Do you live in alignment with your values?

One of the first things I do with new clients is to have them complete a values assessment. The purpose of doing this is to get a clear understanding of what is important to them right now. Values naturally shift over time depending on what stage of life we are in, and so I like to get both my client and myself clear about what’s important to them as we start our coaching journey together. I recommend that once they have identified their top 5-10 or so values, to write those down in a place where they can see them every day. This can be on their phone screen saver, on a whiteboard in their office, on a sticky note, or in their journal - anywhere that they can see them daily.

Why? Because I want them to have the opportunity to build this routine (of looking at their values every day), so each day, as things come up that need to be acted upon, such as how they spend their time/money/energy, decisions that need to be made, etc.—they can pause and ask themselves:

“Does this ___________ align with my current values?”?

This might sound simple and you may be thinking, “oh, that doesn’t seem like a hard thing and of course, I already do that.” I thought so too, until I actually started doing it. As I’ve been coaching people, I have periodically had my values written down in different places but I realized a few months back, I have not looked at them daily or even updated them recently. So, I bought a small whiteboard and wrote—My Current Values—and made a new list based on what I am valuing today. This whiteboard is currently sitting on my coffee table in the living room, where I spend most of my morning and evening time. My current values include: connection, respect, commitment, physical activity, love, energy, and joy. At the bottom, I wrote: “Does this _______ align with my current values?”. This is a prompt I have started using daily when I think about everyday decisions that I have to make. It has been most helpful when it comes to deciding how I spend my time and who I choose to spend it with.

For my life, this has become the most noticeable shift I made to pay more attention to my energy, and really notice if there are certain people or things (that I do or don’t do) that impact my energy and life as a whole.

Over this last holiday weekend, I continued this exercise of asking the question of whether I am living in alignment with my values. What I discovered is that it’s a practice and not a one-time fix. I gave myself permission to pause and think about whether being around a certain person or participating in a certain activity was aligned with my values today. And then asked myself:

"Would this increase my energy, bring me joy or love, is it what I genuinely wanted to do?"

And I found myself a number of times thinking, "well I should answer that phone call because my friend is calling, or I should make plans with someone to do something." But by taking the time to practice pausing and thinking through my values over the weekend, I realized that I actually wanted to do something else for myself. I wanted to spend time alone, go to yoga, and take long walks in the park—so, I did all of these things!

As I reflected after the weekend, I wrote in my journal that I felt like I had the most amazing Labor Day weekend, and listed the reasons why I felt that way. I just felt so fulfilled, full of love, joy, and energy.

And the primary takeaway was that I did exactly what I wanted to do and continued to shift more into aligning myself with my current values.

This wonderful experience prompted me to write this post this morning, and I invite you to think about whether this practice would serve you in some ways as well.?

Wishing you all the best, and a beautiful day!

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