Our happiness, fulfillment and ultimately our success is caused by whether or not we are living our values. You have values regardless of if you know them. When you know what you value in each pillar of your life, you can then adjust your activities. It’s simple and powerful!

Values are simply principles you live by. It’s a word or short phrase that represents a picture in your mind that motivates you in an aspect of your life. You have values in your career that likely vary from what you value in relationships and so on. So, what is motivating in your career might not be the thing that motivates you with your partner.

Values are developed based on your life’s experiences and environments – your family, friends, religion, co-workers, mentors, community. As you experience new things and perspectives shift, so can your values.

Here’s two quick illustrations around how values are created…

First illustration: In school, you always knew the answers on the tests and really mastered whatever the subject is. Your teachers praised you and your parents told you how great getting good grades are. You felt so good when you got that attention that over time competency became a value. Now you’ve transitioned to work and you want to know everything about what you’re doing. When you know, you feel confident and have that same happy feeling as you did when you were a kid.

Second illustration: In school, you felt a lot of pressure to get everything right. You had the kind of parents that, when you brought home a 95% on a test, they asked you why you didn’t get 100%. That was stressful for you. You begin to know that if you were competent, you’d get answers right and therefore good grades, which would keep your parents from giving you a hard time. And that’s what you wanted, to not disappoint them and have them proud of you. Now you’re in work and you believe competency is the difference between you failing or success. Moreover, you value competency because you don’t want to fail.

Regardless of how the value came to be, it motivates you to go after something.

Values are a representation about what IS not what you might WANT. What you have are your values, what you want are your goals. That means that values show up in your current or past environments. 

The values you have shape what you do and how you feel about what you’re doing.

Are you feeling good about your career? It’s probable that you’re living out your values consistently. Not feeling so good about it? Chances are you’re not living your values.We call it being congruent. When you’re congruent, you feel confident in who you are which affects your performance.

Here’s how this works in real life… I was working with a client that realized that connection was a big value of his. To him, connection happened face-to-face. We also realized that he had a core group of people that sent him business, yet he wasn’t being proactive. We devised a plan to go on 2 coffee appointments per week with someone from that group. His energy increased and he loved those appointments. He got more referrals from this group. Ultimately his business doubled.

Usually we have around 12 values for each pillar of our life. Our top 5 are your biggest drivers and the values we want to make sure we’re fulfilling.

Getting to know what your values are and then developing a strategy to live those values consistently will lead to happiness, which leads to success.

Do you know your values and have your list? If not, I’m offering a free “Learn My Values” call. It’s a 30 minute one-on-one zoom call with me where you’ll walk away with clarity around your values. Book your call here.