Are you making the money you want? Have you walked away from what had looked like the perfect job, again? Are you living a life of your dreams? No? Well, it could be time to examine, eliminate and recalibrate your values.
You will know you are aligned with your values when you are in your happy place. You will rate your life satisfaction at a 10! If you are already there, Congratulations! But if you aren’t, read on.
Your values impact all of your choices and when you are aligned with your values, you can step into action with grace and ease. Values are the tools you can use to find clarity and to connect to your passions. When you speak from a place of passion, people tend to notice and are drawn to your message.
You often acquire your values as a child, typically from your parents and your communities. These values are personal to each individual. They provide the structures for your belief system by informing you of concepts, like what is right or wrong, what is fair or unfair, what is beautiful and what is not. Ever had a friend say “Oh, isn’t that dress stunning!” And you think ‘Yikes!’? This disparity might simply reflect a different set of underlying values.
Make no mistake, your values and your beliefs determine who you will become as an adult, which partner you choose, what career path you want and even mundane things like whether you will wear bright colours or whether you will run from them. Don’t you want to make sure your values are working for you?
Do you know what your values are? Why don’t you take time to review them? Take 15 minutes and write out a list of ten values that are important to you. You can choose values that relate to your work, your home life, your appearance or whatever domain you would like to examine more fully. And while you are at it, rank the values in order of importance to you.
After examining your list, you may find that a number of the values are not so meaningful anymore. You can eliminate some and move others farther down the list of priorities. It may be time to rethink and recalibrate. It was for me. I found out why I did not like you job. My values were not aligned.
I had come from a family where the medical profession was highly regarded and even esteemed. As such, I believed that I would be happy if I entered the medical system.
So, 30 years in, why wasn’t I happy? What had I done wrong? I had spent a lifetime getting to this place in my career. How could I dislike it so much? You know what, some of the values I was working so hard to demonstrate belonged to my parents!
I had not yet explored what values were important to me. Upon examination, I discovered that in terms of a career, I valued science and fact-based research but I didn’t value a structured environment at all. Work-place flexibility is what was a PRIORITY for me. Is it any wonder I struggled in the highly regimented routines of a hospital setting? A flexible work environment has made all the difference in my work life and home life as well! My life satisfaction scores have soared.
For a concept that we think about so rarely, values are actually a big deal. So, take a look. Spend the next 15 minutes and examine yours. Is it time to eliminate some of those that were passed along from your childhood?
Examine, eliminate and recalibrate! That salary, the perfect job and the life of your dreams may still be available. It was for me!
To learn more about values and how important they are for manifesting your own success and to live a life of your own design, please call to book a 30 minute phone session with Simone Usselman-Tod, Dynamic Visioning Life & Executive Coach, Certified NLP Master Practitioner. Learn more about Dynamic Visioning.
