I mentioned in the last article, “Stop Asking Why…Start Asking How,” that your values tell you what’s important to you, and by looking at them and getting clear on what’s important to you, you’ll understand why you make the choices you make. 

Your values are those things you decide are important to you. It’s a simple concept with HUGE applications, because your values drive all of your decisions. While it’s a simple concept, most people still don’t know what their values are, because they haven’t taken the time to sit down and figure them out. 

 

Or perhaps you do know what your values are, but you aren’t aware of the order of importance, which also factors in how you make decisions. The things that are a higher value to you carry more weight than things of lower value, so understanding this can help you to prioritize your actions and decisions, too.

I have a workbook with 10 pages dedicated to clarifying your values, and I could not do the process justice in this one article, but I’ll give you some direction. Here are three simple steps you can do on your own with just a little time, paper & a pen.

 

1.      Take out a blank piece of paper and brainstorm “What’s important to you?”

2.      Once you feel you’ve completed the list, pick out the 10 you feel are the MOST important to you.

3.      Rank those 10 items in order of importance – the first one having the greatest importance.

As I mentioned, I have 10 pages in a workbook devoted to this, and an entire CD on the subject, so there is much more you can do in regards to researching your values. However, I wanted to give you something so you can start exploring what’s important to you, and use the information to make better decisions in your life.

Always remember, whenever you say ‘yes’ to one thing, you’re saying ‘no’ to something else. So if you understand your values and their order of importance, you can use the information to guide you when you have a decision to make, or to simply understand the choices you do make. The idea is to fulfill your higher values whenever and as often as possible.

 

For example, let’s say you determined that family and health are both in your top 10 values and that family ranks higher than health. Now, when you are faced with a decision to either spend time with your family or spend time at the gym, you can understand why you might pick watching a movie with your family over going to the gym – even though one of your goals may be to exercise & get to your ideal weight.

Understand that we are constantly changing, so our values change, too. This is not an exercise to do once and never again. But doing it now will help you make better, more intentional decisions in your present situation, and will help you to “Enjoy the Journey.”

 

I’d love for you to share with me what’s important to you by adding a new comment below. 

 

~SS