My definition of success: When your core values and self-concept are in harmony with your daily actions and behaviours.
John Spence
We may not consciously realise when we’re not living our values. It’s so easy to lose sight of what we value most when all our effort is going into trying to control the chaos. Trying to pass for normal and hiding our struggles. Trying to live up to what we think others want or expect of us.
Life becomes a constant battle to control the negative rather than living the positive. It feels overwhelming and joyless.
When we don’t live in line with what we value most, we aren’t living an authentic life. And it’s hard to feel any sense of satisfaction, self-worth or happiness, when how we live is out of step with the kind of person we truly are deep inside.
Living this way affects everything we do. For example it’s hard to make decisions and stick to them without the compass of values to guide us. It’s difficult to set boundaries without that yardstick. And we’re more likely to feel shame, guilt and anxiety.
This was my daily reality, as it is for many women on the relentless treadmill of life with undiagnosed ADHD.
But I was stuck on the hamster wheel and didn’t even realise I was totally unanchored, living life on default. I wasn’t living my values so I was essentially disconnected from myself.
Does this resonate with you too?
Thankfully it’s never too late to reconnect with our values. Here are some ideas that are working for me which I hope will help you too.
Know your core values
Perhaps you never step back far enough from the overwhelm to even understand what it is that you value most? That’s certainly how I was when I was on the survival treadmill.
For me, the first step was to identify my core values.
Even if you believe you know your values, it’s absolutely worth doing this exercise. For example we can be carrying around values instilled in us by other people – a parent, our spouse or society in general, say – not actually realising that those values don’t reflect what’s most important to us.
When you’re identifying your core values, they should be the ones that resonate with you on the very deepest level – the 4 to 6 that represent who you truly are at your best (or maybe who you know you could be). The ones that just feel right.
Don’t worry for now whether or not you’re living up to these values. One step at a time!
As preparation and inspiration for doing this exercise there are plenty of lists of values online and offline. My personal favourites are:
- https://scottjeffrey.com/core-values-list/. Scott not only has a comprehensive values list on his website, but he also offers a useful process to help you really think through exactly what you value most.
- The 6-Minute Success Journal from Dominik Spenst (https://urbestself.co). What I particularly like about the values exercise in this journal is the way Dominik helps you get clear on your personal hierarchy of values, which then helps with life choices.
I found that my top core values are compassion, hope, growth and freedom.
What are yours?
Is your life aligned with your values?
Living a life that aligns with our values is such a game-changer. We not only value ourselves properly, we also earn respect from others. Because we feel good about ourselves we take risks that enable us to grow and achieve goals. We feel a sense of inner peace.
Hold on Jacky, you may be saying – I don’t experience any of these good things in my life. Exactly! Neither did I.
When we aren’t living a congruent, authentic life we experience the very opposite of those good things. We have low self-esteem. We feel exhausted. We live with inner turmoil rather than inner peace. At the end of most days we don’t feel a sense of satisfaction or achievement; instead we feel we’ve failed to achieve anything meaningful. We feel stuck in a limited life.
So we can actually tell by how we feel about ourselves and our life whether we’re living in alignment with what we value most.
And to move towards a life of greater alignment and authenticity we need to know how we’re currently measuring up.
I found journaling a big help for digging deeper. Examining how each of my core values showed up (or didn’t…) in my daily life and actions.
Now we’ve got our baseline we can plan how to move forward.
Create an action plan
Ask yourself these two questions about each value:
What can I start doing to better live by this value?
What should I stop doing to better live by this value?
This simple exercise helps identify practical things we can do to incorporate what we value most into our daily lives and start to reap the benefits.
For example, one of my values is hope. To me, this means I want to stay hopeful and optimistic as I age, and look for the very best in everything and everyone. It represents a positive attitude to my life.
In order to better live by this value I decided to keep a gratitude journal to make me more mindful of the good things in my life. This helps to increase my store of hope.
I also started meditating again to help me become less reactive and choose better responses to the things that happen to me. This enables me to envisage – and actively build – a more constructive and positive future.
Think of activities you would enjoy that are in alignment with your values. Start doing some of them!
Create habits and rituals that will make your values an integral part of your life consistently, starting today – like I have with gratitude journaling and meditation.
Stay on track
Check in with yourself every once in a while to see how well you’re doing living up to your values.
My personal routine is to ask myself at the end of each week what I’ve done specifically to live according to my values. At the same time I reflect on instances when I fell short. For example I don’t live up to my value of compassion/love when I take my frustrations out on my partner.
I also reflect on what I can do to improve on any shortcomings.
It really helps to reinforce this habit if we celebrate the positive examples and focus on reliving the benefits we experienced.
To go back to the love example, say you stopped yourself before you said something mean to a loved one and you said something encouraging instead. Perhaps you felt a glow of satisfaction and happiness as a result of this, instead of the shame and guilt you might feel if you unthinkingly blurt out your negative reaction.
Building this process into my journaling routine helps me stay on course and motivated. Tracking my successes fires me up to keep going.
And it makes me feel good about myself!
Final thoughts
Having a self-image that’s in alignment with our values helps us to live an authentic life – and to thrive.
The benefits of this are especially significant for women (like me) who have lived with undiagnosed ADHD and spent a lifetime hiding behind a mask to cover up our struggles and shame.
So here’s a quick summary.
- First, identify your core values.
- Then build those values into your life by planning and consistently doing things that are in alignment with them.
- Finally, stay on track by evaluating how well you’re living your values in practice.
Be bold, have fun – identify the values that truly represent you at your best and live accordingly.
Resources
Like to find out what your unique strengths are? Strengths are connected to our values and are the character traits that help us put our values in action. This is a link to the VIA Institute on Character’s own character strengths assessment (it’s free and thorough): takethesurvey
