of life, you're going to run into the problem I mentioned before. The things you value in some areas of your life will inevitably be in conflict with what you value in other areas, which usually means that some areas will get suppressed in favor of others.

For example, it's not unusual for both men and women to compromise on the quality of their family life because they're focused on success at work. In a roundabout way this might actually reflect a high value for family, because they're trying to create long-term financial security for the sake of their partner and kids. But they're compromising the quality of the relationships now in the hope that it pays off long term. This doesn't justify the actions—you are not a success at business if you fail at home.

Sometimes it's fine to let one area edge out another. Sometimes you really do just have to invest in one area short-term, so that you create more freedom and alignment for the long term. That's okay.

But a lot of the time it doesn't feel okay. When values are in conflict, it creates guilt and sadness and anger. Most people don't know what to do about it, so they just live with it, but you don't have to live with it. You can create self-awareness around your values and the order in which you prioritize them, to give yourself the best chance of creating a life that has the least amount of friction when it comes to living out your values.

BE A WOMAN, NOT A CHILD

If an area of life isn't working for you, it's most likely because you feel like you don't have the ability to operate in that area in accordance with your values. You'll know it's wrong because you'll get negative emotions, even anxiety and depression.

But guess what? If you've got a values conflict and you can't make it work, you're most likely operating like a child, not a woman. That's the cold hard truth. Adults develop the ability to navigate conflicting values (their own and other people's). That's the definition of maturity.

Grown-ups know how to navigate unfamiliar situations and new people, in alignment with their values, without feeling really distressed. That's who I want us all to be—grown-up women who are confident applying our values, and sophisticated with our own emotions.

That's rising.