DOES YOUR LIFE LIVE UP TO YOUR VALUES?

To feel good about your life, it needs to live up to your values. This is true for your life as a whole and also for the individual parts of it - your work, your business, your relationships, your family. So, does it?

If you’re like most people, you won’t be able to answer this question. Why not? Because most people have only the vaguest of notions of what their values might be. When I started working with clients on their values, I found that not only did most of them not know what their values were, they hardly knew where to start to work them out.

So, I developed a set of cards to make the task a whole lot easier. You’ll find them in this work-book. Print them off and cut them out into separate cards. Then spread them out, somewhere that you can see them all at once. A work-surface or desk works well - but I like to use the floor.

It’s probably easiest to start by picking out the ones that are NOT particularly important to you as that lets you do some rapid “pruning.” When you get down to a dozen or so, see if you can pick out your top 5. If you’re not sure, ask yourself, is X more important than Y or is Y more important than X? Do I make decisions based on X more, or do I use Y? If I had to choose only one value from X and Y, which one would I pick? See if you can get your top 5 values in order: 1,2,3,4 and 5.

Take a look at the list. If you knew these were someone else’s values, how would you expect that person to behave? If you were interviewing them for a job, how would you expect them to dress? What kinds of things would you expect to see on their CV?

If you were looking at potential partners on a dating site, what kind of relationship would you expect to have with a per-son who had these values?

If you were doing a business deal with someone who said these were their values, how would you expect them to approach the deal?

NOW LOOK AT YOURSELF - DO YOU MEASURE UP? Does your life match up with your values? If not, what can you do about it? The more you live up to your values, the more other people will perceive you as congruent, likeable, and trustworthy.