Are you living life in line with your values?

In my last post Changing your life starts with a plan, one of the places I wanted to start exploring was personal values. I have come across setting personal values quite a few times in plenty of self help resources and think it’s a great place to start!

First up, what even are personal values?

Ok so below are a few points on what I understand values to be:

The principles you stand for personally
Your beliefs and attitude to life
What is fundamentally important to you and makes you feel fulfilled

Your personal values are kinda created in the background while you go on your merry little way living life.. They can be formed from experiences you have had, family background, spiritual beliefs, stuff you have witnessed and a whole range of reasons that your mind or soul (lets not get too deep) has attached value to..

Why do I need to know this?

You know that feeling you have when you have no idea where you are going or what you are doing and life is just not living up to what you thought it would be!? (I mean you know I do… That’s why I’m here) well that feeling can happen when some of the actions you are taking in life don’t align with your values.

Ok, so if I already have values... What are they?!

There are plenty of resources around that can help you figure this out… For free! Online! I’ll link a few resources that I found super helpful at the end of this post! But here’s a quick list of how I figured out what mine are (keeping in mind, this isn’t the only way):

Lists – I looked at lists of values in self help books, listened to pods and searched online lists by googling personal values.
Gut feeling – I then selected 10 values that resonated with me, I tried not to over think this and just went for the ones that felt right.
Value – I wrote the ten words on a sheet of paper and then numbered each word with a number from 1 to 10, 1 being the most important.
Connect – I then connected any of the words that were kinda the same with each other e.g. Health & Energy or Relationships and Affection.
Reflect – I then cut the list to my top 5, this took a long time thinking each word through and looking back on choices and goals I have made in the past.

My Values

For me, they ended up being:

Physical & Mental Health / Energy
Tolerance / Positivity
Relationships / Affection
Freedom / Security

Why I chose the 5 I chose

When I look back on the goals I set for myself over the years and different choices I have made in the past and when I sat and thought about the things that make me happy and the things that make angry I could see connections to these words! I could see that I chose tolerance because when someone judges me or judges others that pisses me off! The opposite to judgement… Tolerance! Every year I set myself physical and mental health focused goals, which connects to the value of Health! I also set a lot of my goals around fun, starting new hobbies, spending more time with my friends, starting projects, taking photos, these all come back to creativity and pleasure, so on and so on…

What now?

So… now I know my values, great! But what now? Well! Now you get to make sure everything you put your focus and energy into this year fits in with and aligns to your values baby! Hell yeah!

Oh, how?… well… stick around while I try and figure that out!

In the mean time check out these cool resources that have helped me get started!