Investigate Your Values to Guide Your Actions and Have More Energy

My friend Alison Proffit likes to say, “your values are your GPS system.” This means that your values can guide you in making decisions and help you see when you’re off track.

I’ve also noticed that acting in alignment with your values can affect your energy.

When you act in alignment with your values, you feel good in your body. Your body might feel more alive or have a bubbly, vibrational feeling. Even if you’re doing something new, uncomfortable, or hard; there’s still a feeling of “I did the right thing,” and maybe even hope of everything turning out all right in the end.

When you go against your values, it can feel crunchy. It might feel like your heart is heavy or your insides might feel squirmy. If you continue having a gap between your values and your actions, you could feel depression or less meaning in life, which could lead to less energy.

Being aware of what your values are allows you to act with intention and have more of those positive sensations mentioned above. Knowing “this is right for me right now and that is not” is how you go from feeling drained to feeling connected and living on purpose.

You can use this practice below to help identify your values.

Identify Your Values

1. Name all your values. Write out all the values you care about on a separate sticky note. You can use Brene Brown’s list of values to help you identify some things you care about. Alternatively, you can use a values card deck and separate them into 2 piles: the ones that light you up and the ones that fall flat.

2. Create umbrella categories. You might notice that 1 value relates to other values you care about and encompasses all the values underneath it. For example leadership might encompass things like responsibility, trustworthy, dedication. mentorship, and courage.

3. Get your list down to 3-5 values. Continue creating umbrella categories until you’ve narrowed your values list down to 3-5.

4. Keep your values top of mind and check in with them through out the year. Post your values in your space so they can be your guiding light through out the year. You could also add a values review to your weekly, monthly, or quarterly planning.

Questions to reflect on:

• How/why are my values the same/different from the year before?

• Is how I spend my time in alignment with these values? Why or why not?

• What changes can I make to help me live my values more?