Know Your Values And Live Your Best Life
“A value is defined as a principle, standard, or quality considered inherently worthwhile or desirable. Individuals, groups, and whole societies hold values. Values are what motivate and fulfill you. They imbue your work and your life with meaning...In essence, a value is what is important to you.”
-Julie Jansen, I Don’t Know What I want, But I Know it’s Not This
Since starting my coaching business in 2019, I have incorporated a values assessment exercise for my clients. It is so satisfying to help adolescents uncover what matters to them through this exercise. Deep down they know what they like and don't like but aren't able to articulate and understand that the decisions they make every day are related to their values.
“Values” as a word often gets thrown around, but many of us rarely stop to ask what this means to us and how it might impact our lives. Values are the things that we believe matter most in life. It's our motivation to strive for happinesss and success. Parents, you too may have passed along values to your children and it is important to continue to help your child determine the things that matter to them from their personal experiences.
When you were younger people may have asked what you wanted to do for a career but did they ask you what you stood for?
From a young age, my mom toted my 3 brothers and me to hang out and volunteer at a local home for the Cerebral Palsied. I was in diapers at the time and continued hanging out there until I was in high school. The residents were some of my closest friends and I loved hearing their stories and in turn sharing my own trials and celebrations of life.
However, my upbringing dictated that I had to find a job and find one immediately out of college, so without really considering the qualities I valued, I fell into a job that despite being considered prestigious and “cool”, wasn't in line with what I now stand for.
Fortunately, I knew I loved helping others and continued to volunteer nights and weekends even when I didn't love my career. I realize now knowing my value of “serving others” has been an integral part of developing my sense of self.
If you are dissatisfied with your life, you may not be living in line with your values.
Without knowing our values, how do we know where to focus our energy on the many choices we have to make every day; making the right decisions for our well-being? Once you know your worth, no one can make you feel worthless.
Here are 5 reasons why I believe knowing your values matters:
Becoming familiar with our values helps us to make meaningful decisions about our lives, decisions that resonate with the kind of person we want to be.
Values help us to find our purpose in life and be clear about what we want. You can't expect to know what you want out of life if you don't know what is important in life. Who are you and what is the impact you want to have on the world? Ultimately, the career you choose is often an expression of your life purpose, but remember you are more than what you do.
They are the tools by which we stay driven and motivated and they ultimately improve our overall well-being.
Our values influence our thoughts, which create our words, which become our actions. Values drive our behavior, with our decisions reflecting our values. They can help ensure we behave in a way that is in line with who we want to be at our core. Our actions often mirror what we value and when they don't is when things no longer feel right in our life.
Without knowing our values or living our lives in line with them, we often find ourselves faced with dissonance and dissatisfaction. Knowing our values helps us understand the things we do not value – the things we need to distance ourselves from and the things that create conflict in our life.
If you have never considered what your values are, here are some clarifying questions:
Recall times when you have been so absorbed in what you were doing that you hardly noticed the time. What were you doing?
Think about the things that you find meaningful. What do you think of? Include ideals, feelings, and activities.
If you think about your life as a story, what would you put in the next chapter if you wanted that chapter to be meaningful?
Write down as many of the answers that come to mind. I have a list of values to choose from that I give my clients, however, you can easily look up examples of values on the internet. Then circle the ten most important to you and then prioritize them. You are then welcome to narrow down your top five values.
Without knowing what matters to us, it can be so much easier to get distracted in life by things that don’t serve us or our purpose
Because it can be so easy for us to lose sight of what is important to us, I thought I would leave you with this spot-on excerpt from a Psychology Today article:
“I'd argue that it is harder than ever for people, and especially young people, to know their self-worth and what they value. Modern technology has created a fire hose of information in the expansion of communication media. The gush of words and images we have unleashed on ourselves risks psychologically overwhelming us.
Amidst the noise, we look in the mirror and find a person who is too fat, too old, or, the irony of ironies, too critical and judgmental. We are unable to put to rest our own insecurities, and low self-esteem, many generated by media constantly pulling us into self-defeating behaviors. We are unable to sit with the pain and distress that is a normal part of the human experience; instead, deep inside we desire to escape it and are offered ever more ways to break free from it. We are unable to reach through the mental entanglement of human judgment, losing flexible contact with others. Self-confidence, compassion, connection, community, and peace of mind disappear into the chatter.
We've always struggled with these matters. But never have we had such a toxic brew in which people are comparing themselves with others, judging others and themselves, and trying hard to avoid discomfort to feel worthy.
The same cognitive processes that feed comparison, judgment, and avoidance on the one hand can also enable us to create relationships, connections, community, and cooperation on the other. We unconsciously manipulate other people to see us in ways that make us feel good. They can be used for good or for ill. We need to do better at creating modern minds for this modern world so that we can more directly connect our behavior to what we deeply value."
