Do You Value Your Values?

It’s the key to a happy and successful life.

When values say one thing and actions do another, it leads to some pretty lousy feelings. Those lousy feelings are bad enough, but that’s only the surface. The incongruence of valuing one thing and doing another causes chronic pain and health problems, relationship problems, roadblocks, and failure.

Ouch. Let’s fix that.

Have you ever assessed your values?

I’m with you on this one. For a long time I had a vague awareness of what felt important to me, but I never actually made a list of my specific values.

Let’s take a minute to do that.

What are your actual values? Are they authentically yours, or did you adopt them because family or society expects them? I want to know what you value, not what you think you should value.

Sometimes it helps to know what you don’t value. What are some of the things you know you don’t want in your life? Your values are the opposite of what you don’t want.

Can you be specific about your values? Nearly all of us value grand concepts like family, education, security, and happiness, but what does that look like specifically for you?