Me – building capacity from inside out
 
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My values

 

Values are the compass of our lives. We make decisions and choices based on them, and by acting upon our own values, we can find meaning and purpose and experience fulfilment. One powerful way to make your life really represent who you are and bring you a sense of purpose is to let your values shine through in your everyday life. It might be a matter of small changes but result in a huge impact in how you feel about yourself and your life – and make your life really look and feel like you. Considering values can also be of great help when creating your own self-care plan (see the previous chapter), especially if you find it difficult to come up with actions to bring more joy and fulfilment to your everyday life. In the exercises of this chapter, you can find tools that help you incorporate your values to your self-care plan.

In this process, it is necessary to look at two core questions:

  1. What are my values today?
  2. Do my values guide my everyday life as much as I'd like?

In the chapter about boundaries (the following chapter) we discuss the things that might typically hinder us from keeping our healthy boundaries. One of the first and most important questions when talking about boundaries is to make decisions about what to say yes and what to say no to. We need to know what we want and can do and know the limits of our resources. Working with our values can give us clarity in our journey towards knowing and feeling what is good for us: both in self-care and in maintaining safe boundaries.

Values are not cemented. The priority of our values can shift, and sometimes we might even undergo a larger re-evaluation of our core values. While our values often dwell in the background, they form a bridge between our whole being and our visible actions. Our values are there whether we pay attention to them or not. And they can change, without us even noticing. For this reason, it is refreshing to take an interest in your own values from time to time. Underneath you will find different ways to tap into your core values.

 

Exercises





Peak experiences

This exercise is created by Dr. Jennifer Leigh Selig.

You can do this exercise by yourself or with a group of young people.

  1. Think back to the times of your most meaningful experiences: Which experiences made you happy and helped you become who you are?
  2. Think about one of these experiences. Write down 5-10 values that were met in this event. Identify which of those values are most important to you now.
  3. Reflect on the life you are leading now. Which of these 5-10 values are currently shining through in your everyday life? How? Can you recognise them in your behaviour, in your life choices and in your relationships with others? Are there some important values that you’d like to manifest in your life more than you are doing now?






Pool of values

You can do this exercise by yourself or with a group of young people.

  1. Explore the values in the attached pool of values (PDF attached.) Quickly pick 10-20 values that you are most drawn to and write them down.
  2. From these 10-20 values choose carefully 3-8 values that are really important to you.
    You can also revisit exercise “Peak experiences” and see if you want to take one or several values from there.
  3. Write your chosen values down on a piece of paper and put it on the door of your refrigerator.






Bringing values to life

  1. Pick one of the values in the exercise “Peak experiences” or “Pool of values” you find to be very important to you.
  2. Take an A4 piece of paper and write the value down as a headline.
  3. Brainstorm activities / small changes in your everyday life that would include this value shining through in your life.
  4. Put this A4 paper on your refrigerator door, and for the following 14 days, try to implement any action that reflects your chosen value.
  5. Write down a notification on your calendar for exactly 15 days from today saying: assess the value.
  6. In 15 days make an assessment: did you manage to bring the value to life? How did it feel?
  7. If you want to make a habit an activity that rises from emphasising this value in your everyday life, keep doing this for 6 more weeks. Or if you want, revisit the values list you created in exercise “Pool of values”.
  8. After finishing working with your first value and entering those habits / actions in your life, you can do the same with another value. If you have 5 core values, these will be woven into your everyday life within 10 months.
 

TIP! You can incorporate this exercise with your “Self-care plan”, which is presented in  the previous chapter (Self-care). Incorporating these two exercises can be fruitful, especially if you find it difficult to pick activities / values that you feel you want to reinforce in your life.

 
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