No. 9 - Connecting to Personal Values
Personal values are our deepest desires for the way we want to engage with the world, other people and ourselves. Values describe the personal qualities we want to cultivate and embody in our actions. They represent what we want our life to stand for and in this way they show us what we want to move towards and invest in.
Our personal values reveal our deep passionate yearnings for a full, authentic and impactful life. They engage our motivational powers to move forward even in great hardship. Like a lighthouse helps ships to navigate treacherous waters during hostile weather, values can guide us through hard times. In my book, I give many examples of how my values provided me with direction during adversity. Two broad values that affected me in most areas of living were: extracting life from my difficulties and honouring the life within me through ruthless authenticity. Even when I was in a desperate state, the glimmer of these values reassured me that my life had purpose, meaning and direction.
Knowing our values is important because when we need to choose or decide something, we can do so by simply determining if the choice lines up with our personal values. And when we live moment by moment in accord with our personal values we gain a sense of purpose and fulfilment.
Connecting to personal values is at the core of the ‘feasting on life’ process described in my book. Discovering my values, my heart’s deepest desires, and using them to guide my life, energised my living and sustained a forward momentum even during severe adversity.
Our values reflect our authentic selves. In my book I mentioned that my aspiration is to fully inhabit all of my life cells which hold the DNA for my values. In doing this, I continually uncover my purpose in life and experience fulfilment. It is my response to the question, ‘Why am I here?’ For me, this process honours the life within; I called it the “most noble calling”.
The Personal Values Pathway
There are a few steps involved in connecting to personal values as follows.
Step 1: Explore, discover and clarify your values. In exploring your values it is important to remember that they are more than words, ideas and thoughts. Values are sensed within us, processed cognitively and expressed through words. It is important not to get bogged down in thinking about values – it is essential that they are also sensed. Values generate sensory excitement within. Typically when people talk about their personal values they exhibit non-verbal animation (e.g., rate of speech, energy, positivity, and excitement intensify). So values can be sensed as much as they are thought about. Discovering and clarifying your personal values is not merely an intellectual process.
Practicing the mindfulness and acceptance strategies mentioned in my earlier blogs can help you discover your authentic personal values. Personal values are experientially discovered and known in the present without judgement. In addition, there are a variety of values clarification exercises and tools you can use. The following questions may also help you discover and clarify your values:
What is most important to me?
What do I want my life to stand for?
What sort of person do I want to be?
What sort of relationships do I want to build?
How do I want to act/behave in the world/ towards others/ towards myself?
What do I want to do with my life?
If ______wasn’t such a problem for me then I would______
Step 2: Write your values and date them. The act of writing your values reflects a behavioural commitment to them. It is like setting up a contract. I write my values in a dedicated note-book.
Step 3: Regularly review and refine your values. Every 6 or 12 months I review, update and modify my written values. It is helpful if you lock in a date for reviewing your values
Some important characteristics of values are summarised below:
Values are freely chosen without judgement; ‘freely chosen’ lies in the fact you do not HAVE TO act on things you actually don’t care about.
Values are not about “should” or “must” – they are not built through force, rules or others’ expectations.
Values are implicit - they are not in the service of a consequence (eg., valuing fame as a way to get rich).
Values are not achievable – they are what we continually strive for.
Values are not dependent on the actions of others
Values are not feelings (eg., ‘Being happy is important to me’ - this is an elusive quest at best because feelings come and go)
Values are typically stated in the positive (eg., ‘I value not being poor’ can be changed to ‘I value being financially stable’) so that they direct you towards what you value rather than away from it.
Values are best stated in an action form (e.g., verbs and adverbs) reflecting that they are embraced as qualities of ongoing action across time (e.g., caring, being adventurous, learning). In this way we can pursue our personal values for our entire life. For example, I can never finish or exhaust being adventurous.
Values are not stated as the absence of something (e.g., not being impatient); the absence of something is something a dead person can have.
Values are not limited by physical capacity or means. This became very clear to me when working with people who had MS. I give an example in my book of a person who had severe physical disability but continued to pursue his career-related personal values.