Laugh Life Day 81

More on the question “Who am I?”

Determining your values are another great way to help you figure this out.

Values are “what is important to you”. Think concepts not things.

My values for Example are (In order):

1. Family
2. Happiness
3. Freedom
4. Creativity
5. Harmony
6. Health
7. Personal Growth

One of the places where I started to look at my own values years ago was when I read the book: “Smart Couples Finish Rich”.  It is a financial planning book by David Bach, but he has a whole chapter on determining your values.

click on the following link to read that chapter and go through an exercise to help you determine your own values:

Values Circle

I really like this exercise, but there are two main differences in how I look at values now.

One – you’ll notice I have more than 5 in my list.  There may be more than just five things that are important to you, but still only chooe the ones that are MOST important.  For me that is those 7 things.

Two – I know that values are not all equal.  He has a values circle and I know that it’s more like a list than a circle.  There are some values that are more important to you than others and sometimes in life when two values come into conflict (which can and does happen) you need to know which is more important so you can know what to do in that situation.

Example:

Family is may top value, but Freedom and Creativity are also values.  For a while there (before I got married and realized how important family was for me) I wanted to be a writer and just live free and be creative and write.  When I got married I realized that “living free and writing” would not pay the bills I took other jobs to help us get by.  I realized what was MORE important to me and acted on that.

Values are a great way to help you know more about who you are.  I hope you have some fun finding yours.

Keep laughing.