The Invaluable Value of Living Our Top Authentic Values

Are you feeling conflicted about making certain decisions, finding yourself being pulled in different directions?

Or do you feel lost, unhappy or frustrated with the way your life or your work or your relationships are working out?

Or do you find you are unable to make decisions easily with confidence?

And as a coach, are you hearing your client’s conflicts in relation to their desires and goals? Are you noticing your clients are connected to a dream and focus, yet they keep defaulting to old ways of being, sabotaging their goals? Are they clients struggling to make decisions with ease? We may even potentially live an unhappy, angry, stressful or even depressed life.

Why are values so important? They are important because we make decisions based on our values which are our states of being and living we ‘step into’ from moment to moment. And these decisions ultimately create our emotions.

The thing is, not many people are aware of their top values. Or if they are, they may not have done the work to recognize they may potentially be living according to someone else’s values and not their own authentic values.

We are often influenced by and adopt values that come from other sources like our parents, our culture, our teachers and our experiences, which may or may not have been entirely positive. Some of those values we may find they resonate and inspire us, and some may not.

For example, our parents may have had the best intention of instilling safety and security or perfectionism within us with their advice or their own influential behaviours. But we may find those values actually hold us back from experiencing other values which are even more important to us, such as freedom and adventure. And this is when we recognise one part of us wants one thing, while another part of us wants the opposite.

And some values may be overriding our authentic values when fear behind our unauthentic values are high. For example, trust maybe a high value because of experiencing lack of trust as a child. Living life in fear of lack of trust – consciously or unconsciously – will potentially lead to worry, anxiousness, and ultimately, lack of trust.

We don’t have to continue to live our lives according to other people’s values. We can choose a different way, if we want to. When we create conscious awareness of our top personal values and align them with what we truly desire to experience, then we can also make conscious decisions and actions to ensure our goals, behaviours and emotions come to life.

For example, if we know our health is a top value because it energises and inspires us, we would set regular goals to ensure we practiced good health as much as possible. We would also know if we didn’t make healthy choices, that it’s a conscious choice, and there will be costs for making that choice such as not being energized, alive and vibrant.

One of the ways we can be more aware of our values is to recognize the times when we feel truly alive and inspired. By giving ourselves a moment to reflect and go back in time and into our bodies in those wonderful moments of our lives and ask ourselves, ‘what values did we honour in those moments that truly brought us to life?’

At Empower World we believe as coaches, when we notice our clients are unhappy, disillusioned and confused about their choices, supporting them to create conscious awareness of their top values to align their decisions and goals, 100 percent moving towards their desires versus their fears, will provide our clients with the compass to live an inspired and empowering life.

Listen to Empower World’s Coaching and Leadership Podcast Episode-90 where Jeanine Bailey explains the value of values work in coaching and our day to day lives. 

Episode 90 can be found iTunes or ‪on Stitcher.

Be Empowered.