Living a Valued Life

Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them

Stephen Covey

One of the most unfortunate aspects of our present technological age is its distractibility and superficiality. As well, social media platforms, which encourage constant comparison to others can so often lead to feelings of inferiority and dissatisfaction with one’s own life.

A very powerful way to re-center your life is to look deeply into what it is that you truly value. There is abundant research which shows that consistently affirming (and practicing) one’s personal values has a significant positive impact on self compassion and prosocial behaviours, overall well-being, positive goal oriented behaviour, authenticity, sense of purpose, and general happiness in life.

In considering what your values are, it first pays to look at what they are not:

·         Values are not goals. Goals are things that you are aiming for and desire to achieve. Values are your guide for how you want to behave and the attitudes that you want to take now and at every stage in your life, whether or not you achieve your goal. For example, getting married would be a goal; being loving would be a value

·         Values are not needs. Although they can coincide with the needs, they are essentially different. Needs are universal and all our lives feel deficient to the degree that those needs are not satisfied. For example, one can have physical needs (food, health, shelter), or social needs (love, belonging, acceptance and respect). We all hold these needs in common but are at different points in our lives in getting these needs met. Your values, on the other hand, are unique, intentional, and specific to you. They are your north star, something to align your life towards. When you find that you are not living up to your values, this is a great realization to have as it can then become something to re-commit yourself to.

·         Values are not social norms. Social norms are what your society (or early caregivers) have conditioned you to believe are the right ways to behave. Values, on the other hand, are freely chosen. There is a sense of fit or resonance that one does not get with the social norm. Social norms usually feel like: “I need to do this” or “I should do this” or “it’s expected”. Whereas values: “this is really important to me. It’s something that I aspire to live by”

So how do you find out what your values actually are? Here are four different ways:

1)      Look at a “values list” and get a sense of which values you resonate with. Most people, when they look at such a list, will come away thinking that they ideally or should have almost all the values that they see. However, what you are actually looking for are the values on the list that resonate with something deeper inside of you. They somehow reflect the way that you would really want to be, a kind of direction that you would love to orient your life towards, something that excites and engages you just reading about it.

2)      Ask yourself the following reflective questions:

·         What really matters to you in your life?

·         What in life are your highest priorities?

·         What is in your life right now that you would not want to lose?

3)      Imagine that you are 10-20 years into your future and you are looking back at your life of today. Complete the following statements:

·         I spent too much time worrying about…

·         I did not spend enough time doing things such as…

·         If I could go back in time what I would do differently is…

4)      Another (somewhat counterintuitive) way to come to an appreciation of the things that you value in life is to look at your current sources of suffering. There is a powerful relationship between our suffering and our values. For example, grief can highlight the importance and value of human connection. Anger at someone crossing your boundaries can highlight the value of self respect. Performance anxiety can highlight the value of doing a good job or making a real difference in communicating something of importance to others. So this can be a powerful way of looking at suffering: what does the way I’m feeling tell me of what I truly value in life and how can I bring myself closer to living that value?

After discovering 4 or 5 values, you might journal about the following questions:

·         When did this become an important value for me? Was it a special experience that I had?

·         Why is this value important to me?

·         In what ways do I live this value currently?

·         Is there any way, no matter how small, where I can bring my life more in alignment with this value?

Then finally, set an intention to begin some action to bring yourself closer in alignment to your chosen value.

Delving into these questions helps to solidify and integrate those values into your thinking. As your behaviour becomes more aligned with your values, you will create a life with purpose, integrity, and meaning.

Wishing you the best in your endeavors!

Peter Dukesz MD