How to find your key values
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’re invited to attend your work colleague’s child’s birthday party and in the moment you say ‘yes’ because you simply didn’t really have a good enough reason to say ‘no’? Or you have a spare afternoon planned for ‘you time’ but you find yourself distracted by tending to other people’s priorities?
All the tiny decisions we make each day, lead to our life experience
When we don’t know our key values, its very tricky to know how to keep focussed, stay the course and make everyday decisions that lead to a life of purpose and meaning. It’s easy to get pulled in the direction of other people’s priorities and then we never get to do what truly matters to us.
Understanding our values helps us know what our priorities are in life. We want to get to the end of our life and look back and be able to say to ourself,” I had a meaningful life.” Having a meaningful life means getting clear on your values.
If you look at the goals you want to set in our life, it’s important to look through the lens of your key values. Making values-based decisions rather than emotionally led ones is more likely to lead to a meaningful fulfilling life. Making decisions just based on how we feel in the moment, is likely to lead us into all sorts of undesirable circumstances and outcomes in life. If we are not anchored to something deeper then we will drift around and eventually run aground.
So how do we know what our key values are? Here’s 3 ways to get on the path of knowing your key values
1. Base your life on your values, rather than what society says will bring you success
Many of us have forgotten who we truly are because we have jumped on the ‘success’ and comfort seeking band-wagon of financial wealth, social status, pleasing our family and trying to look like the people in glossy magazines. In our society this path is leading to the highest levels of depression and anxiety known in history. Weird physical health problems also show up because at our core, we not living in alignment to our true authentic values, or we are not clear what our values really are. We have allowed ourselves to become social conditioned because by default, we have allowed ourselves to internalize the dominant consumerist and competitive values of modern society.
‘More’ is not the answer to our problems of unfulfillment. There is of course nothing wrong with owning a home, having a husband, a wife, a partner, a nice car….but none of these things or people will ever satisfy the place inside us that never feels full.
Instead, work on who you are, not who the world wants you to be. When you ask yourself deeper questions such as ‘What is unique about me?’ ‘How do I want to be remembered?’ and ‘How can I take action to align my actions with my own true core values?’ When you change who you are in this way, the world shifts. What you really want, wants you too. Don’t tune into the rules of what the world tells you will bring success and happiness. You don’t need to do more, to become something. Instead, be who you really are. Become the person you wish to be.
“The Universe doesn’t give you what you want, it gives you who you are.” Michael Beckwith
2. Listen to your soul
This probably sounds quite far fetched for most of you reading this, but I think you know deep down that you are much more than just your busy mind, your aging body, and the things you own, and the job you have.
In a quiet moment, ask yourself, what would make me feel more alive in my life right now? If no one knew of me, what would I do with my life right now? What are my unique gifts? For many of us, asking these questions causes tension, because for so long we have been living in a pretence of a ‘happy life’ that isn’t our truest happy life. So, we push our great vision down into the back burner, even though our highest, or biggest sense of Self really knows what would fulfil us.
Carve out time to tend to yourself with care. When you spend most of your days giving to the needs of others, you end up depleted, resentful, and sick. When you spend most of your days making careful decisions to fill up your own cup, carving out time for yoga, getting outdoors, and creative activities where you lose track of time, you start to feel inspired.
We are all entitled to an inspired life, it’s just society doesn’t always educate us on the value of being inspired. Notice what moves you, how you could make the world a better place, how you could channel your gifts into something others could benefit from. If all else fails, take a break. Carve out some time to be in your own company. The space, adventure and detoxing from the busy world might just rattle something awake inside of you.
Remember, your only work is to love yourself, value yourself, and embody this truth of self-worth and self-love so that you can be love in action. – Anita Moorjani
3. Growth through pain, or growth through insight
Insights derived from Zen Buddhism give two key types of personal growth that help us get clear on our own true core values. They are:
1. Growth through pain. ‘Kensho’
2. Growth through insight - ‘Satori’
(As stated by Vishen Lakhiani, Mind Valley)
Kensho moments are moments in which you experience temporary pain that drives personal growth. You could say these painful moments are like an ‘auto correction of the soul’. For example, someone who has a heart attack, and survives, totally transforms their health and wellbeing based on the realisation of how important their health is.
Satori moments are moments of enlightenment that are a more pleasurable and comfortable way of experiencing growth in our life. For example, such as an ‘Ah-ha’ moment, or a quote that moves you, or just clicks with you. Satori moments lead you to operate at a completely different level so you can take new challenges with confidence and courage. Usually these are challenges you wouldn’t have taken before. Satori moments happen when you listen to your heart. This is why we focus on our breath, and our body through opening the heart in our yoga practice.
For me personally, I went through a sort of ‘breaking down’ in my life in my late 20’s whilst working in health management. The 9-5 job, the pressure of ‘needing to get married’ and be successful and working and living a ‘socially conditioned life’ as a deep sensitive soul, lead me to become very sick. This you could say was a very “kensho way’ of getting clearer on my values.
I didn’t actually go seeking my values. Rather, through the painful experience of living in this unauthentic way, I ended getting very sick - sick at a soul level. Eventually I got to a point where I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. This prompted me to live more courageously - I let go of my job status and my belongings in order to get curious about a healthier more fulfilling way of living (read more on my path of seeking here).
This ‘awakening’ propelled me out of my comfort zone to live more creatively and become a yoga teacher. It created a sense of openness and vulnerability in my life that I might not have had otherwise. This has led me to take even more courageous steps in my life (Satori growth), such as opening Heart and Mind Yoga Studio in 2019.
Some of my key values which you may also relate to include:
Authenticity
Freedom
Personal Growth
Clarifying my life’s Purpose
Simplicity
I’ll share more on these values in the next blog!
When your core spiritual values are aligned with what you spend the majority of your time doing, it creates unity in your soul
- Leila Janah, social entrepreneur and founder of Samasource
Learn more at the upcoming Beachside Yoga Retreat 12 March Christchurch
Jo Jarden is a certified personal trainer and yoga teacher in Christchurch New Zealand and the founder of Heart and Mind Yoga studio. She has 10 years experience in health promotion in New Zealand and Australia including management and promotion of national chronic disease prevention programs. She now helps people one on one with their wellbeing through yoga teaching, personal training, workplace yoga and wellbeing workshops.
Qualifications include:
Certified Yoga Teacher Santosha Yoga Institute, Registered Australian Yoga Alliance 2017
Certificate in Advanced Personal Training, Fit College New Zealand, 2016
Bachelor of Science with Honours Public Health. University of Canterbury, New Zealand 2006
Bachelor of Arts Mass Communication and Psychology. University of Canterbury, New Zealand 2005