Values: How They Can Work For You

Spiritually we develop much the way a tree grows — the deeper we guide our roots downwards towards our inner light, the higher we raise our conscious awareness

Our values are the integral of code of behaviour which comes from the inner Self to help guide our lives on earth. They are the road signs steering the roots allowing us to grow higher towards the light.

Most of us intuitively perceive a set of shared values that are common to all of us which tend to have the qualities of being “higher” — qualities of honour, justice, protection, care and respect of family, community, humanity, humility and unconditional love. At a deeper level, we share these values no matter what corner of the world we come from or what our background is.

Why are values important?

Understanding what your values are helps you to manage every aspect of your life

• Relationships — resolving differences, gaining greater acceptance
• Work environment — what work you do, whether to accept a compromise, how you perceive competitiveness in the workplace, ironing out discrepancies
• Insight into your life path and purpose
• Corporate environment — setting strategies, motivating staff and building loyalty with clients
• Leadership — motivating colleagues, building loyalty in team and customers
• Community — shared values provide a nucleus around which people gather
• National integrity — imagine if more national leaders upheld the values their voters elected them for
• Our care for the planet

As an example take a person who has Generosity for one of their key values and it gives this person pleasure to bestow happiness on others. Their partner however believes honour starts with responsibility, so Responsibility will be an important value for them. Initially this difference could be a strong source of attraction between them, but as the initial flush of romance simmers down, you can see how these two could end up butting heads fairly often — the generous person will think their partner is mean spirited, and the responsible partner would think the other is disrespectful of their hard work. Working with values would allow them to better understand each other: generosity for one is their expression of love and warmth. Similarly the responsible partner wants to protect the couple and family for the future, and it’s their expression of love. Working with values not only allows for acceptance of each other, but it could bring the couple to a deeper connection.

We can apply the same principle for a work situation looking at:

• the individual’s values as compared with an immediate boss or colleague
• the team’s collective operational values
• the corporate standard and vision
• the corporate mission looked on from the perspective of upholding values appreciated by customers

Identifying Your Values

Working to consciously know what your most important values are and using them to guide major life decisions not only allows you to step back to see the bigger picture to make more conscious choices, but they also offer a life line if you’re feeling lost in the middle of a storm.

• From the list below, choose around 25 of the values that speak to you
• Now group them all so similar values will be under one heading, for instance, you can group authenticity, honesty, integrity and honour together under the heading “Honour”
• Keep doing this until you have four or five value headings that you’re not able to group together
• Think back to periods in your life where you may have had tricky situations and see if you’re able to prioritise the four values you have. If you’re not able to, that’s ok
• These will be the most important values for you — possibly during the whole of your life, but certainly for this period of your journey

Exercises

Below are a couple of exercises for you to work with. The first is to be done on your own for when you’re in need of getting clarity around a problem or choice. The second is for a group of 2–9 participants and is great for brainstorming, team building, encouraging discussion and highlighting solutions to a problem

Individual Values Exercise

If you have a personal or work problem, or trying to make a decision on an important issue, try the exercise below to get some clarity and to amplify your gut sense of what’s best in line with your values and for your life path:

• Take a few minutes to centre yourself and take a couple of deep breaths
• Picture yourself walking along a path, it’s beautiful country side around you, and there’s no one around

• You feel perfectly relaxed and protected
• You’re contemplating a problem which has been bothering you for some time and you’re thinking of several possible options
• Allow a cool breeze to wash over you, through you, slowing your thoughts and calming your mind
• Focus your mind on two possible solutions
• You come to a fork in the road
• First of all you’re going to take the left fork in the road and stroll down. Take stock of what you see, how it feels to you. What values do you associate with this path? How do those feel for you? How does the road ahead look to you?
• Take a last look here and turn around and come back to the fork in the road.
• When you’re back at the fork in the road, take the right fork considering the other option. What does the scenery this side look like? Is it light or dark? Do you feel comfortable here? Are you in line with your values? What do you think of the road and how does it look to you further along
• Take a last look and walk back to the fork in the road
• Take another look and see if you can see a third possible solution
• Go down that path and explore that one
• Where do you feel most comfortable with respect to your values?
• Bring your attention back to the room

Group Values Exercise

For 2–9 participants; to be used to help brainstorming, team building, encouraging communication and discussion, and highlighting solutions to a problem.

This exercise is designed to get the team talking about their ideas encouraging contributions to infuse inspiration and fresh perspectives to a project. It highlights the objectives and values relating to the project to make them central.

• Each participant selects 10 values which they believe most relate to the project being discussed. The list below is to help remind you of these values; you can of course also add you own if you don’t see it on the list
• Once everyone has done that, choose the next 5 most important values
• Find the values that everyone in the group had in common from the first 10 most important values
• If not everyone in the group has at least 2 values in common, expand out to the 15 most important values
• Make a list of the values everyone agrees on, represented by the white area in the diagram
• Discuss how the group can use these values to further the project
• Once that’s done, each person will in turn put forward one value which they feel is the most important value relating to the assignment at hand. This value just needs to be one of their original 10 and doesn’t need to be one of the values in the overlap area
• Discuss with the group why and how they believe it to be relevant and what they think it will bring to the project
• Make special note of any new depth and perspectives this exercise sheds on the assignment

List of Values — use these values to help inspire you and feel free to add to it your own