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I believe one of the first steps toward living a more meaningful and fulfilling life is getting to know and understand your personal values.
Your values are a set of beliefs and guiding principles that act as the foundation for every choice you make and every action you take. They’re the things that are the most important to you and the things that make up who you are at your core. If you were a pie, your values would be your main ingredients.
When you start to live in alignment with your values and own who you truly are, you start to find a whole lot more purpose and a experience a whole lot more joy.
Gaining clarity around what my personal values are changed my life in so many ways. I want to share those ways with you in hopes that you’ll feel inspired to identify and define your personal values for yourself too.
Here are the changes I’ve seen and the ways knowing and living in line with my personal values has changed my life:
-I have more meaningful relationships both personal and professional.
-I have more meaningful goals in place; Goals that are in line with my values and the vision I have for my life.
-It’s easier for me to make tough decisions in life, so I don’t feel confused or unsure nearly as often as I used to.
-I’ve set healthy boundaries that allow me to love both myself and other people at the same time.
-I have more balance in my life. There is no one single area taking up most of my time and energy. I intentionally create time for all the things that are important to me.
-I became more in tune with my passions and started to do more things related to those passions.
-I made a big scary career change decision that lead me to my dream job of being a Life Coach.
-I became more confident in my own skin.
I could literally keep going with listing all the ways knowing my values has changed my life, but I’ll stop there.
If any of that sounded intriguing to you, please know that you too can experience all of this positive transformation.
It starts with you identifying what your personal values are.
You can search the internet for lists of values or you can use the list I’ve included for you here.
Once you’ve narrowed it down to between 5-10 values, think about what each of the words means to you. Write down your own definition for the word.
Then ask yourself, “Why is this important to me?”
“Where or how does this value show up as a guiding principle in my life?”
Once you have each of them defined, reflect on them day by day and continue to gain a deeper understanding of what they mean to you and how relevant and true to you they actually are.
You may find that they evolve a little at first. And maybe a couple of them are very similar, like happiness and joy for example, so you decide that one is more important to you than the other after doing some extended reflection and self discovery.
Once you’re certain of them, these values don’t change. They are who you are at your core. The exception to this rule of them not changing is when you experience a drastic life change of some kind, like having a child. You may value family more than ever before so this becomes one of your core values when it may not have been one before having the child.
Once you feel good about your list of 5-10 values you’ve defined for yourself and you’re sure they are authentic and true to you, write them somewhere you can see them on a daily basis. You don’t want to do this activity and just forget about them or have them live on a piece of paper somewhere in your desk drawer. You want these values to be present with you in your every day life.
A great practice to strengthen your values is to focus on one or two a month that you want to live with more intention around. Maybe they’re the ones you feel you need some improvement on. Then just rotate between all your values and which ones you focus on each month all throughout the year according to what you feel like you need.
Once you start to live with more intention around being the person you want to be, and who you are deep down, you’ll notice the shifts start to take place day by day and choice by choice.
In Conclusion
It’ll be a lifelong journey of keeping these values close to your heart and reminding yourself of what’s important to you.
Your values will act as your compass in life for those moments you feel lost or confused and don’t know which way to turn. They’ll help you make tough decisions and decide how you spend your time and energy in a way that feels good to you. Your values will always bring you back to the path that leads to your life’s vision.
All anyone really wants at the end of their life is to be able to look back and say, “I was who I wanted to be for myself and for others, and I did what I wanted to do”
Living in your truth and living with intention around your values will create that legacy for you.
This will be a life changing journey. A journey filled with exploration and reflection that will transform you into that best version of yourself that you’re trying to create.
Cheers to you learning more about yourself so that you can live a more fulfilled and meaningful life, one aligned with your personal values!
