Your Values Guide Your Life
Your Foundation
Simply put, your values are how you verbalize what is truly important to you. They are the foundation of your life. In fact, all of your thoughts, feelings, and actions are built upon them. When you feel something is off in an area of your life, it’s usually because you’re out of alignment with your values. You’re operating in a space that doesn’t work for you such as a job, a relationship, a community organization, or perhaps a single conversation. Or maybe you are living into values that have been assigned to you rather than those you’ve chosen.
This can make you feel as if you are living a life that is not your own.
The first step in figuring out how you want to respond to a situation and, subsequently, how you want to live your life, is to define your own values. It sounds simple enough but most people haven’t taken the time to really determine what their core values are and find themselves caught in situations where they don’t quite know what to do.
“A value is a way of being or believing that we hold most important. Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk - we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs.”
Defining Your Values
The easiest way to define your values is to spend some time thinking about what is truly important to you in life. What are your the things that are absolutely essential? Do you value honesty and trust above all else? What tops your list? Is it faith, holistic living, career success, having adventures, or something else?
To help you define your values, I have created an exercise based off of Brené Brown’s work as well as others’. You can access the exercise HERE.
Take some time to think about what’s most important to you. I know it’s tempting to say that many things are important. However, refining it to just a few values will help you focus your future decisions more easily.
Once you define your values, the next step is to stick to them even when it is hard to do so. Having your values clash with people is uncomfortable but you handle it.
Standing up for yourself doesn’t mean you need to be nasty, just firm about what is and isn’t acceptable.
Ah, now we are getting into the realm of boundaries. Many people struggle with boundaries because they aren’t clear on their core values. Take some time this week to work on your values and stop in next week for a discussion on boundaries.
Have you ever wondered how happy you really are and what you could do to change your happiness level? Get the assessment to find out!
