Values: What are they and why are they important?
Imagine this scenario – you’re in the middle of a piece of work, happily typing away and deep in concentration. A colleague comes over and asks if you have a minute. Before you have time to answer they continue talking, destroying your train of thought and getting you a little hot under the collar. You value patience, empathy and control. Your colleague has a different set of values.
Understanding your values is a fundamental part of self awareness and is crucial to creating a happy and successful life. But what exactly are values and how do they affect our lives?
WHAT ARE VALUES?
Quite simply values are what drive us, what creates our subconscious responses and what shape our perspectives, choices and actions. They form the core of our identity. It’s kind of crazy to think that something so important and that has such a huge affect on our lives isn’t recognised and talked about more. Often the first time we hear about ‘values’ is when we join a company and get told the company values. But each and every one of us, even if we aren’t aware of what they are, has a set of values. Have you ever had a decision to make and one choice seemed to align better with a gut feeling? That’s probably a value getting involved. Ever felt really frustrated by something – that is a sign that one of your core values has been in conflict with a situation.
Values can be thought of as a your view on the ideal way to behave and act. They are a central part of you, and who you want to be. They are the best tool for helping you make decisions and determine your priorities. Which is why identifying them is so important!
WHY ARE VALUES IMPORTANT?
Whether you’ve already identified them or not, values exist, so why not make a conscious effort to recognise them and start to make more informed choices.
If you only take one thing away from this article I hope it’s this…….recognising your values will enable you to make more informed choices and lead a happier life! For example if ‘family’ is one of your core values* and you choose to take a job which requires regular 70 hr weeks you’ll likely feel stressed, concerned and unfulfilled, even if you love the job.
It’s really important to remember that there are no one set of values which are better or worse than anyone else’s, it isn’t a competition to have the ‘right’ values, so when you are trying to identify yours, be honest!! Also be honest with yourself as to which you are ignoring or are afraid of. One of my core values, nature, was ignored by me for years as it seemed silly and frivolous, and not in line with some of my other values. However, over time I’ve realised that I can’t be me, be happy or successful if I don’t include nature in my life and decisions. That doesn’t mean it drives every single thing I do but it definitely needs to be something I can engage with and advocate for on a regular basis to enable me to succeed elsewhere.
Anyway, back to why values are important! Let’s switch to a list for this:
1. Grounding and Sense of Self
Values provide the skeleton on which to build our lives. They are the founding structure on which we make decisions and act, and they provide stability when other things are uncertain. They quite literally define who we are. That may sound big and scary but it’s actually really exciting, values give us a home no matter where we are or what we’re doing. The actual scary part is when we find ourselves in conflict with our values, but that’s a whole other blog topic!
Defining our values gives us knowledge about ourselves, can create a greater sense of purpose and ultimately allows us to understand our needs and emotions more. That pretty blooming powerful.
2. Decision making
This is arguably the most useful and important reason for identifying your values. At the simplest level, your values help you discern right from wrong, and prioritise your actions based on what really matters to you.
Knowing your values and how they affect your mood, sense of fulfilment and overall happiness will enable you to make more informed decisions. This in turn will lead to fewer regrets, faster routes to success and more fun in the process. It can also give you a greater confidence in your decisions and in what you are doing.
3. Communication and Relationships
Understanding your own values can be hugely beneficial in creating and keeping connection, however being able to ask others about theirs or recognising someone else’s values gives an even greater ability for connection. It’s impossible to go through life without having your values challenged at some point but being able to understand why that might be happening and how the other person might feel or why they are acting in a certain way can help to minimise the stress this causes.
Don’t forget it’s not about who has the ‘better’ or ‘more important’ values, it’s about using our values to understand each other and why we might behave differently. From this place of knowledge we can then find ways of working or communicating better. Putting boundaries and agreements in place within a team or relationship might seem like a cold thing to do but it can be a total game changer in making everyone feel part of the team and provide a more successful working environment or relationship.
Let’s take the example from before – you were frustrated by your colleague interrupting your work. Your values of patience, control and empathy were challenged in this scenario, and your colleague wasn’t aware as they have a different set of values. When you responded you also went against your values as you felt cornered, so your answer was rushed, not fully thought through and then you spent some time after feeling guilty, further exacerbating the loss of thought on your work and your productivity dropped. If this happened often enough the colleagues would risk having a strained relationship and in the worst-case scenario one member would quit. How could this situation have been improved if the colleagues knew about each other’s values and what could be put in place to improve the colleagues relationship and communication?
FIGURING OUT YOUR VALUES
Discovering your values isn’t a one time only thing. It’s something we need to check in with on a regular basis (at least once a year), our core values are likely to be similar throughout life but they might change in order of importance and occasionally one or two might swap out. It’s completely normal and it doesn’t mean you were wrong before.
If you want to find out your values we can do that together – it’s sometimes easier with someone asking you questions to help focus the mind, or you can use the work sheet in the link below.
* (these are the top values you identify – we’ve all got a huge list of things which are important to us but we can all narrow that down to a set of four or five values which encompass everything else)