Feel Your Values

In last week’s post, Know Your Values, I talked about the positive and liberating effect that knowing your values – and bringing them into your conscious awareness – can have.

This week I’d like to talk about how you can really feel your values on a regular basis.

 

[box type=\”shadow\”]“We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”

― Malcolm X[/box]

 

Feel Your Values (continued)

Reactive or Proactive?

Many people go through life on autopilot, doing things the way they’ve always been done. They face situations by reacting  instinctively rather than thinking things through based on what is most important to them.

Reactive, as opposed to proactive, reasoned behaviour is generally a symptom of a value system that is hidden way beneath the surface of one’s consciousness.

Thinking responses

As last week’s post explained, having an intimate knowledge and awareness of your highest values is vital if you want to make beneficial, thinking responses to the changes and situations the world throws at you.

I’m reminded of an old saying:

When life throws you lemons, do you duck? Or do you catch them, peel them and juice them to make refreshing lemonade?

So knowing your values is important.

But if you know that you value a loving relationship and never get to feel or experience it, that’s not terribly useful, is it?

Making it difficult

Strange though it may sound, most of us make it very difficult to feel our top values on a regular basis. More about this shortly.

Given that so many people have never properly visited the subject of their values and most of those that have make it difficult, if not impossible to experience their values, it should come as no surprise that there is so little joy and happiness in the world!

Why would we make it difficult to feel our values on a regular basis?

Worthy of our own praise?

It has a lot to do with the high standards that we set ourselves and the degree to which we can feel worthy of our own praise.

You’ve heard the phrase “We are our own worst enemies”. This is in many respects true when it comes to our capacity to feel good about ourselves.

Uncovering the rules

In life coaching, we help our clients establish their highest values and then uncover the rules that they have set for feeling those values frequently.

Most clients are quite shocked when they realise how difficult they have made it for themselves to feel good about themselves.

Let’s take an example

Bernadette places great value on being a self confident woman. When asked what it would take for her to feel self confidence she replies:

“If I can get up on stage and address an audience of more than a hundred people, then I will feel self confident.”

When asked what else might make her feel self confident she responds:

“If I make a contribution in a meeting at work and my boss acknowledges the value of that contribution then I feel self confident.”

It turns out that Bernadette has set the bar for feeling her value very high indeed. Not only that but in one of her rules she delegates her likelihood of feeling good to her boss!

Embracing unrestrictive rules

Fortunately, once the client becomes aware of just how difficult they have made it to feel good about themselves, it is a simple matter to reverse this.

The secret lies in moving away from restrictive conditions and embracing unrestrictive rules.

In Bernadette’s case she might be encouraged to come up with the following new rules:

“Anytime I smile at someone in my workplace I feel like a self confident woman.”

“Whenever I think of my wonderful children I experience feelings of self confidence.”

Easy to feel great

By lowering the bar, removing the rigid conditions and taking responsibility it suddenly becomes easy to live up to and feel your values (in other words feel great) on a regular basis.

Try it for yourself and see!

[If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy this one: Rules for Success]