smell you later, meta: a practice of values alignment 🌱
(3 minute read)
Hi! Welcome to Our Best Work Weekly, a newsletter from Healthy Pour where you'll get weekly tips on creating a healthy workplace, becoming a more compassionate leader, and cultivating a regenerative relationship with work.
What in the world?
While this was disappointing to read, it wasn’t necessarily surprising. In recent days, Meta has also pulled back its fact-checking and rescinded its DEI initiatives. With these changes, it became strikingly clear that Meta, the company, is operating in a way that directly conflicts with Healthy Pour’s mission and values.
The realization that I had to leave these platforms for both my personal and business usage felt like when you realize a relationship is over: you have inklings over time that something is off, but you continue to push forward until you know you cannot, and once that realization hits, you can’t go back. The light has been switched on. It’s over, and every moment after that realization feels like a betrayal.
Healthy Pour is a values-driven organization, meaning I make decisions for the business based on a set of core values: curiosity, integrity, security, and compassion (you can read more about Healthy Pour’s values here). They’re essentially the vehicles I chose to navigate how the business runs, who I work with, how I communicate, and how I approach problems. They’re integrated into everything I do. When I fail, it's a real bummer, meaning my behavior or decisions don’t align with my values. Like, it feels gross and wrong.
When something feels off in a project, client relationship, or my management of a situation, I can usually trace it back to values misalignment.
The science supports this feeling. Values congruence is strongly related to burnout, meaning that when we are out of alignment with our values, we’re more likely to burn out. However, values alignment also helps improve our subjective well-being. For a stark business argument, values alignment enhances job satisfaction, engagement, and organizational commitment, ultimately supporting overall organizational performance.
This is why I also urge my clients to adopt values-driven strategies. Values definition and alignment create a clear path toward an organization where people are mentally and emotionally well while also performing at their best.
So, how can I possibly ask my clients to engage in values-driven organizational strategies when I’m not doing the same?
Where is the integrity in that?
If I’m really honest with myself, the time and energy I’ve put into building a presence on Meta platforms hasn’t matched what I’ve gotten back. Not even close. I haven’t gained much business from those platforms, and it’s become clear that I continue to use them for my ego, perceived clout, and pursuit of social validation—all of which have contributed to my burnout. Most (if not all) of my business has come from word of mouth and client referrals (thank you thank you thank you). I can talk about values and mental health and blah blah blah all day, but it also doesn’t make sense to invest in something that doesn’t support the growth and health of my business.
There are so many other, healthier ways to connect with people like you who see the potential for a healthier relationship with work. Instead of constantly competing with rage bait, misinformation, and charlatans preying on an addictive algorithmic abyss, I want to cultivate relationships rooted in imagination, potential, and possibility. I want to put my energy, time, and resources into physical and virtual spaces that are actively moving toward the kind of world I want to see. We can build those spaces and communities off of Facebook and Instagram; we just have to take the first steps.
I’m not sure what that will look like yet, and that’s okay. In the meantime, I’m enjoying this newsletter (I hope you are, too!) and will continue cultivating and honing this avenue to connect with you.
I sure will miss my absolutely unhinged algorithm, though.
I’m happy you’re here. Thank you for being here.
See you next Monday!
