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By Gerry Murray. 29-03-2020
(Scroll down for a laugh)
“I look for the things that matter and invest my time in making them better - I simply have no time for anything else.” ~ Ken Allen
This in itself is a very important question? Why? Because it helps you elicit your values.
In fact, when you ask yourself “What’s important…?” And then ask yourself “Why is this important to me?” Your values start to emerge.
Variations on the “Why?” question are: “What does that get me?” "What does that do for me?” “For what purpose?”
Test out these questions for yourself.
Why are values important?
Values give us upfront motivation to do something and then provide a post-event way to evaluate or judge our actions. Values are things that we’re willing to expend resources for or to acquire resources to have. Therefore they often function as a source, or force, of energy.
When a value is satisfied, you tend to feel a surge of positive energy, leading to motivation, leading to action.
When a value is not being satisfied in an area of your life, you’ll tend to have a sense of something missing.
When a value is being mismatched, this is not comfortable and it will contribute to depleting your energy and your motivation.
Also, it’s possible to experience values conflicts, which can lead to us behaving erratically and getting inconsistent results.
Areas of Life
We tend to have values in several areas of life. Some values may be common to all areas. Others, may be more specific to one area. Therefore, it’s useful to first think of the different areas of your life. A classic coaching tool for this is called the Wheel of Life and it tends to include such areas as:
- Health/Fitness
- Finances
- Career
- Relationships
- Possessions
- Development
- Spirituality
- Family
These are just guidelines and you can add your own, adapt these, etc… What are your specific values in each of these areas of your life?
What are values?
Our values exist mainly at an unconscious level. The words we use to express them tend to be abstract and use a grammatical structure known as a “nominalisation”. This means that a verb has been turned into a noun e.g. communicate into communication. This has its own implications.
Each of our values tends to have a series of beliefs linked to it. We call these Belief Systems. Collections of Belief Systems form Attitudes around a certain topic.
Our values sit in hierarchies of importance and, therefore, it’s important to satisfy our higher-level values before those lower down.
Our core values define our sense of self.
As you can see, values are a fascinating aspect of our lives.
Can we change our values?
It’s not so easy. It’s easier to change beliefs. Remember, Santa Clause! However, sometimes we need to change our values, or their hierarchy, to make meaningful changes that stick in our lives.
This is where a highly skilled Coach can be very valuable to help you work through this. Values elicitation takes skill and experience. And, there are some very powerful tools that can help too.
A significant emotional event also has the potential to alter our values. For many, we’re going through one right now. I’d bet that most of you reading this post have thought about the importance of health, in relation to other aspects of life, in the past 2 weeks.
Stay focused on what’s important this week!
Gerry
Humour
It's now 7 months since I joined the gym and nothing has changed
Maybe it's time I go there personally and find out what's wrong.
People used to call me ugly in middle school, but things have changed - I'm not in middle school anymore
An elderly couple is in church. The wife says to the husband, "I've let out one of those silent farts, what do I do?"
The husband says, "Change the battery in your hearing aid."
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