Integrity. Humility. Love. How I Use These Core Values in Life, Leadership, and Coaching
Every now and then, I pause and reflect on the core values that guide me. Not only as a coach, but as a human being committed to growth, service, and alignment.
These values are integrity, humility, and love. And they aren't aspirational words on a wall or a pretty graphic on my website. They're the practical tools I use to make decisions, navigate hard moments, and measure whether I'm living the way I actually want to live.
I share them here because I believe that knowing your values, truly knowing them, not just being able to name them, is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself. And because the way I define these three words might surprise you.
Why Knowing Your Core Values Changes How You Make Decisions
Most people, if asked, could name a few values that matter to them. Honesty. Family. Kindness. But naming a value and living from it are very different things.
When your values are clear and specific, they stop being abstract ideals and start functioning as a filter. Every decision runs through them. Should I launch this new offering? Does it align with my values? Should I say yes to this opportunity that looks great on paper but feels off in my body? What do my values say?
Research on values-based leadership consistently shows that leaders who make decisions from clearly articulated personal values experience greater clarity, stronger trust with their teams, and more sustainable performance over time. It's not that values make decisions easy. It's that they make the right decision recognizable, even when it's the harder one.
This is one of the first things I teach in the Golden Coaching Certification Program™, and it's not an accident that it comes in Week One. Before you work with your thoughts, your emotions, or your habits, you need to know what you're building toward. Your values are the foundation everything else sits on.
Here's how my three values work in practice.
Integrity: Radical Honesty Leads to Authentic Follow-Through
Integrity, to me, means making decisions I not only respect in the moment but ones that my future self will admire.
That distinction matters. It's easy to make a choice that feels safe right now but that you'll regret in a year. It's harder to make the choice that's honest, even when it's uncomfortable, because you know the woman you're becoming would stand by it.
When I'm faced with a bold move, like launching a new workshop, saying no to something misaligned, or changing direction in my business, I ask myself two questions: Does this feel truly grounded? And if I could fast-forward a year, would I stand by this choice?
This forward-leaning integrity is how I build trust with myself. Not just in the moment, but with my future self, the one who will live with the consequences of today's decision. It's the same practice I teach my clients and my certification students: self-trust isn't built by always getting it right. It's built by being honest with yourself about what's actually true, and then following through on what you find.
When things go sideways in my business, and they do, integrity is what guides me to course-correct honestly rather than spin a story that protects my ego. It's the value that says: tell the truth, even when the truth is "I got this wrong."
Humility: Accepting Our Humanness Invites Compassion and Connection
I believe that in this work of coaching and leadership, perfection isn't the goal. Connection is.
Humility is what keeps me human in a space that can easily become performative. It's what lets me embrace the inevitable minor tech glitches on calls, the typos in a newsletter, the moment in a session where I ask a question that doesn't land the way I intended. Those moments used to mortify me. Now I understand that they're part of the practice of being visible, of putting your work into the world in service of something bigger than your own comfort.
Humility invites laughter. It invites vulnerability. It invites the kind of honesty that says "I'm still learning" from a place of strength, not weakness.
When I'm brainstorming something bold, like changing my messaging or restructuring an offering, humility is the value that reminds me to ask for feedback instead of assuming I have the full picture. When a launch doesn't go the way I expected, humility invites me to sit with the question: what's my responsibility here? Not in a self-punishing way, but with genuine curiosity about what I can learn.
This matters for coaches especially. If you're holding space for other people's growth, you need to be in an honest relationship with your own. A coach who pretends to have it all figured out isn't trustworthy. A coach who says "I'm trying, learning, and growing, and I always will be" is the one people actually open up to.
Love: Non-Negotiable Self-Love Is the Best Fuel for Courageous Leaps
This value centers me more than any other.
Love, the way I practice it, means treating myself with the same compassion I'd offer my closest friend, in the wins and in the missteps. It means not waiting until I've earned kindness before I offer it to myself. It means remembering that my worth isn't contingent on my last launch, my last session, or my last decision.
In my business, love looks like sending a generous refund without hesitation when it's the right thing to do. It looks like giving myself rest when I'm tired instead of pushing through and calling it discipline. It looks like celebrating a small win instead of immediately raising the bar.
In my coaching, love means remembering that everyone, myself included, is worthy of understanding, grace, and the space to be imperfect while they figure things out.
And here's what I've found: when I lead from love, I take bigger risks. Not reckless ones, but brave ones. Because when you know you'll be kind to yourself regardless of the outcome, the stakes change. You stop being paralyzed by the fear of getting it wrong. You start making choices from desire instead of from self-protection.
Love gives me freedom to try. And when I fall short, love is what helps me get back up without the self-punishment that used to keep me stuck for days.
How to Use Your Values as a Practical Decision-Making Tool
I don't just reflect on my values when things are calm. I pressure-test my decisions through them in real time.
When I need to measure success, instead of defining it by external results alone, I ask: Did I lead from my heart? Did I establish safety and trust? Did I honor my values? These questions matter as much as any traditional metric, because a business built on values you don't actually live by isn't a business worth sustaining.
Here's what that looks like practically: before a big decision, I run it through all three. Integrity checks whether it's aligned and honest. Humility reminds me that I don't have to have it all figured out before I move. Love gives me permission to go for it and to be kind to myself no matter what happens.
This isn't just something I do for myself. It's something I teach. In the certification, women identify their own core values in the very first week, and those values become a decision-making compass for the rest of the program. When you know what you stand for, you stop agonizing over choices that used to keep you up at night. You stop looking around at what everyone else is doing. You start leading from the inside out.
How to Identify Your Own Core Values (And Actually Live by Them)
If you've read this far and you're thinking about what your own values might be, here are some questions worth sitting with. Not scanning. Sitting with.
What matters most to you, not on your resume but in how you want to feel at the end of the day? When you think about a decision you're proud of, what value were you honoring when you made it? When you think about a decision you regret, what value were you ignoring? If you could name three words that describe the woman you want to be, not the woman you think you should be, what would they be?
And once you have your values, the real work begins: pressure-testing your choices through them. Not occasionally. Regularly. What would happen if the next decision you need to make this week ran through your values first? What would you do differently? What would you finally say yes to? What would you finally release?
Your values aren't decoration. They're architecture. And when you build your life on them, everything, your relationships, your leadership, your self-trust, gets steadier.
If this resonates and you want to do this work in a structured, supported way, I'd love to be part of that.
Learn more about the certification →
With immense appreciation & gratitude. Always.
About Katie Pulsifer
Katie Pulsifer is a Master Certified Life Coach and the founder of the Golden Coaching Certification Program™, a training program for women who want to learn how to compassionately coach themselves and others to create extraordinary results. She specializes in working with high-achieving women who look great on paper but feel unfulfilled, helping them rebuild self-trust, make aligned decisions, and stop postponing the life they actually want. Katie's coaching is grounded in neuroscience, radical self-responsibility, and the belief that your worth is inherent, not earned. Read how Katie went from the bathroom floor to building her own certification.
