Personal values

You’ve heard of values before but when did you ever sit down and seriously contemplate your own set of personal values?

If you’re like the vast majority of people, you’ll have to think long and hard about what your true values are because this is not normally something that we are taught or encouraged to do in life.

How extraordinary … when it is our values that guide the very behaviours and actions that we take each and every day!

For life coaches, helping clients to gain a clear understanding and appreciation of their values is an important step towards understanding why they think, feel and do things the way they do.

[box type=\”shadow\”]\”Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one\’s values.\”

– Ayn Rand[/box]

Values?

So what, exactly, are values?

Values are the things that really matter most to us. They are the ideas, principles, traits, philosophies and/or qualities that we hold as most dear and special in our lives and to which we feel strongly attracted.

Influencing our behaviours and actions

Provided our key needs are being met (this is the subject for a separate post), then our values play a primary role in influencing our every day actions and behaviours. They determine our likes and dislikes and even the level of importance that we ascribe to people and things.

Here are just a few examples of values someone might hold:

Abundance, commitment, financial freedom, generosity, loyalty, passivism, responsibility, sincerity and tenaciousness.

Lack of alignment

Without a conscious understanding of your values you are likely to feel confused and frustrated when you are called to act in a way that is out of alignment with your values.

Take Selwyn as an example:

Selwyn has never really thought about what his values are. He signed up for a camping weekend with his friends but feels a deep rooted sense of discomfort about it even though he is really looking forward to a break and spending time with his friends.

Selwyn\’s subconscious has linked the idea of a camping weekend with  hunting for deer – a pursuit his late father used to enjoy and tried, unsuccessfully, to instill in Selwyn.

Selwyn has a strong sense of love and respect for nature, so hunting (and by association camping) is an action that is out of alignment with his value.

And then there\’s Jackie:

Jackie works for a legal firm as a young attorney and is highly respected for her legal mind. Her senior calls her in to tell her that she has been assigned a challenging job to represent a client who has been charged with corruption, saying \”There is a strong likelihood this man is guilty but it\’s a high profile case and we think you could win it on technicalities.

Jackie has always placed a very high value on integrity. Despite being given the opportunity to show what she is made of, she can\’t help but feel a sense of confusion and frustration.

Values to avoid

Just as we all have values that we feel strongly attracted towards feeling, we also have values we desperately don’t want to experience.

The values that we are repelled by can, in some cases, have an even stronger influence over our actions and behaviours than those we are attracted to.

And therein lies a problem.

A value that we really want to live our lives by – or an \’aspirational value\’ – may stay exactly that, aspirational, and never become part of our authentic value set because of serious conflict with another value that we want to avoid.

An important cause of procrastination

This is an important cause of procrastination and general inability to make progress towards the life you love.

Here\’s an example:

Jean’s top value is to be loved. She craves the feeling of being doted on by an admiring partner who feels strong emotional attachment to her. And yet, for the last five years she has been unable to forge a single deep and meaningful relationship despite having met many wonderful men who seem to have been very attracted to her.

The reason? She simply hates the thought of being rejected. Rejection is something she want to avoid at all costs.

Dealing with conflict in the value system

So life coaches work with their clients to bring to the surface both those values they feel strongly attracted to and those they badly want to avoid, then to look for conflict – and then to deal with that conflict.

You might wonder how such conflicts are resolved. This begs the question: \”Can values be changed?\”

The answer is yes!

Most people go through life with a set of ‘core’ values. Core values are generally learnt during the formative years, from parents, teachers, family and experiences. Although these core values can be changed they have a tendency to remain in place throughout our lives.

Other values are adopted later in life as one establishes one\’s own unique and independent personality through exposure to different people, circumstances, experiences and perspectives. These are more readily changed as circumstances change.

A matter of priority

If you\’ve never really given great thought to the values – positive and negative – that drive your own actions and behaviours, why don\’t you do so as a matter of priority.

Better still, get a life coach to help you with this exercise.

Take it from me. The potential benefits are huge!