Our values are important to us in life. Knowing our values helps us understand what our drivers are. They help us determine what we really enjoy, what inspires and motivates us, and more importantly, what we might want more of.
We must be aware our values change over the years and as we get older our values deepen as we start to understand what makes us tick. Understanding ourselves better means helps us move forward, it helps us make choices and decision that align with our values.
But how much do we know and understand our values? And how much do we realise that our values underpin everything we do and believe in. Whether in our personal life or business or work life, our values come into play. However, we must be mindful that our values for ‘work’ aren’t necessarily the same as our values for ‘play’. Our values are also situational where different values can feel more acute with some things than others i.e. work or family. What is the best way to determine what our values are and why those values are important to us?
Here are some steps you can follow to determine your values:
- We must build a list of what we feel our values are, digging deep into our emotional pockets to ascertain what ‘makes’ us.
- We need to put our list into priority order, this gives us time to think about what makes these values important to us.
- Once we’ve done this, the next step is working out the big WHY each value is important to us, this enables us to really work on what made them important to us.
Once we’ve followed these steps we need to hold tight to our values, use these in our everyday lives. Use these are our foundation, letting them help us with all aspects of our lives. In business these values are called Core Values and are the basis of what an organisation is about, similarly to ourselves, the basis of what we are about.
