Our Values Always Know The Way.

Not enough airtime or attention is devoted to the under-explored power of personal values and how our values impact every aspect of our lives – from our careers, moods, and relationships, out into our increasingly disconnected society.

Your central values are essentially a cutting edge GPS system pre-installed inside your soul. This ingenious system senses precisely where you are at all times and is able to intuitively chart the most efficient and scenic routes for advancing your life’s journey.

A job promotion that’s proven to be painfully dull and drab may be underestimating your core value of creativity perhaps. A spouse’s request to cut back on family spending may agitate your value for freedom or travel. An election result might deeply rattle some of your most deeply-rooted values, be they empathy or autonomy, honesty or security.

When we’re knocked off track, take a wrong turn, lose our way - our inner navigation system automatically alerts us. Since, maddeningly, there is no speaker nor touch-screen installed in these systems, we are alerted to our wayward routes in subtler ways whenever our thoughts or actions neglect our central values.

We’re sent shadowy signals in the form of apathy, anxiety or overwhelm.

Through frustration, fear, lack of fulfillment. 

And when we find ourselves back on track, brighter and usually bolder signals quickly appear through flashes of inspiration, excitement, and enlightenment.

Our Values Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves.

It’s important to remember there are no columns that separate “good values” from “bad values.”

All values are valid and integral to what we need in our lives to feel authentically connected to ourselves and securely connected to those around us.

But until we’ve identified our core values, we’re quite unequipped to successfully steer our personal journeys down paths that will properly honor who we are and the elements we need to become our best and brightest selves.

This is the key reason the first and most freeing work I do with coaching clients is help them identify the values that have driven their most rewarding adventures. With their unique values clearly articulated, they’re armed with two incredible new tools:

First off, clients now instantly have an incredibly detailed description of who they are which supports them in confidently answering the age-old question of:

WHERE in the world am I going in my life?

And secondly, my clients gain a sharpened, super-charged sense of sight. They become increasingly adept at viewing not only their own feelings, needs and dreams through this clarifying lense of their core values, but they are also able to see the feelings, behaviors, and hopes of the people around them with a keener respect around what others’ values may be.

Our Values Connect Us to The Best in Each Other.

In today’s world, conversations around values are often used as justifications to separate us from one another and to instantly excuse us from the opportunity to grow with and toward one another.

I have seen through my work, however, that clear communication around values is, in fact, one of our most effective tools for cooperation and connection.

For instance, a husband who’s identified he greatly values Stability isn’t trapped as a terrible, ticking time-bomb of a match for a wife who’s realized that she deeply values Adventure.

(Relational conflicts around differing values arise and multiply only when we’re aiming to negate or nullify the distinct values in one another.) 

If we, instead, approach our values as different, distinct, notes in a harmonic chord, then a Stability-minded husband can quite capably collaborate with his Adventurous wife on how to establish structures and routines in their marriage that allow him to feel secure and safe.

While he, in turn, is set up to partner with his wife to invite opportunities into their shared lives for her to express her Adventurous spirit so that she, too, feels vital and invigorated in their partnership.

When you’re in tune with your values you quickly become less frustrated and flummoxed by the differing values and actions of others.

Centered squarely on your own productive path, you’re perfectly positioned to recognize that everyone’s values are unique and useful. You’re fully equipped to act as a curious collaborator with all sorts of individuals – supporting the key values in each of us in order to honor our best and brightest selves.

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by William Scott Rees