Use your values as compass

Journal, Journal, Journal - be introspective and write narratives based in emotion to determine your values that allow you to guide your in your never ending journey.

Hi, and welcome to the journey never ends today.

We're going to talk about how to identify your values and the importance of values for everyone.

So do you know what your values are?

You might say that you do,

but could you write them out and reference them every time you make a decision?

Anytime you take action,

could you reference your values and say,

my actions and my decisions are in line with my values?

I use values almost as a compass for my decisions, my actions, etc.

When in doubt, I go back to them and I say, huh, is this what I want?

Is this what I believe?

Is this who I am?

So my values are trust, transparency, and action.

So when it comes to identifying your values,

which is a very important activity that most people likely don't do,

I have a process that I recommend for people personally.

I recommend that you guys take a moment to write down three narratives that

exemplify days in your past where you were happy.

You were proud.

You just had a really positive emotion.

I also want you guys to write three stories and narratives about the day that you

had a negative emotion,

jealousy,

anger,

sadness,

et cetera.

And I want you to write these narratives almost as if you were there.

I want you to write as much detail as you can.

Who was there?

What was going on?

And after you do that,

I suggest that you take a break,

walk away,

go to sleep,

and then come back to these six narratives and really analyze them almost as if

they were a body of literature that you were analyzing for your English class.

So I want you guys to do this and it can be a difficult exercise for those that

aren't used to it,

but really it's understanding what's going on.

So if you have a story where you're with your family, then maybe your value is trust.

Maybe your value is family, but what about your family do you like?

Is it that you feel safe?

Is it that you feel like you can trust them?

Like, what about it do you think is important?

And maybe there's a theme of accomplishment in a story where you said you were very proud.

Maybe you accomplished against all odds something great.

For me,

my values are trust,

transparency,

and action because I realized that some of my worst days were when people lied to me,

when I was deceived.

I also realized that when I have progress,

When I move forward, I am very happy.

And that's where the value of action comes.

I love to move forward and overcome obstacles.

So for me, I realized in my narratives that I really value my family.

And when my family is around, I had really happy days.

But people say family is their value.

And in my opinion, that's not deep enough.

I want you to think when you're with your family, what emotion are you feeling?

Are you feeling that you're safe?

Are you feeling that you can trust people?

Are you feeling camaraderie?

What about your family interactions at the core bring you this happiness?

For me, being with my family is valuable to me because I feel a deep sense of trust.

I know that I can say anything, do anything, and my family can be trusted with all of my demons.

For me, the next one is transparency.

And I really was able to get down to this value when I realized how much I hate being deceived.

I realized how much I hate being lied to and feeling dumb because I trusted people.

And so, again, you want to go a little bit deep.

And for me, it's not just honesty.

Someone might say their value is honesty.

But for me, it's about transparency where it's a little bit deeper than honesty.

It's sharing the things that

that maybe people wouldn't share so that you can build that trust.

So they're pretty interrelated.

The last one, action, I really got into understanding that as my value because I like progress.

I like accomplishment.

I like moving forward.

When I can take great change to improve and overcome obstacles with action, I'm very happy.

Again, I just encourage you guys to be a little bit more introspective.

It's part of journaling, I guess.

It's a little prompt to write these narratives and try to really dig deep into what

the themes are and what about the themes that really made you be happy or made you

be upset or

What's cool about identifying your values is again,

you can use them as a compass and you can always change what your values are.

They don't have to be static.

People grow, people learn, people have new experiences.

So you can do this every so often to identify how you're doing.

And I would really try to keep it down to three or four values.

You don't want a huge list.

So when you have this list of values,

it's important because you can,

again,

use it as your compass to make decisions.

Hey, should I lie about doing X, Y, and Z to my coworker?

Oh, maybe not my value transparency.

So I will not do that.

Should I make a decision to move?

Should I move?

Well, I believe in action.

And if there's a compelling reason why taking this action would progress me, let's do it.

So it really works as a compass to understand really who you are.

In addition,

if you are open and share these values with people as I do,

it helps people understand what makes you tick and how to interact with you.

I hope this has been helpful for you guys.

If you want to go more in depth about how to do this, let me know and I can go more in depth.

But

At the high level,

people really need to focus,

be introspective and journal about what their values are in order to understand the

world and be able to be a better person in it.

I hope this was helpful for you guys again.

Thank you for listening.

Have a great day.

Much love.