It’s my hope there is at least one takeaway throughout my offerings that will help you become the best version of yourself to make the world a better place through discovering your value to it!

A few years ago I was encouraged by a mentor to develop a professional development class focusing on one of my passions….helping others connect passion with profession.  This led to many discoveries about what was important to know about ourselves such as our personality traits, learning modality, time vs. energy management & not the least of which…our values.

If You Don’t Stand for Something…

You’ll Fall for Anything

Not sure who is credited with this saying but if you’ve done any self-reflection you know it to be true.  For our purposes here lets separate ethics from values.  The “Mirror” test;  if you can look yourself in the mirror & are totally confident the decisions you made during the day, week, month or in life were made with personal integrity then you passed the ethics test.  Congrats!  However, our values are something much different!

What do you value?  How do you figure them out?  Why is it important to identify them?  To live your most authentic life it’s essential to go on this journey.  Living someone else’s values won’t last & our well-being can be negatively affected.  They’ll fade away as soon as we’re challenged.  Start by writing down something you have a passion for.  What’s the itch that you’re always scratching?  What thing do you do for 5 hours & it seems like 5 minutes?  Next, write down the concepts that connect with why your passion area is a “must do” for you.  It may take a list of 10 or more, don’t judge them initially just put them down.  Discover the big concept connections & boil the list down to 3 or 4 overarching values.  If they are the values you’d die for then you’ve got your list!

Sample Exercise!

The following exercise is taken from a Character & Leadership class taught at The United States Air Force Academy & one I’ve facilitated many times with great results for the individuals who dig in with an open mind!

Imagine, if you will, you live in a society that limits individual rights & due to those limitations you can only choose 3 things you value most in life.  Write them down.  They can be anything such as family, faith, knowledge, etc.  Trust me you need to have three, the first two will be relatively easy but the third takes real engagement!

Next, societies rules have changed & you have to lose one of your value items.  This will be a difficult decision, think hard & tear it away from your list.

Next, the society tightens once more & you are forced to lose another value item.  Think hard & tear it away from the list.  Now you’re left with the most important aspect of life you value most.

Understanding our own values & having the ability to express “why” they are important to us can assist in our empathetic approach to those around us at home, work & communities.  Empathy is the glue that holds societies together!  Our individual “value” baseline helps them move forward in a positive direction.  Whether you can speak to them or not, our behaviors are an example of them every day!

As you can imagine, in a group setting the value concepts people choose to give up are very interesting to read aloud to the class, anonymously of course.  One of the best moments in class has been the reveal of one person’s final value…..AIR!  This totally broke the seriousness of the moment but cemented the intrinsic “value” of the exercise.

As you hopefully have now experienced, this has the potential of being the most poignant self-reflection gift we can give ourselves.  Hope this helps in some small way!

All the best!

Karl

*Thanks to Bob Vasquez for exposing me to this concept & allowing me to facilitate his class at the Academy alongside him.  Most of all I thank him for his friendship & mentorship.  Thanks Chief, you’re the best!
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