HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN ANY OF THESE SITUATIONS?

Many times when you haven’t given much thought about your core values you end up in certain situations that can create a certain level of tension in your life: 

• Giving up your time to attend an event or gathering that has little importance to you.
• Pleasing others because you are unsure of what direction you want to take your life in.
• Setting goals, but failing to act on them since you’re unsure of your purpose.
• Sacrificing your reputation in doing something for others that you don’t feel is right.
• Not speaking up about something that you don’t agree with.
• Having others tell you what to do.

A lot of the times, these situations can be easily prevented just by being aware of what your core values are. By having values, you also feel better and it improves your subjective wellness.

HOW TO ESTABLISH YOUR CORE VALUES

Becoming aware of your core values and establishing them is actually easier then you may think it is because in many ways your attitudes and actions reflect your values.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to get started:

• What types of things make me feel happy?
• What/who inspires me?
• How do I treat people?
• What causes do I support?
• What matters the most to me?

Once you begin to answer these questions, grab a pen and a piece of paper and brainstorm: actions, feelings, behaviours, and beliefs that accurately describe who you are. You don’t have to place too much focus to your thoughts, just write down everything that comes to your mind. To allow yourself to be more efficient, set a two-minute timer; this way you won’t let your mind slip into other thoughts.

Once you have your list, create four columns and label them: actions, feelings, behaviours and beliefs and place any word under the appropriate column as you see fit.

Next, pick your top ten. You want to narrow down your list because the goal is to really hone in to which values really represent who you are.

YOUR BIG THREE

Now it’s time for you to prioritize your list down to your big three. Look for patterns, you may find that certain words may overlap. For example, you may have words like: fitness, healthy diet, and self-care – you can then come up with umbrella words to shorten your list. In this case, this all falls under ‘health.’ Once you have your big three, it’s time to do your happy dance and then to start incorporating your values into your lifestyle!

HOW TO LIVE BY YOUR VALUES

Alright, now that you have your big three you can begin to live by your values by doing this simple exercise in your head any time you are confronted with a situation that you feel requires careful navigation. This is what you do:

• Mentally become aware of your big three in any moment.

• Check off all of your values that are in alignment with the situation you are faced with.

• Are all three of your values checked off? If they are, then you can give yourself the green light to proceed full throttle ahead. If you could only check off one or two of your values, then the situation is not in full alignment with who you are – honour your values by backing away respectfully.

CHANGE YOUR VALUES WHENEVER NEEDED

You are always going to be growing and evolving and your current values may no longer serve you in your near future. This is OK. It just means you are becoming clearer of your purpose and what new adventures you are navigating yourself towards. Whenever you feel that you have outgrown your values, sit down and do this value setting exercise again.

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