What next?
When you are happy with your eight values, you need to rank them in importance for you, at the moment. (Your values will rarely change as you move through your life, however they may take on a different importance.)
The easiest way to do this will be to number them in the order they emerged between one and eight. Then ask which is the most important: one or two, one or three, one-four etc. When you have the marks for number one continue with two or three, two or four and so on until you have marks for each one.
Another way is to visualise yourself at a train station, on the platform, you’re carrying two suitcases, one labelled with value one and one labelled with value two. As you run for the train which one do you drop to ensure you catch the train? This will be the one which is the most important between the two. Continue along those lines until you have, in order, the values which are most important.
Who’s in the movie of your life?
Now find out how they all get on. If each of these values were in a movie what characters would they play? How would they communicate? Would they be friends or enemies? Would they live in complete harmony or have the occasional bust up?
Becoming self-aware should be enjoyable and empowering. I hope this values elicitation offers you insight, clarity and hopefully some aha moments.
Living a life with the knowledge of who you are, what you will always do and what you will never do is very empowering and will set you on your way to achieve more harmonious relationships with others as well as the most important one, the most important person in the movie of your life, you.
A quote which sums all of this up is from the Buddhist teacher, Bhikku Bodhi:
“For the human race to live together peacefully on this shrinking planet the inescapable challenge facing us is to understand and master ourselves,” Alternatively Alan Bennett can always be relied upon to give some perspective, “Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.”
Emma Ranson Bellamy is an accredited CMI Work life Balance Coach specialising in facilitating organisational and personal balance. To find a programme to fit your needs contact Emma on T: 0845 257 1937 or at www.emmaransonbellamy.co.uk
Other articles in this series:
- Finding courage
- All work and no play?
- The graduate
- HR gets loaded and happy
- Living in the ‘now’
- A new chapter
- The five minute mentor
- The Queen of the Jungle
- You’ve got to be ‘in it to win it’
- Raising the bar on self esteem
- Can bosses ignore ‘portfolio personalities?
- An intuitive answer to an age old debate
- The glorification of age?
- Pandora’s box
- Trouble with ‘de math’
- Reconciling tensions
- A workout for the soul
- New perspectives
- Learning to listen
- Starting out
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