Values: Your Compass to Destiny
What is most important to you in life?
Love. Courage. Joy. Success. Growth. These are examples of what are known as values. Our values are the things that are important to us. They are our highest principles and without them life would be meaningless (and valueless… literally!)
Our values hold the key to our motivation. They give us motivation and direction since we link massive amounts of pleasure to some values, such as love and success for example, and massive amounts of pain to others. We will go to great lengths to move toward some and we will do almost anything to avoid others. Our values guide our every action and our every decision. They determine how we spend our time and how we evaluate the time we have spent.
Our values lead to happiness and joy when they are fulfilled and bring anger, frustration and resentment when left unsatisfied. The extent of your happiness will be a function of the extent to which your values are fulfilled. When your highest values are unfulfilled you will find yourself depressed and despondent.
Our values come in the form of labels that are vague; what the word love means to you may be very different from what it means to me, but each of us knows what it means to us. They are big words with big meanings. The words we put to them are charged with emotion and merely hearing the word can stir up a response because the labels embody what we hold most dear. Our values are like the guiding principles of our lives. I call them the compass guiding you to your destiny.
Each person’s values are different and a value is neither inherently good or bad. Values change from context to context- what is important to you in one context may not be in another- and they change throughout life.
For the most part our values are unconscious. They drive our behaviour and emotions, but they are out of our awareness and are rarely explored. Most people don’t even consciously know what is important to them. Our values guide all our actions and we don’t even know what they are! If we are not clear on what is important to us, how can we actualize it? If you ever have trouble making decisions, it is likely a result of not being clear on what is most important to you.
Take a moment now to write a list of what is important to you in life. Keep asking yourself “what else?” until you have a list of 10-15 points.
Our values are what is important to us, but some are more important than others. Instinctively you can arrange your values into a hierarchy, numbering them from the most important to the least important. The way this hierarchy is arranged can be quite revealing. Once you see this hierarchy, why you constantly head in certain directions or make the same decisions on a consistent basis will be clear to you.
A gentleman came to see me recently for help deciding on a career path. He was extremely educated, but still did not know exactly what he wanted to do with his life. I asked him, “What is important to you in a job or career?” and noted down the values he listed. When we had approximately fifteen I had him number them in order of important and rewrite the list in that order so he could see his hierarchy. “Now I know why I have left every job I have left in the past,” he told me. “All of my bottom values were fulfilled, but none of my top values.” Now he knew just what he wanted in a career.
He took that list home and brainstormed on what would be the embodiment of all those values. He realized it was aerospace engineering and he was in a university program to be an aerospace engineer not long after!
It just so happens that some values in our hierarchy are not compatible with others. A values conflict is one of the most common ways to fall into self-sabotage. I worked with an individual recently who had a problem with procrastination. As he spoke I could hear that he valued accomplishment, but he valued something else much more. I asked him, “What does putting things off until later give you?” The answer was temporary relief. “And temporary relief is more important than accomplishment?” I continued. Then I asked him, “What if you made accomplishment more important than temporary relief?” He let out a sigh and said, “I feel relieved!” The way he had arranged his hierarchy was not leading him to what he wanted. A subtle shift led to a profound impact.
Another client of mine was having trouble controlling his emotions in certain work situations. I heard a values conflict here too. He valued respect so much that if he felt disrespected, he would lose control of his emotions… and then lose more respect from his colleagues. I had him rearrange his hierarchy of values so that emotional control was more important than respect. This way if he is disrespected he will still have emotional control and be able to respond optimally and maintain the respect of his colleagues.
When we change the order of importance of our values, we literally change the way we think and behave. People who are not happy are often not happy because there are so many things on their hierarchy of values that are more important than happiness. They sacrifice happiness for other “more important” things and wonder why life is so unpleasant. What values conflicts might you be living?
How would your values need to be ordered so you could create your ultimate destiny? Which values would need to be removed? Which ones would need to be added?
