Values 06/11/2010
Your values are ‘what is important to you’. They create the motivation for you to do what you do and therefore create your behaviour. They are the reason you get out of bed in the morning! They determine what you focus on and subsequently what you get in return. They play a major role in determining whether or not you achieve your goals. They may not necessarily be what you want but they are what’s important to you. Therefore if your values are not aligned with what you want you may find it very difficult to achieve what you want to or live the way you want to live.
What are my values?
You will not consciously know what your values are. They are stored in your unconscious mind and have been programmed from an early age. During your ‘Imprint’ period (0-7 years), ‘Modelling’ period (7-14 years) ‘Socialization’ period (14-21 years) and Business Persona (21-35 years), you will have picked up, absorbed and made decisions based on all your experiences, the behaviour of your family, friends, teachers etc. You will have developed your own opinions based on all of these things and these are what form your values and beliefs. They may change throughout your life depending on what you experience.
Values are what you focus on. What you focus on is what you get. Have you ever heard of the term ‘Perception is projection’ or ‘you attract what you radiate’? Well it’s very true!! Again, this is mostly unconscious and you are unaware of what you are ‘projecting’.
Your values can be vary in different areas of your life
Your values will most probably differ from one area of your life to another. What’s important to you in your career could be completely different to what’s important in your relationships. For example, your most important career values could be – making a difference, challenge, communication, money etc. Whereas in your relationships your most important values could be – love, trust, honesty, intimacy etc.
Even the importance of different areas of your life can vary from person to person. Have you ever known a relationship where one partner is a workaholic and the other a family person? There is no right and wrong, everyone is different.
How do I find out what they are?
Finding out what your values are is a fairly simple process. First of all you need to find out ‘what is important to you’ about a specific area of your life that you want to work on e.g. relationships, career. You will then decide the order of importance and pick the top 8 values as these are the ones that play the most significant role in determining your behaviour. Once you have discovered your most important values, you then need to find out whether these are working for your or hindering you.
Are my values helping or hindering me?
Once you have established your most important values, you need look at them individually and assess whether you are focusing on the right things. Are you focusing towards what you want or away from what you don’t want? For example, if in your career, money is extremely important to you, ask yourself – ‘am I focusing on having money (towards) or not being poor’ (away from)? Remember, you get what you focus on in life! If it is the latter then ‘being poor’ is what you are focusing on and therefore that is what you are radiating and attracting and you may find it very difficult to earn as much money as you would like.
It may be that you are focusing ‘towards’ your most important values but the values themselves are not actually helping you or supporting what you want. For example, in your relationship, what might be important to you – freedom, variety, fun – might not support you if you want to settle down and get married.
How do I change them?
The good news is that if you want to, you can change your values. The first step of identifying what your values currently are can often be quite eye opening and usually explains why you are as you are and getting what you are getting from life. There are various ways to change your values, change your focus and adjust the importance of them within each area of your life. Visualisation techniques, Time Line Therapy and hypnosis can all be used to do this.