How Changing My Values, Has Changed My Direction.

Hello and Welcome,

For long term success and to have sustainable happiness is to live by our highest ideals and to live by those values, understanding what our values are and getting them re-defined is the single most important thing we can do to help us grow.

Each person, including me, holds values, the values and beliefs we have determine every decision we make, so whether we are conscious of it or not they are the driving force, our map for life. Values in understanding of them or not determine our future because we make choices and take action based on what values we possess.

Here I’d like to share with you how I discovered my core values and how they shaped the path I have been taking for most of my life.

By re-shaping and doing some digging I found that the values that I have been living by were not what I thought they were, and surprisingly after doing a little exercise and asking my self the right questions I found my core values.

By doing self-reflection and having a desire for self-growth finding who we are and who we want to be can be enlightening.

SO WHAT ARE VALUES.

Thinking of values, we often refer to them as someone or something important to us. If we stop and ask, what is it that I value the most and what is it that is most important to me, Some of us will reply with, my family, health, love, success and power, everyone is different.

For me, it was love, freedom and security, these were the values that I had thought I had valued the most and for the most part, they are, but when learning a little more, I discovered that there are two types of values, means value and ends value they both lead off each other.

So if we have our family as a value, something we are protective over something important to us, then our family is a means value. We don’t just want a family for the sake of having a family; it’s what we get from our family, which is what we are seeking. Love, belonging, comfort are all end values because these are the pleasurable states at the end of the means values.

Family, personal belongings, e.g. cars and things alike are means values because we hold them to the importance of what the end value is. Which is freedom if you value your car or it could be a sentimental chain that your nan left you, that chain reminds you of times that you had when your nan or family member was alive.

THE IMPORTANCE OF VALUES

As we all know with life being busy, the majority of us spend too much time chasing our means values and very unusually achieve our end values the pleasurable state we wish to accomplish. This not only means that we have pleasurable states, but we also hold painful states, moving towards and moving away from values, here are some samples of the couple,

Moving towards values.

Moving away from values.

So an exercise we can do is to look at the moving towards values and re-order them to what is most important to you.

When I did this at first glance, I had re-ordered them to love, freedom and security but then to take a little closer of a look how could I have freedom the desire to do and go where I want but then have security the need to feel safe and secure, the two conflicted with each other.

Choosing and getting our moving towards values are so important, I could never have freedom if I value security just as high it would stop me from making choices to seek freedom because I would desire to be secure, you with me?

So take a little time to re-order the list and see what you find, this can also be done for the moving away from values too.

With the moving away from values choose in order of which ones that you would do most to avoid, one being the one you would like to avoid the most and five being the one you would be less likely concerned.

Once we know what our values are it’s clear to see why we head in the directions that we do consistently, discovering our hierarchy is crucial as our top values are the ones that will bring us the most happiness.

So putting put more understanding around the importance of getting our top values re-defined is to think of it as if, on our moving away from values, we have rejection as our primary emotion to avoid.

Then on our moving towards, we have power as something that we most want as a pleasurable state of feeling.

So as many of us can agree, with authority comes rejection. If we hold rejection highly as a moving away from value, then we are going to make choices based on not being rejected. Therefore never achieve our moving towards values, people will do more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure.

So whenever we come to the point of having to make a decision, our brain will first evaluate whether if that action will either bring us pain or bring us a pleasurable state.

Our brain does this if we are aware of it or not but by getting a real understanding of all our values and being conscious of them gives us that heads upon which way we want our lives to go.

The relative levels of pain we associate with particular emotions will affect and cloud our decisions, therefore, never getting what we want because our mind will decide that the pleasure of power is not worth the feeling of rejection.

RE-SHAPING OUR VALUES.

Re-shaping our values can be somewhat challenging, and I know choosing between certain ones can have you looking inside yourself and discovering things that we didn’t know were there.

The first thing we can do is to write down a list of the ten most essential things in your life right now.

Ask yourself, what is most important to me in my life? Here are some examples, Peace of mind, growth, family, creativity, progress, courage, impact, fun, health, passion, just to name a few.

Below is my list of ten when first doing the exercise.

1. Love

2. Security

3. Freedom

4. Health

5.Passion

6. Success

7. Comfort

8. Growth

9. Adventure

10. Power

So now we have our list of what we consider to be the most valuable things to us in our life. We can now start to re-shape them by asking a few questions, firstly what values do I need to create my ultimate experience, to be the highest version of myself and to achieve what it is I desire?

Then we can also ask what values do I need to add or remove to achieve my most wanted desires?

Also, look at the moving away from values, take our example from earlier with rejection and power. If we want power success and achievement, then removing rejection from the top of the moving away list will be massively beneficial because we don’t hold refusal so highly as a feeling we want to avoid.

Next comes the importance of these values and what order they are in makes a massive difference in the outcome and choices we make.

Take the time to think about which one tops the list, for example; I have love as my number one because without love there’s nothing right, then comes health, without good health life is challenging and we are limited to our potential.

Freedom is at number three because having the right to be free is a human right in its self, and number four is growth the wanting to progress, if we are not growing we are dying as the saying goes.

Success is at number five and courage in sixth followed by creativity at number 7 and passion in spot eight with family and security in ninth and ten places.

As you can see by taking a little look at my re-shaped values, all are in alignment with each other because wanting values from number four to number ten requires numbers one to three, love, health and freedom you with me?

Therefore being more open and changing our opportunities by simple re-shaping our values and taking the time to go within and giving ourselves the attention and future we deserve will bring significant change to us and those around us.

So there we have a simple exercise to narrow down what it is that’s driving you in a direction that you may not want to be going and taking the time to re-evaluate your values can change which way we choose to go, hope this has sparked a little interest and curiosity to go and discover your actual values and start living the life you are entitled to, let us grow from within.

Thank You.

Originally published at https://acoursewithin.com on April 17, 2020.