Knowing Your Values Can Change Your Life
I’ve been a development professional for basically my entire working life. From the moment I realized at age 23 that there was a whole discipline devoted to how people grow and nurture their best selves I was hooked.
Which is why no one was more surprised than me to realize, some 15 years later, that I had been operating for a long time without a clear sense of my values.
The realization came to me as I found myself in one of those life moments where I was utterly lost, almost alien to myself. I felt like I was failing in all fronts of my life: not being a good enough wife, mother, employee, or steward of my body. I was exhausted all the time, harried, and whatever it is that exists beyond burnt out (charcoaled? is that a thing? can we make it a descriptor?).
A friend of mine (and fellow coach, the wonderful Nadia Hewstone of Destino Coaching) suggested I reflect on my values and use them to start sorting out the absolutely tangled feeling I was experiencing. I think before she made that suggestion she observed I was all over the place and running around putting out fires everywhere all the while screaming inside. Perfect characterization.
I took her advice and spent some time drafting my values out. I came up with six, and I absolutely hated them. They seemed like the kind of thing corporations put on their wall and forget about. They didn’t feel like me, how I think or speak. So I went back to the drawing board and did it again. And again. And again.
It took me a few months to coach myself through the process and whittle the list down to a size, shape, and wording that really resonated with me. It came down to five: Connect, Nurture, Create, Nourish, and Enjoy.
Once it was done it felt surprisingly amazing and painful at the same time. The amazing part was how authentic they felt: it felt like a mirror was showing me myself for the first time in a long time. Like the end of that song in Encanto where the main character sees her reflection in the doorknob. The painful part was holding up the current shape of my life against them. There were so few things I was doing or investing my time in that matched my values.
Once I finished my pity-party (table for one!) about how far it seemed I’d strayed from what mattered to me, it was just as Nadia said: the values became a great map to help sort it all out. All the points of frustration, pain, annoyance, and energy drain could be help up against those values and evaluated. Did it match? What would a matching action actually look like? What would need to shift in order to align more with my values?
Knowing your values can change your life. I can honestly say it changed mine. Over time, I was able to shift many of the things that were causing me stress and frustration toward things that just felt better for me. We are all works in progress, but knowing my values and being intentional with how I act in their spirit has brought me a lightness I had forgotten was possible. Problems come up…and the answers usually come along with them. Decisions arise…and the answers manifest more clearly.
I still work every day to be the best version of myself I can be for my husband, my children, my clients, and my own body. Leaning on my values has enabled me to do that with greater impact and success than all the years I spent flailing around in the dark. Sometimes I feel sorry for those wasted years, but then remind myself that life has ebbs and flows, dark years and light ones, and all of it contributes to our growth.
What are you values? If you haven’t got them written down or thought out (or haven’t thought about this in a while!) take this as your sign to spend some time working on them. Values are “why” we do what we do. Without them, we are often just wandering around, slowly turning into charcoal.
Go shine your light, my friend
If you want more on values, check out my Monday Morning Pep Talk on aligning values and action from March 2024.
