What you need to know about your values
Value your life, live your values. The focus of this entire site is how to win at work, AND stay true to your values.
Why the focus on values? Because your values are what focus you!
So, here we go with the top twelve things you need to know about your values:
- Your values are what motivate you. They are the bridge between your inner desires and outer reality.
- Your values are your lifestyle priorities and preferences, your unique motivation code. You need to know what your values are. They silently guide your words, your decisions and your actions. Get to know them … unless you want to be led through life by a stranger.
- Knowing your values gives you clarity – you can make decisions based on choices, rather than habits.
- Some of your values are more important to you than others. They are your core values and usually remain consistent over a long period of time.
- Your values are with you 24/7. There is no distinction between personal and professional values. There is however, a distinction between what is an appropriate context for living out some values.
- Your values are not necessarily predictors of your behaviour. For example, you and I may both value leisure and play. I might (would) choose to live that value by going to the opera, and you might choose to go rock climbing … same value, different expression.
- All people, regardless of race, colour or creed, share 5 human needs: survival, freedom, fun, belonging and power. How you attempt to meet those needs depends on your values … your lifestyle preferences and priorities.
- Your values come from your world-view. Your world-view is a set of (mostly unconscious) beliefs you hold about how the world works, or how you believe the world should work. The formation of your world-view was influenced by many factors as you were growing up:family, culture, geographic location, socio-economic conditions, media – old and new, peers, education, religious affiliations, groups such as Scouts and sporting clubs, and significant life events.
- Your values and your ethics are not the same. Your values will motivate you, usually unconsciously. Your ethics will constrain you, usually based on conscious choice.
- Clarity around what you value will help you choose more compatible friendships and business partners.
- Knowing your values helps you to be clear about what you DON”T want in your life … your values are a guide to the boundaries you have in place in your life.
- Consciously choosing to live your values leads you towards being more of who you were created to be.
Let’s make it a baker’s dozen and give the last word to the Bible:
Your treasure is what you value, so get to know what your values are, and learn how to live them.