Mental Moment-What Do You Value
How do you define values?
Have you ever thought about what your values are?
Are you living in alignment or opposition with your values?
The concept of values is interesting. Generally when I ask clients what their values are they mention kindness, generosity and honesty but are these truly your values? Are there others and are you living in alignment with them? I’ll bet you’ve never really thought about it.
Here is how I define values: values are our core essence from which we think, feel, act and respond. Our values are who we are in our life; personally and professionally. It’s how we move through life.
A client who has been struggling to exercise and eating healthy came in this morning. Part way into our session I asked him to tell me his values. He listed kindness, generosity, honesty, trustworthy and a couple of others but he never mentioned living a healthy lifestyle/being healthily. As we talked more, he realized that he thought a healthy lifestyle was a goal; something to be attained and once you get, you are done. I suggested to him that there is a huge difference between a goal and your values, gave him the above definition and the light bulb went off. I asked him if being healthy was a value? He said yes, most definitely but that he wasn’t living this value. I said, you just realized that it is a value and now you have to figure how to live it.
There was a lot more to the conversation but the bottom line is that our values are important to us and most of us want to live in accordance with them (once we know what they are). Awareness of values can help bring a depth of clarity and it can also show you where there are disconnects between your values and how you are living your life. Once you realize the disconnect you can change it or keep doing what you are doing. Most will choose the former. The latter means its not really something you value otherwise you’d be moving toward it versus in opposition to it.
Happy end of the week!
Dr. Michelle
Photo credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org
