How your values and beliefs impact your everyday life. Understanding what drives us is a vital part of getting us to where we want to go
Values and Beliefs
Understanding your values and beliefs will assist you in achieving your outcomes.
Everything we do is guided by our values and beliefs
Values
Values have been shaped over time through various experiences in life. So for example if when you're a child a teacher tells you “you're so amazing I think you have a great future in sports” and you get a really good feeling from that interaction. We're all in search of really great feelings by the way. All of a sudden you may begin to value athletics. Why? Because it gave you that wonderful feeling and you would want to experience it again. Let's say you win an award for being really smart at math you may begin to value education. If you had a friend give you a helping hand when nobody in your family would you might value friendship. Values are typically these one worded descriptions such as love, friendship, power, integrity, freedom etc. Our values are the things that bring us an intense positive impact and we tend to move towards them. Sometimes a certain value may interfere with what you want to achieve. For example you may value independence and now you want to be part of a team. Your strong need for independence will make it difficult to work as part of a team unless you adopt a new value that resolves the conflict. Take a moment to discover what your values are and what you are moving towards.
Beliefs
Beliefs are usually small sentences or phrases we often repeat to ourselves.
The second part is your beliefs. Beliefs usually come in the form of a sentence or a small phrase. An example would be “I’m great at problem solving” or “I’m too old to do that.” These are also shaped by the experiences we have in life. Let's say you went to do a presentation at school or at work and it did not go very well. You may take on a belief that “I am not a good public speaker.” Over time this will probably cause you to avoid any opportunities that involve public speaking. Conversely if you had a belief like “everything always works out in the end” You may feel more empowered to take on new challenges. Take a moment to discover what some of your beliefs are?
Get Inspired
Values and Beliefs shape our actions as they can both move us towards our goals or move us away from our goals. The question that remains is, does what I value and believe serve me at this moment? The Purpose is to create some really great values and beliefs that empower you and remove the ones that don't empower you. As you visualize what you would like your life to be like, have a look to see if what you value and believe is in alignment with that vision.