Core Values: Priorities and Directions of Core Values

Core Values create your world. You live according to the beliefs and perform only the behaviors that align with your core values. Well, you live in happiness and find success when you do. However you fail to find either happiness or success when you fail to live in alignment with what you, in your core, believe is right.

If you have never done so create a list of your core values. Now rearrange the list in order of importance to you with the value you find most important listed first.

Done? Excellent. (If you think you will do this later then you have a value saying procrastination and incompletion of tasks works for you.) We both know the likelihood of you coming back to make your list later is slim to none. So take a few minutes to make it now. Remember to prioritize your values.

How did you determine the order of your priorities? Even more to the point, how did you discover your core values?

Those deep beliefs, alive and well in your subconscious mind, run your life. The thing is, some of what you think defines your most important values really do not meet that definition at all.

What am I talking about?

Core values move you forward toward your Very Excellent Life. Sometimes you think your behaviors protect you from what you do not want rather than forward you along your happiness path.

For most of my life I consistently rated honesty as my top core value. I could not tolerate anyone or anything dishonest. I used to ask my mom to go out and walk the dog rather than answer it and tell someone she was not home when she actually was. (That is how powerful my core value of honesty was for me – or so I thought.)

When I learned the true definition of core values then I found that honesty was so important because of all the dishonest people and experiences running scattered across my life. I was moving away from (avoiding) any new experiences with dishonesty.

Honesty remains on my list now but for different reasons. And it no longer holds the primo spot.

Okay. Got it?

Now go through your list of core values and note which move you forward toward your dream life and which serve to move you away from what you do not want.

Happiness happens when you move toward what you want rather than away from what you do not want.