Learn Your Flow

Let’s imagine a scenario that your older self met your younger self. What would you notice? Are they different or are they the same?  As you get older you live through many different life experiences that can change your preconceptions of the world. Also, you will gain knowledge, meet different people, experience different cultures and have different role models that can also influence your views.

This month at Learn Your Flow we will be exploring the topic of values. Values can be considered as your internal compass. They are the beliefs, principles, and qualities that guide your actions and behaviours.

Values are formed in lots of different ways. For example, you may learn values from your family and community as you grow up. You may also learn values from the different life experiences you go through. Values can also be affected by society and the culture in which you live.

But why are values so important?

• Here at Learn Your Flow we have previously covered the topic ‘true authentic self’. Self-awareness is a key element to living authentically and understanding your personal values is part of this exploration of the self.
• Also, your values influence your identity. For example, they may influence how you dress or express yourself.
• Values as stated in the definition drive your actions, decisions and your behaviours.
• But the final reason for why values are so important is that when you live your life in line with your values you will feel more fulfilled and happier.

So how do we identify our values?

The easiest way to identify your values is to use the list bellow and place them in different categories. These categories are: important, in the middle, and not important. Once you have done this for all the words, discard your not important and the in the middle pile. Then go through your important list and choose your top 6 values. These then become what we call your core values.

Abundance	Acceptance	Accomplishment	Accountability
Accuracy	Achievement	Adaptability	Adventure
Affection	Alertness	Ambition	Assertiveness
Attentive	Authenticity	Awareness	Balance
Beauty	Boldness	Bravery	Brilliance
Calmness	Capable	Careful	Caring
Certainty	Challenge	Charity	Cleanliness
Clear	Clever	Comfort	Commitment
Communication	Community	Compassion	Competence
Confidence	Consistency	Contentment	Contribution
Control	Co operation	Courage	Creativity
Credibility	Curiosity	Decisiveness	Dedication
Dependability	Determination	Devotion	Dignity
Discipline	Diversity	Efficiency	Empathy
Endurance	Energy	Enjoyment	Enthusiasm
Equality	Ethical	Excellence	Excitement
Experience	Expertise	Exploration	Fairness
Fairness	Faith	Fame	Family
Fearless	Fitness	Focus	Foresight
Forgiveness	Freedom	Friendship	Fun
Generosity	Giving	Goodness	Grace
Gratitude	Growth	Happiness	Hard Work
Harmoney	Health	Honesty	Honor
Humility	Humour	Imagination	Independence
Individuality	Inner Harmoney	Innovation	Insightful
Inspiring	Integrity	Intelligence	Intuitive
Joy	Justice	Kindness	Knowledge
Lawful	Leadership	Learning	Logic
Love	Loyal	Mastery	Maturity
Meaning	Moderation	Motivation	Obedience
Openness	Optimism	Order	Organized
Originality	Passion	Patience	Patriotism
Peace	Playfulness	Positivity	Power
Productivity	Professionalism	Prosperity	Purpose
Quality	Recognition	Respect	Responsibility
Restraint	Result – orientated	Security	Self-development
Self-reliant	Self-respect	Selfless	Sensitivity
Service	Sharing	Silence	Simplicity
Skilfulness	Solitude	Speed	Spirituality
Stability	Status	Strength	Structure
Success	Support	Surprise	Sustainability
Teamwork	Thankful	Thorough	Thoughtful
Timeliness	Tolerance	Toughness	Traditional
Tranquillity	Transparency	Trustworthy	Understanding
Uniqueness	Unity	Vision	Vitality
Wealth	Welcoming	Winning	Wisdom

Living By Your Values

Now that you have identified your values it is time to learn how to incorporate them into your everyday life.

Step 1. Reflect on your actions – when you are making decisions or beginning to take action register whether your action is in line with your values.

Step 2. Create value-based goals – when you are setting goals think about how your goals reflect your core values (we will be covering how to set goals effectively soon)

Step 3. Review regularly – once you start to identify your values you can take a moment to reflect on whether you are living close to these values. Bear in mind your values may change over time so you may find it useful to return to this page to carry out the identification exercise again.

Living by your values is a great way to help you feel fulfilled and content. So, we can now use this information to help guide us through the next few blog posts here at Learn Your Flow as we will be covering the life coaching wheel, goal setting and other life coaching techniques. We hope you find this work useful and we hope to see you again.