This was me 4 years ago:
I was going to the gym 6 times a week.
I was tracking everything that I consumed.
I was exercising two times a day.
This is me now:
I've stopped going to the gym.
I loosely track what I eat.
I exercise once a day.
I grew a beard lol
Some people might look at that and think that I am still in okay shape.
But to me, it is nowhere near the standard that I hold for myself.
I've dropped the ball.
But why is that?
How have I gone from someone who trained 6 times a week, fifty-two weeks a year to not even training at all?
I wanted to explore the depths of this answer. Here is the conclusion I found;
My values have changed. Let me explain.
Power of Values
Each individual lives moment by moment to a set of priorities or values of what is least to most important in their life.
This set of values determines what they perceive, how they decide, and how they act.
Values that are higher on the list are intrinsic and make us spontaneously inspired to want to act.
What is lower in your values is more extrinsic and requires outside motivation to act.
That means that your actions will be most consistent with what you value most.
So that leads us to the next question. How do we know what we value most?
Discover your Voids
Whatever is missing in your life becomes the most important.
In that season of my life 4 years ago, I wasn't happy with my appearance. I felt scrawny and I wanted to make a change.
It was a deep hole in my life that I was obsessed to fill.
My day was structured around going to the gym, eating healthy, and exercising.
Fast forward to today and this season of my life paints a different picture.
My values have shifted, going to the gym 6 times a week is not as important to me as it was 4 years ago.
It is not that I don't value my health anymore, I still enjoy exercising and keeping physically fit. It's that it is not my utmost priority right now in life.
In this current season of my life, I have new voids that I am looking to fill.
• I didn't want to be working a traditional 9-5.
• I wanted the ability to get paid working a job I love doing.
• I wanted to have time and freedom and be able to take ownership of my days.
That is what has become most important to me now. My actions are now aligned with wanting to fulfill those voids.
What these actions currently look like in my life are:
• Learning about human behavior, business, and psychology.
• Writing 2 hours a day to share my learnings.
• Working on my business and generating cash flow.
So at this moment in my life, I am living true to my highest values.
You see when you are living in alignment with what you value most, life is filled with meaning and purpose.
Your thoughts, actions, and behaviours are all aligned with what you desire most.
Understanding Your Values
This is what I want to propose to you. Are you living true to your highest values? Do you even know what they are?
If this is even the first time you have come across this concept that is okay. I will attempt to help direct you in the right direction or at least shine some light on why you behave the way you do.
That's why understanding what your priorities are is important to know.
Many times people have unrealistic expectations or fantasies of what is important to them.
People might say they want to be financially independent but the actions they take in their life do not demonstrate that.
It is because they don't know what their values are.
Most people inject other people's values into their life and don't honor what is important to them.
They try to conform and fit in instead of standing out.
Understanding your values is crucial if you want to maximize your awareness and potential in life.
Whatever is highest in your value that is what you are going to excel at. That is where you are the most inspired, fulfilled, and dedicated.
When living in alignment with your highest values:
• You have the highest probability of achieving what you desire.
• Your self-worth goes up
• You become more capable of enduring whatever challenges you face.
When the WHY is big enough the HOW will take care of itself.
13 Questions To Discover Your Highest Values
Here are 13 Questions that you can ask yourself today that will help you discover your highest values.
Some instructions you will need to follow when answering these questions: 1) Write down your top 3 answers for each question.
2) Don't pick answers that do not show evidence in your life.
Question 1: How do you fill your personal space?
If you walked into your home or company office space and looked carefully at your cubicle where you work, what would you see? What does your personal or professional life demonstrate as most important?
Question 2: How do you spend your time?
So look carefully at how you spend your time. Look at how you structure your 24-hour day. What do you most often do in those 16-18 hours of awake time?
Question 3: How do you spend your energy?
Have a look at where you feel most vital and enthused in your day-to-day activities. Things that are low on your values will tend to drain you and things that are high on your values list will tend to energize you.
Question 4: How do you spend your money?
If something means a lot to you, you will certainly figure out a way to pay for it. You create or find the money for things that are truly valuable or highly important to you. You run out of money and don't want to spend money on things that are not important to you.
Question 5: Where are you most organised and reliable?
You have at least a few areas of order and areas of disorder in your life. The things that are important to you, you will spend time organizing. You will tend to bring order and organization to things that are important to you and you will tend to have chaos and disorder in things that are low on your values so look at where you have the greatest degree of order and organization in your life.
Question 6: Where are you most reliable, disciplined, and focused?
If something is important to you, you will be dedicated to doing it. You don't and won't have to be reminded or motivated from the outside to do it. You will be inspired from within to do what is truly most important. So you look at what are the 3 things that you are most reliable, disciplined, and focused on doing, where nobody has to get you up or remind you to do them.
Question 7: What do you think about most and what is always on your mind?
I am not referring to momentary or transient distractions or depreciating self-thoughts. I am referring to what you think about or focus on most that are gradually coming true in your life and manifesting.
Identify what you are repeatedly and commonly thinking about concerning how you would love your life to be, what you would love to do, or what you would love to have.
Question 8: What do you visualize most about your future?
This vision must be showing signs of gradually coming true in your life. Do not include things fantasized about that are not coming true, not delusions or unrealistic expectations, only visions that are becoming reality.
Question 9: What do you internally dialogue with yourself about most?
You speak to yourself and dialogue internally about what is most important to you. What do you keep talking to yourself about most that you desire to come true and that is coming true?
Question 10: What do you consistently talk about in social settings?
What do you externally dialogue about most? Like every other person you want to communicate what is most important to you. If someone discusses something with you that you don't want to hear you will try to change the conversation to what is important to you.
You become an extrovert talking about what is most important to you and when somebody else talks about it, you come alive. When somebody talks about something that is not important to you, you go quiet, become introverted and you want to change the conversation to what is more important to you.
Question 11: What inspires you?
Have a look at your life and ask yourself what inspires you most and what is common to the people that inspire you the most.
Is it great moments of your own or another individual's mastery?
Is it when you or someone conquers an amazing challenge or fear?
Is it when you achieved a meaningful goal?
Question 12: What are the most consistent long-term goals that you have set?
What are the three most persistent goals that you have focused on and that you are definitely and gradually bringing into reality?
Do not write down fantasies that you are not acting upon and nothing is happening with.
Write only the ones that you are slowly but surely bringing into your reality and that they have been dominating your mind and thoughts for a long time and you keep taking step-by-step actions towards bringing them into reality.
Question 13: What do you love learning, reading, or studying about most?
What topics do you find yourself thinking about or asking questions about most? The three answers to these questions will help reveal your highest values.
Once you've had 3 answers for each of the 13 questions, you'll see that among your 39 answers, there is a certain amount of repetition, perhaps even a lot of repetition.
You may be expressing the same kind of value in different ways, for example, "spending time with people I like", "having a drink with my mates from work", or "going out to eat with my friends", but if you look closely, you can see patterns begin to emerge.
Next, choose a colour and mark all similar answers with the same colour. Do that until all your answers are grouped into colour categories (Eg. Health, Finances, Business, Social, Family etc).
Now you can begin to tally the categories to determine your hierarchy of values.
This list will give you an accurate representation of what is currently most important to least important in your life right now.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Think of your values as a blueprint for your life. When you live in accordance with your highest value it gives you a sense of purpose and direction.
We all suffer from the internal debate on every decision that we make. Knowing your core values removes this by making
"Who we are" & "What we want" crystal clear.
Your beliefs become your thoughts
Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your values
Your values become your destiny.
~ Stefan Barbas
P.S. If you want to begin the journey toward knowing and embodying your true self so that you can live a life that is aligned with your highest values.
Check out the Life By Design Program; https://www.stefanbarbas.com/course
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