12 Days of Christmas
Day 7: Gift of Knowing Your Values
Be proactive and know your values. Knowing your values helps you understand what you enjoy and what you want more of in life. Being aware of your values can help you understand what kind of person you want to be and how you will handle conflicts when they occur. Values provide the framework we use for decision-making and help us to be more aware of whom we are.
Most people don’t know their values until an event, circumstance, or person comes into direct conflict with a value and that doesn’t usually work out too well. Knowing your values provides improved communication, connection, and cooperation when we contend with others.
I encourage you to spend some time reading over the following list of values and choose all of the values in the list that resonates with you. It may help to think of the things that feel important to you and influence the decisions you need to make. Make your values a unique and genuine expression of YOU!
Choose at least three to five values and write them down. We are all unique. There may be other values, which resonate with you but are not included in the list below. Please add any additional values to the list.
Accomplishment, Accuracy, Adventure, Affiliation, Authenticity, Autonomy, Balance, Beauty, Bring Your Best, Calm, Challenge, Collaboration, Compassion, Confidence, Courage, Creativity, Curiosity, Decisiveness, Discipline, Discovery, Enthusiasm, Excellence, Excitement, Exploration, Faith, Family, Focus, Forgiveness, Freedom, Friendship, Fun, Grace, Growth, Harmony, Health, Helping Others, Humor, Independence, Influence, Integrity, Justice, Kindness, Knowledge, Laughter, Legacy, Love, Loyalty, Making a Difference, Mastery, Optimism, Originality, Patience, Peace, Presence, Recognition, Resourcefulness, Results, Service, Spirituality, Strength, Tolerance, Trust, Wisdom
Do your best to live each day in alignment with your values. Your values are your anchor when the storms are blowing through and they will guide you through your most challenging times.
After you choose your values, consider these questions:
How well does your personal and/or professional image align with your values?
What actions will you take for your personal and/or professional image to be better aligned with your values?
How does this values exercise change your priorities personally and professionally?
What are your areas for change?
What ways will you commit to your values today?
It’s important to remember that our values will change in nature and importance as we learn, grow, and transform personally and professionally. Values are not right or wrong, or good or bad, unless their purpose is illegal or unethical. When we live aligned with our values, we are living what is true for us. This is not a time of competition where my values are better than your values, but a time of what is right for you.
Everything that comes our way in our personal and professional lives can be transformed through our own self-awareness of what is important to us.
Practice the gift of knowing your values and forgive the times you err. We all do from time to time.
May the gifts of joy, peace, and happiness be yours this holiday season.