What are your values, do you know?

Guided by 2 incredible (and probably long-suffering!) women helping me with my mental health journey; I embarked on what has been a life changing (and saving!) experience this year: Determining my values.

What’s a value, you say?

Well, I had it explained to me with a question as an example, so I will do the same for you:

If you value family, but you have to work 70 hour weeks, how might you feel?
 If you don’t value competition, but work in a highly competitive sales environment, how’s that feel?

Tis fair to say I spent a looooooooooong time sifting thru’ various web sites, mulling over my own thoughts / ideas. I even read a few books on the topic! And in doing so, developed a list of values that truly resonated with me.

In no particular order*, here they are:

1. Adaptability
2. Dependability
3. Financial independence
4. Freedom
5. Happiness
6. Hospitality
7. Humour
8. Independence
9. Loyalty
10. Punctuality
11. Resourcefulness
12. Strength

*Determining their importance / ranking is an epic job

At first glance I am aware my list might seem a tad mundane, ‘sad’, even to some people. After all, I didn’t tick off so many of the things that others deem to be important. For example: Love, relationships etc

Possibly those kinda values would make my top 100 list but I was going for top 10. Yeah yeah, I know, I ended up with 12 – I can’t count lol Altho if I was to continue distilling the list, I could probably merge 3, 4 and 8.

There was no hard and fast rule that said I was only allowed 10 – I just was advised to keep the list short and in doing so, make it more valuable .. So, yeah .. while I am intrigued by some of the items that didn’t make the final cut (And remember, I spent many months creating what I feel is the most accurate list for ME) it’s a list I am happy with.

As an aside, there was a time – even relatively recently – that I’d have put career very close to the top of the list .. it didn’t rate a mention this time round though. Ditto for a variety of the other more ‘popular’ values I would imagine most have on their list.

Which makes me think that perhaps our values evolve with us as we make our way through life. But this is not something I am qualified to talk about .. this is just about my values and my situation, right here, right now!

I am reminded that I also took time to answer the following questions:

1. What makes you happy?
2. What makes you feel great about yourself?
3. Who inspires you the most? (In particular their qualities.)
4. What causes you to strongly believe in or connect to something?
5. What do the people who really know you ask for help with?
6. If you were to teach something, what would you teach?

From my research, there is a PLETHORA of values info online .. and it can be a bit bewildering, so hopefully you have some sort of support crew like I did .. in determining mine. Cos they really are so important, this is something I am 100% certain of when almost nothing in my life is certain, going to plan or even being remotely how I’d like it to be!

Which seques neatly to the fact I am not really sure how to finish this post but finish I must.. And when I say finish, I mean my blog is going into the archives once I post this. But before I go, I have to say – to anyone who regularly read my blog over the years?

And a big thank you for reading!

Ooh, how fantastic is this timing? One of my fave songs came on as I was getting ready to post this! Here it is – Enjoy x