There are many, but today I’m sharing three tips on finding your values. This step is crucial to living a fulfilled life. For me, I had vague ideas on what was most important to me.
The Three Tips
- Understand the concept of values
- Explore your personal values
- Hone in on your top three to five values
What Are Values Exactly?
I want to be clear, I’m talking about personal values that serve as the basis for our goals toward achieving fulfillment and ultimately our life purpose. This article on Physiopedia.com is an in-depth explanation of personal values and beliefs.
Furthermore, values are what you feel is important to you.
How Do Values Affect Me?
If your thoughts and actions are in synch with your values, you are happier, that is, you are calm, centered, content.
Conversely, if your thoughts and actions are based on the values of others, you may be anxious, unsettled, jittery. Empaths are often unduly influenced by the values of others. My blog about empaths will help you discover if this is your reality.
How Do I Discover My Values?
Here is a list of values with further hints on using it. Now, let’s get to it!
- Gather a notepad and pen or pencil
- Find a quiet place and sit upright
- Close or soften your gaze
- Take three slow cleansing breaths
- Relax your neck and shoulders
- Sink into your hips and feet
- Notice how your body feels
- Slowly open your eyes and start reading each value aloud
- When a word resonates somewhere in your body, write it down
My Three Values as Example
Here are my values; Honesty, Tranquility, and Purpose
If I follow these values in my thoughts and actions, I’m extremely happy and carefree. It’s fairly easy if I’m alone and in complete control of my environment. Rather, since I don’t live a monastic life alone, I often struggle to live these values.
Let’s see examples where I’m successful:
- Honesty: I use my love of creative cooking to create a healthy, gluten-free, dairy-free salad for lunch.
- Tranquility: While caught in Interstate-4 traffic, I tune into the Spa channel on Sirius XM, smile, and calmly allow merging traffic to, well.. merge.
- Purpose: Quiet morning time is spent meditating and writing my blog.
Now for the opposite:
- Honesty: Feeling stressed, I open my overhead kitchen cabinet where ‘fun foods’ like wasabi peas and dark chocolate are stored and grab something, stuffing it in my mouth before anyone sees my loss of control.
- Tranquility: While caught in Interstate-4 traffic, I tune into the 70’s on 7 channel on Sirius XM, pound my palms on my steering column, and switch lanes over and over to ‘get ahead’.
- Purpose: Quiet morning time is spent checking email, all my social media channels, reading newspaper headlines and getting sucked into someone else’s drama.
Is There a Theme Here?
Absolutely. The theme is self-care. Once I discovered my values, all I needed to do was practice self-care by respecting myself and these values. And yes, I fall off my self-care regimen all the time, forgetting to honor my values. Above all, I start again.
May you explore my three tips on finding your values and use the list of values to discover a calmer way to live with ease.
With honesty, tranquility, and purpose,
Dawn