The Importance of Values

I've talked about values in the past. So it's not a new subject. But each time I share a subject that I've shared before, there's a new perspective and a new way of looking at it. Today, I wanted to talk about values and context because our values are important to us.

They provide a profound level of motivation. Values give us this deep level of motivation. This deep level of what this sense of what's important, as they say, they're context-dependent. So I wanted today to talk about values, both in the sense of life values and values in the sense of career or business values, depending on whether you work for somebody or whether you're self-employed.

Now, different values will show up in different contexts. But sometimes, we have a value or several common values across many contexts. For me, one of my life values is joy. I want joy in my life. It's also a significant value in my business. I want to feel joy in my business. I want to communicate joy in my business.

The autumn season here in the UK has been stunning. We're getting some glorious colors. For me is a real source of joy because I can experience the joy of the autumn in its fullest glory. So when we do have that opportunity to experience joy, it's just so special.

Why are values important?

As I say, the main thing about values is that they motivate us. It's an intense unconscious level of motivation. So the more we can uncover them, the better we can understand what motivates us to understand why we procrastinate. I don't know about you, but I can procrastinate like an Olympic champion on a good day. So it helps us understand why we procrastinate and help us understand our level of motivation. It helps us understand what we need to pay attention to.

Just because something is important to me may not necessarily mean that I'm giving it the time and attention I want. So often in business, life, career, and relationships and whatever we are held up when we have what we call a values conflict.

So let's say in a relationship, I have a strong value on spending time with my partner, but if I'm not spending time with my partner, then it can create kind of an almost a conflict because it's something I want to do. It's important to me, but I'm not doing it.

Some people have career values, or that family is actually part of a career value. What's important to you is your career or time with my family. So if they're not spending time with the family, this can set up a conflict.

Sometimes our values themselves conflict one with one another. I used to have an actual conflict. When I went back to when I was still working, I had a real conflict around independence. I wanted freedom and independence. But at the same time, I wanted a challenge, and somehow, there's an inconsistency. How could I have challenge and freedom and independence? So sometimes we can get conflicts in our values.

Discover your values

So let's talk about how you discover your values. Now, you probably know this anyway. But the big question to ask is, what's important to you? It could be love, career, relationships, money, health and fitness, and spiritual development. So any area of life really that you want to focus on.

So what's important to us is what will motivate us and what we would expect to spend time, energy, and possibly money on. So in the different areas of your life, you will have different values.

Write down and make a quick list of what is important to you. Whatever comes to your mind quickly. So what are those? You want these, as we say, abstract nouns, so that ends in -ation such communication, a relation that sort of things. You would probably come up with a list with 12-15 items, but you want to boil that list down to pin the important things.

So what you need to do, is put them in order of preference. What's your priority? Ask yourself this very simple question. If I could only have one of these on my list, what would it be? Then, what would it be if you've got that one, and you have one other? You make a list.

And really, what's going to motivate you are the top five on your list. As I say, life values may be different from career values. Some of them may be the same, and there may be a crossover. The more you understand your values, the more you understand your motivation. The more you start to understand why you're getting hiccups, why you're not able to uplevel because if you can't honor your values and if you can't satisfy your values, it's going to be difficult to uplevel.

For years, one of my highest career values was freedom. But I always felt constrained. In the context of my career, I couldn't figure a way to find the freedom that I wanted to express myself and do what I wanted to do. I couldn't find that freedom. So I was permanently bumping up against the fact that my freedom value wasn't satisfied.

Sometimes in a career, things you bump up against things. For example, for many people in their careers, money is important. Now, if you're not making the money you want to make in your career, and money is a value for you, you're not going to feel a lot of satisfaction in your career if money is a high value.

By the way, if you don't have money as a career value or financial reward, then you're a complete philanthropist, or maybe you need to look at your value set. If you're working for yourself or somebody else, and money isn't in there, re-examine yourself. Should it be there? You can do a lot of things to change your values. But I'm not focusing on that. Today, I'm focusing on ways of making your values work for you.

In career values, look for money, and see if it's in there because it's one of the biggest dissatisfiers. So, if your career's going quite well, but if you're not getting the money you want, it can pull a punch.

So, in the context of life, then longevity, or health and vitality, you would typically expect to see that in your life values. So if it's not in there, then and you do not have a good health and vitality experience, then it might be that you haven't put enough importance on it in your life as a whole.

So all these values can give you hints and information. If you have a high value on something, let's say you have a high value in your career, self-development, learning, growth, whatever, whatever your words are for that, and you're not spending time on self-development, you're working for an organization that doesn't let you spend time on self-development, perhaps you're so busy in developing your business, that you don't have time to focus on self-development.

If you've got a high value on self-development in your career, but you can't spend time, or you haven't been spending time, energy, money on developing that, then that's going to set up a conflict for you.

Looking at the values and how much time you are spending on them and seeing whether they are satisfied is a valuable way of figuring out what is going wrong.

When I used to do a lot of career coaching, one of the exercises I would do was invite people to have their list of values and then score them in terms of their career.

Let's say you've got a list of 8 values on your list. For each one score, it marks at a 10. How far does your career or your business? If it's your business? How far does my business satisfy that value? Because if your career or business doesn't satisfy a high order value, so something in the top five, top eight, possibly, then you're going to bump against it.

You're going to feel levels of dissatisfaction, and you can do this in a relationship. You can do it in health and vitality. You can do it in all areas of your life. So, what you're bumping up against? What's not getting satisfied? What's not getting enough time? What are you not focusing energy on? Which is important to you?

Now, there's one argument that goes well, if you're not spending energy on it, then it's not that important. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think sometimes we get distracted by life. Sometimes, there are really important things, and we struggle to spend time and energy on them.
For me, that's when conflict comes in.

There are times that I know my values, but I can't spend time on them. That sets up a conflict for me. That's the importance of knowing your values and what is important to you.

If you want to book a call and talk about values, or if you're bouncing up against your values, because you realize that there's something important to you, but you can't spend the time and the energy, and you want help with doing that. Please do get in touch and book a call in my diary, secretartofhuna.com/diary. We can talk about it and see if I'm the right person to help you. 

Content Disclaimer

The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article. Jane P. Lewis disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article. 

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