Identify Your Values and Start to Find Happiness

I’ve had what I can confidently describe as a breakthrough in my quest to find happiness!

Another piece of the jigsaw has fallen into place and I’m absolutely delighted.

Over the weekend I went through the “values elicitation” exercise in chapter 5 of How To Be Rich and Happy, and I’ve ended up making some solid progress.

I assure you I’m not prone to acting like a giddy schoolgirl, so to be this animated about something is unusual for me.

Here’s how it went:

I had an uneasy feeling before starting the values elicitation. I had some low level fears that I’d be revealing myself to be something I really didn’t want to see myself as.

Actually, that didn’t happen, and by the time I’d finished I was pretty excited because for the first time in a long time I have a better understanding of who I am and what I am. And I’m glad to say it’s not the person I feel I’ve become over the last few years – and that is a huge relief.

I was tempted to look at the list of values I ended up with as a definitive picture of who I am but of course it’s not. My values aren’t limited to the list I produced, it’s just a snapshot of those things foremost in my make up, and I have no doubt they shift around depending on what’s going on in my life.

The process of making the list and refining it took about 45 minutes, possibly and hour, I’m not sure, as I became totally engrossed in the exercise.

The author indicates that the exercise should be done when you’re alone and where you won’t be disturbed and I can confirm that this approach worked well for me. I think if I’d been interrupted or distracted I would have lost some of the benefit and taken even longer.

As I went through the exercise I wasn’t sure I was doing it right, the results initially didn’t seem to tally but I guess the author knew this would happen and included instructions to deal with this eventuality.

When deciding which values were mine, I went with “gut feeling” as advised. It felt for a while like I was going around in circles, but I followed the instructions and eventually arrived at the end point with a list of values.

It was quite a surprise that some of the values I thought were dear to me were not on the list.

For example “humor” didn’t make it onto the list. I’ve always believed that a big part of who I am was my sense of humor, so it’s a bit of a surprise not to see it featured in a prominent position.

Of course, having completed the exercise I realize it’s not that I’ve pushed “humor” aside, it’s just lower down the order of what’s important to me.

Also a surprise is that “truth” and “wealth” were not on the final list. I originally believed they would be somewhere near the top.

As an example of where I ended up going around in circles I can tell you that “love” was not part of my original selection – which felt really odd given that I’m a family man and I love my children and my wife (despite our relationship difficulties).

When I thought about it some more using the suggested method, it turns out that that I had listed “stability” when I really meant “love”. My stability in life is in fact my family. When family life is suffering everything else suffers.

Maybe I could have substituted “love” with “family”, but I stuck with the gut feeling and went with “love”.

Overall I’m not sure if the interpretation I put on my values is right, but it “felt” right, so I’ve gone with it as per the instructions.

Here’s a list of my values in order, from most important to least important. But keep in mind that least important doesn’t mean unimportant:

1. Happiness
2. Self Awareness
3. Love
4. Health
5. Comfort
6. Integrity
7. Creativity
8. Significance

Discovering my “anti-values” was less troublesome and I was much more definite about my choices. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s because my daily life has revolved around them for so long?

Anyway, here’s my list of anti-values with the worst of the Anti Values at the top:

1. Injustice
2. Hypocrisy
3. Aggression
4. Anger
5. Dishonesty
6. Conflict
7. Arrogance
8. Worry

Although I found this list easier to pick, the result is a little more sobering. These anti-values have featured quite significantly in my life. Much more significantly than I would have liked.

I’m trying hard not to read too much meaning in to this exercise at the moment because I still need to look at my beliefs (later in the book) and see how the values and beliefs have played together to create the man I am right now.

But – I can already see some startling insights beginning to form.

I can also see that there’s the real possibility of changing the way I think as a result of going through this and the subsequent exercises.

If you’re currently trying to do this for yourself, I can assure you, you’d benefit from using the structure laid out in the book. I mean, I’ve tried to look at my values before but I’ve never been able to do it so completely.

As an example of that, I think when I looked at my character traits (before I got into using the book properly) I was trying to achieve the same thing. When I look at that list of traits now I realize that I could have made that list ten pages long and never really identified my true values. It was a confused list of things that hinted at my values but didn’t actually reveal them.

This is the true value of the book. Using the method described in the book I’ve ended up with something meaningful to work with.

Like I said, it’s very tempting to dwell here for a while and ponder what it all means, but I’m going to resist it and press on with working through the book. There’s more to do in the following chapters and I suppose I won’t be able to piece it all together until I’ve got to the end.

To conclude I have to say that I am completely enthused now. I’m so pleased that after all this time I’m making real progress and feel pretty good about it.

If you’ve got the book and you haven’t yet completed this exercise I urge you to do so. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Thanks for reading,

Andy

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Tagged as: anti-values, breakthrough, find happiness, gut feeling, happiness, personal values, progress, values elicitation exercise