Discovering Personal Values to live your life by......

What are the key Values that guide the way you lead your life ?

This article discusses the purpose in naming your values and consciously living according to those values. This article also explores how we can arrive at knowing our values.

Our values are our own values, they can be different from those of our siblings, parents, our culture, or our friends. We arrive at knowing our own values by.....

Remembering peak experiences ... things we have experienced, value, and want to experience again.

Recalling our very worst experiences and deciding to value the opposite.

Looking at our cultural values and choosing which cultural values fit for us.

Purpose in naming your values.

If you can name 5 or 6 key values to live your life by these values can have a major effect on decisions, goals, speed of growth and direction.

Matts Values...  and why he chose these 6

To live simply   (Matt is aware of his footprint on the planet and he has noticed that, for him, material things are not a source of joy or meaning.

To belong to a community (Matt experienced being alone and lonely and from this time in his life he came to appreciate friends, family, neighbours)

To always make time to learn. Matt has always had an intense curiosity about many things in life but when going through a very busy time he lost touch with this feeling and he is determined to always make time to learn more.

To be a good partner and friend. Although Matt has been a loner for much of his life he admires the friendships and partnerships he has seen in others over the years and has chosen that value for himself. To be a good friend and partner,

To strive to be healthy. Matts twin brother died from a lifestyle related disease and now sees his health as his number one asset.

To be honest . Matt reflects on his parents marriage where there was a lot of dishonesty and he saw the painful consequences of that and to be honest in all his dealing is a very important value.

So, Matt has named his values, he knows where these values came from and most of all he is much more aware of his feelings when he is living outside his values. Decisions are much more clear cut.

Matt is living his life, his way, consciously, not wasting time on things, foods, drinks, substances, people, activities, behaviours that are outside his value system. He can stay on track with his goals, he is consciously creating a new improved version of himself every day because of his values. The feedback Matt experiences around his Values is when he feels a sense of belonging, purpose, connection, fitness and fascination in his world. This feeling is the result of his values.

Are your values the same as they were 5 years ago, 10 years ago ?

How have life events shaped your values, changed priorities ?

How do you feel when you are living your values ?

What are you still doing that does not fit with your vision of your best self.

Once you have clarified your  Values this article can help you get on course in practical ways such as making and evaluating goals.   See my article Smart Goals

Talking to your counsellor can also be really useful in clarifying your values.