Last time we talked about how knowing your values are essential to increasing your productivity.
This time, I'll show you how to use the 5 simple steps framework to figure out both your moving-towards values and your moving-away-from values. For simplicity, let's call them towards values and pain values respectively.
Firstly, let's work on your towards values.
Step 1: Identify Your Peak Moments
Before we choose our values, we need to know what's most important to us in life.
It may be hard to randomly come up with vague names like excitement, popularity, power, affection, fun, beauty etc.
So here's a list of questions that help you identify what you value most:
- When were the times when you were most happy? What were you doing? Who are you with?
- Do you remember the few rare moments when you are most alive? What was going on and why did you feel so empowered?
- When were the times when you felt most proud of yourself? What happened? Are there other people celebrating with you?
- When have you felt the most satisfied and internally fulfilled? What, why and how did that experience give you a sense of life meaning or purpose?
- What are the biggest decisions have you ever made? How did you make a decision about that?
Step 2: Identify All The Values You Feel Important To You
I recommend you googling "Values List" and you'll find hundreds of values names.
From there, select all the values that you feel that's important to you.
Step 3: Narrowing
You may have circled or highlighted or written down 50 values that seem important to you.
That's okay.
Now you need to narrow down the list to just 10-20 values. It helps if you combine values that are of very similar nature.
For example, if you value achievement, ambition, career promotion, you can name them "professional growth and success"
Once you have done it, you 'll need to again pick the top 5-10 values that you feel represent what's most important to your life right now.
Remember, values can change over time.
Don't worry about being correct or perfection. Just choose top 5-10 that is most suitable to your current life stage.
Step 4: Write Down What Each Value Means To You Specifically
There's no need to follow the general definitions. People often can't relate with a particular value because they don't think the word accurately describes how they really feel.
The word is only a guide to serve you. So go ahead give your values a particular meaning that's catered for yourself only.
For example, when I first did this exercise, I defined "healthy" as "having a strong, lean, fit body and have endless flow of energy to have peak performance" while "gratitude" as "to be calm, tranquil and thankful for whatever happens and understand that everything happens for a reason and it serves me".
Step 5: Rank Your Values
It's time to rank them in order of importance!
As it's difficult to decide which values come before others, you can use the Paired Comparison Method.
Let's say you have your top 7 values. You compare value 1 with values 2-7 respectively. And then repeat value 2 with values 3-7.
Decide how much more important the value you picked is compared to the value you didn't pick. Assign it a number from 0-5, where 0 means that they are both really important to you, and where 5 means that the value you picked is much more important to you than the value you didn't pick.
When you're finished, add up the score for each value. The higher the score the value gets, the more important it is.
When I first did it, I got these towards values: Healthy, Gratitude, Integrity Love, Passion, Resourcefulness, Sustainability, Open-mindedness, Impact.
Once you've found out your towards value, use the exact method to find out your pain values.
It's a long exercise to do, but it's very important to you if you are serious about aligning your life in a way that makes you most happy, productive, passionate, successful, and fulfilled.
So now go and start your assignment!
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