Values

“Man is unique in that he has plans, purpose and goals which require the need for criteria of choice. The need for ethical value is within man whose future may largely be determined by the choice he make” – George Bernard Shaw

How you understand your own personal value system is crucial in helping you make good powerful choices in your life and career. There’s some pretty exhaustive lists online if you Google values, so I’m not going to list them here. Once you’ve found a list you like – I like Steve Pavalina’s list but its pretty huge – the first step is to go through the it and pick out the values that you feel are relevant to you. It is, as always, really important to be honest with yourself here. You really don’t ever have to share this list with anyone so if you know one of your values is extravagance but you know the people around you would be impressed if you put frugality, go with what you feel – this is not about impressing people! Go through the list quickly and take the ones that jump out at you, if you have to agonise about any of them then it probably isn’t for you, even though you might wish it was! Now you have a big list in front of you its time to get a bit ruthless – go through it again and drop everything that you don’t feel really passionate about and keep doing this until you have a list of about 10. These are your core values.

Now its time to put them in order – look at the first two on your list and ask yourself the question – if I had to choose between 1 and 2 which would I choose? If its 2, put that at the top of your list and 1 at the bottom. Keep going through the list until you have compared them all. Now you have your list in order. If you always make choices based on these values in this order you always act in congruence with your true nature.

Tomorrow we can look at why acting in congruence is important.