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  VALUES

  Though values are personal beliefs about what is important to us as individuals, values are usually consistent with principles, and they allow us to put our own stamp on the meaning of the principles. For example, responsibility is a key principle, but our values help us choose how we individually express the principle of responsibility. We may value competence, challenge, or creativity. In each case, we can align our life choices both with those values and with the principle of responsibility. Will I be responsible by using my competence, by taking on challenges, or by finding creative solutions to areas such as work or family needs?

  As we grew up, we learned a set of values, those qualities or standards that parents or caregivers considered important to our well-being and that of others. Families vary in the weight they place on certain values. Families often emphasize a variety of values, such as helping others, creativity, knowledge, financial security, or wealth accumulation. Early in our lives, we typically adopt our families' values, and as we mature, we often add our own. By selecting, interweaving, and prioritizing our values, we define who we are—or at least who we want to be. Just as we recognize people by their physical characteristics such as hair color, height, or the way they laugh, we also come to know people by the values they embody. As we get to know friends or people with whom we work, we begin to recognize what means the most to them. Do they crave excitement, care about the environment, or seek status? We evaluate others based on how well our values mesh with theirs. You might value personal time for creative work more than social activities while I might value relationships and family time more than professional recognition. We feel comfortable around people who share our most important values and often avoid those who don't. If you value financial security, for example, you may not enjoy associating with people whom you feel spend excessively.

  Discovering Your Values

  What is the set of values that anchors you? How would you want others to think of you? It's no coincidence that values are important to people who experience high levels of overall well-being. They know what their values are, and they consistently make decisions that are aligned with those values. To act in alignment with our values, we must first deeply understand what they are.

  Try this: In the next 30 seconds, say out loud your five most important values. If you're like many people, you may find yourself stuttering or struggling to think. “Uh … family … financial security. Umm …” Our values are typically not top of mind. That's why most values clarification exercises provide a “cheat sheet” list of common values. Steve Pavlina,3 a noted personal-development blogger, offers a list of 374 values on his website. Think2perform, the company founded by co-author Doug, created a pack of “values cards,” akin to trading cards, each of which names and explains a value. They come with an exercise to help you identify your most important values.

  You can order a set of Values cards on the think2perfrom website at https://www.think2perform.com/tool-shop/tools/original-values-card-deck.

  You can also access a free values exercise using think2perform's virtual values cards, which you'll find at https://think2perform.com/our-approach/values.

  Another way to begin exploring your values is to use the following exercise, “What Are Your Top Values?”

  EXERCISE: WHAT ARE YOUR TOP VALUES?

  Review this checklist of values. Begin by checking off the 15 that are most important to you. Then reflect and narrow that list to 10, and after more reflection, select your top five values. If you have an important value not on the list, use the blank spaces below to record other values. Don't rush through this exercise. Take some time to reflect on what really matters most to you.

  □ Adventure □ Autonomy □ Challenges □ Change

  □ Community □ Competence □ Competition □ Cooperation

  □ Creativity □ Decisiveness □ Diversity □ Ecology/Environment

  □ Education □ Ethics □ Excellence □ Excitement

  □ Fairness □ Fame □ Family □ Flexibility

  □ Freedom □ Friendship □ Happiness □ Health

  □ Helping Others □ Honesty □ Independence □ Integrity

  □ Leadership □ Loyalty □ Meaningful Work □ Money

  □ Order □ Philanthropy □ Play □ Pleasure

  □ Power □ Privacy □ Recognition □ Relationships

  □ Religion □ Safety □ Security □ Service

  □ Spirituality □ Status □ Wealth □ Work

  □______________ □ _____________ □ ______________ □ __________________

  See Appendix A for a copy of the exercise, “What Are Your Top Values?”

  When Eileen, the nurse anesthetist featured at the start of the chapter, reflected on her values, an exercise suggested by her life coach, she identified these five:

  Helping Others

  Family

  Friendship

  Community

  Health

  Eileen and her coach discussed her values and explored areas where her life was and wasn't aligned with her most significant values. As a young woman, Eileen had chosen nursing because of her interest in helping people, so her current job seemed to be consistent with one of her top values. But when Eileen thought more deeply about her current job, she realized that her specialty area wasn't giving her the sense of helping people, since her patients were under anesthesia for most of their time with her. Though Eileen prided herself on keeping her patients safe and comfortable during their surgical procedures, she became aware that she missed working with patients who were in a conscious state, and felt that she needed more feedback from patients about whether she was succeeding in helping them. So Eileen began to consider studying to become a nurse practitioner, where she would be on the front lines of primary healthcare, and be better able to experience the results of her desire to help others.

  Eileen also worked with her coach on ways to align her actions with the importance of family as a key value. Even though her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren had moved cross country, Eileen realized that she hadn't really “lost them.” Given her relatively high income, Eileen could afford to get on a plane to the West Coast as often as she wanted. So her coach encouraged her to talk with her son and daughter-in-law to decide on a plan for regular visits that was comfortable for everyone. Eileen and her West Coast family mutually decided that it would be ideal if Eileen spent a week with them four times a year. They also decided how Eileen would spend holiday time with her son's family. Each year, Eileen would spend either Thanksgiving or Christmas with her son's family, to accommodate her son's family need to spend certain major holiday time with his wife's family and her son's father. Eileen also figured out that she could afford to pay for airfare for her son and his family to visit her in Boston at least once a year.

  Acting in alignment with Eileen's friendship value proved challenging for her. After all, Eileen had lost some friends in the wake of her divorce, and tried to foster new friendships through church groups and book clubs with little success. Eileen's coach suggested she use Facebook to locate old friends from high school and nursing school, and try to reestablish connections with them through social media. Before long, Eileen found someone on Facebook from her high school class who happened to be in charge of their high school class reunion, coming up in a few months' time, and the former classmate promptly sent her an invitation.

  Eileen was tempted to skip the reunion, worried how she would look to others, given her weight gain, and uncomfortable about attending without a husband or boyfriend. Eileen's coach encouraged her to go anyway, pointing out that many of her classmates wouldn't be in ideal shape themselves. So Eileen decided to take the upcoming high school class reunion as a challenge to get in better shape. She revamped her eating plan to make it as healthy as possible, and started working out several times a week at a fitness center near her home. Feeling better about her progress in becoming more fit, Eileen bought a fabulous outfit for the reunion and even hired a makeup artist to
help her make a glamorous entrance to the reunion. Though Eileen attended her high school class reunion without a date, she had the time of her life, and enjoyed reuniting with many high school friends, a few of whom turned out to live near Eileen. Within the next month or so, Eileen arranged lunches with several local long-lost high school friends. As she reconnected with her high school friends, she discovered mutual interests that opened up her world to new possibilities and activities in which she could become involved. Eileen also used Facebook to find a few nursing school friends. One particular friend, now a public health nurse, asked Eileen if she would volunteer to staff a local health fair which offered free health screenings, such as blood pressure checks and cholesterol screenings. Many health fair participants lacked resources for regular health exams, and Eileen felt she was helping others to recognize and address potentially dangerous health conditions. As Eileen became increasingly involved as a weekend health fair volunteer, she found herself part of an altruistic community of people who shared her values, and her connection with other volunteers helped her feel the sense of community that church groups and book clubs had failed to offer.

  After a few months of weekly volunteer work, coupled with taking night classes to prepare her to become a nurse practitioner, Eileen went for a follow-up with her primary care physician. Surprisingly, Eileen had lost ten pounds, her blood pressure had dropped so much that her doctor cut back on her blood pressure medication, and her blood sugar level was averaging just above normal. These results motivated Eileen to work even more seriously on improving her health. Eileen started walking every day. She bought a pedometer to track her daily steps and set a goal of 10,000 steps a day. Eileen enjoyed the feedback she got from the pedometer, so much so that on days when she hadn't reached her goal, she walked around her condo at night after getting back from classes until she hit her target. Eileen's life was changing in many positive ways as she increasingly aligned her actions with her values.

  Jim Loehr, a world-famous psychologist in the area of optimizing human performance, suggests an exercise in which you prioritize 10 common values you most want your life to reflect and compare that list with how much time and energy you invest in living in alignment with those values.4 We adapted Loehr's valuable exercise to help you assess your current level of alignment with your values.

  EXERCISE: VALUES AND BEHAVIOR ALIGNMENT

  Step 1: In Column A, rank order from 1 to 10 the values you most want your life to represent.

  Step 2: In Column B, rank order these values from 1 to 10 based on time and energy invested in each over the last year or so.

  Step 3: Determine the difference between priority score for each top value and priority score for values in action.

  Step 4: Subtract number in Column B “Investment” from number in Column A “Importance” and place in Column C “Alignment Level.”

  Step 5: Reflect on alignment or gap between priority of values and time/energy invested in each value. Is there alignment between what I believe is important in my life and my actual behavior?

  A: Importance B: Investment C: Alignment

  Values What I Want My Life to Reflect (Rate importance from 1–10) Time and Energy I Spend (Rate from 1–10) Alignment Level (Subtract Column B from Column A)

  Wealth (how much money you have)

  Material Possessions (things you acquire)

  Family (as you understand your family, including non-traditional families)

  Social Status (degrees, job titles, awards, etc.)

  Health (physical and emotional)

  Power (feeling you control people and circumstances)

  Ethics (being honest, kind, generous, etc.)

  Fame (well-known by many people)

  Attractiveness (regarded as being beautiful or looking good)

  Work Performance (professional competence and mastery)

  In the Values and Behavior Alignment exercise, the larger the positive number in Column C, the more you invest in this value relative to its importance. The larger the negative number, the less you invest in that value relative to its importance. For instance, you may rank “Fame” as 10 in importance but 4 in your investment of time and energy. That leads to a gap of 6, which suggests that you may be spending too much time on a value that is not as important to you as other values. As another example, you may rate “Family” as 1 in importance, but a 5 in your investment. The gap of −4 indicates that you may not be investing enough time and energy in your family relative to their importance. A score at or close to zero (−2 to +2) suggests close alignment between a value's importance to you and the time and energy you invest in that value. Such numbers are only rough estimates of alignment between values and behavior. However, it's a useful way to begin to think about how meaningfully you are using your time and energy. And it will give you a head start in thinking about potential goals for yourself, before beginning the goal achievement process described in Chapter 3.

  See Appendix B for a copy of the Values and Behavior Alignment exercise. You can also download a copy of the exercise (including a blank version that allows you to do the exercise using your own top 10 values) from the book Toolkit at www.leveragingfi.com.

  * * * * * *

  Eileen had come a long way from the unhappy woman who hated waking up in the morning. Focusing on her values helped Eileen discover her ideal self—the person she wanted to be at her best. In the process of taking those initial steps to live life more aligned with her values, Eileen was realizing the truth of what Helen Keller meant when she said, “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” Instead of engaging in recreational shopping in an effort to feel better, Eileen refocused her time on a meaningful pursuit—helping people understand and improve their health. Like Eileen, all of us can use our values as a springboard for discovering our purpose—the one true thing we believe is our reason for being.

  NOTES

  * Eileen Kelly is a composite persona based on our interviews with several individuals who have completed the process of learning to live in alignment.

  1 Studies place nurse anesthetists near the top of the ranks of most-stressful jobs, though average annual salary is favorable at $147,256, http://career-profiles.careertrends.com/stories/10430/most-stressful-jobs#22-Nurse-Anesthetist. Retrieved April 2, 2017.

  2 As reported by Dennis Thompson, “Healthy Lifestyle Can Overcome Genetic Risk for Heart Disease,” 2016, http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/11/13/Healthy-lifestyle-can-overcome-genetic-risk-for-heart-disease/4971479085350/. Retrieved March 30, 2017.

  3 Steve Pavlina, “List of Values,” November 29, 2004, https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2004/11/list-of-values/. Retrived August 8, 2017.

  4 Jim Loehr, The Only Way to Win: How Building Character Helps You Achieve More and Find Greater Fulfillment in Business and Life. New York: Hyperion, 2012, p. 14–15.

  Chapter Three

  Setting and Achieving Goals

  The self is made, not given.

  —Barbara Myerhoff

  Now in her mid-fifties, Donna Krone looks entirely too young to have had time to excel in three successive careers. Coincidentally, Donna's careers track with the three life areas emphasized in this book—financial health, physical health, and overall well-being (happiness). Donna graduated from college with a BS in nursing, and worked for five years as a nurse in a hospital. In that role, Donna saw the tragic results of uncontrollable medical conditions, and the life-threatening consequences of poor lifestyle choices made by patients over decades. Donna was a highly conscientious nurse. She advocated for her patients and made sure her patients and their families got all the information they needed to reduce their stress as they navigated the confusing hospital environment. Donna embraced the intellectual and coaching aspects of her nursing role, but always felt anxious about the technical aspects of her role. On the one hand, she thrived on acting as a liaison between busy doctors,
who didn't always communicate very well, and patients and their families, who were desperate for clear and complete information about their situation. On the other hand, Donna didn't gain the satisfaction she thought she would in the fast-paced hospital environment where nurses had to get tasks done as quickly and efficiently as possible, often at the cost of patient relationships. Despite that, Donna continued working as a nurse until a serendipitous opportunity arose to pursue a career as a financial advisor with IDS, a financial services organization that eventually became American Express Financial Advisors, and later Ameriprise Financial.