Lesson 1: Identifying our Values
Learning Objective
Identify and prioritise your personal values when it comes to your wealth & wellbeing
An important step to improve our relationship with money is to figure out what matters to us most.
Once we know what we value, then we can create goals and make decisions for our money that align with our true values. We’re also likely to feel more motivated to actually achieve them.
Values are what we hold dear, such as family, freedom, security, or health – they are the things that are most important to us – deep within our core.
When the things that we do and how we behave match our values, we are generally satisfied. But when we do things that don’t align with our personal values, we can feel unhappy, dissatisfied.
As we move through our life, our values may change. Many of us start our careers and define success measured by money or status, but after a few years, or once we have a family we may decide that it’s more important to have a work-life balance than more money.
How do we define our personal values?
When we don’t know who we really are, then we often end up doing things or becoming something for other people. Doing what others want or what is expected of us brings respect and esteem from others, but is unlikely to bring satisfaction or meaning to ourselves.
If we stand anchored in who we are and what we personally value, then we can guide our actions and behaviours to meeting those things.
We have two sets of values that are important for us to define and understand on a personal level:
- Conscious Values
- Subconscious Values
Conscious values: One way to help us discover our values is to think back to the times when you have been the happiest in your life? Relationships? Career?
Mindful Question/Reflection
Think back to what the things were that you were doing, who were you with and what things made these times so great?
What did these times and experiences bring to you? What feelings did you have? Why were they so memorable?
When prioritising our life values, it’s important that we distinguish between what we value and what other people tell us we should value as the opinion of our parents, mentors, peers and society can often influence us.
Whilst many of the values we pick up from our parents, partner, siblings or peers may be worthwhile keeping, it is also important to work out whether we in fact share these same values.
It’s often human nature to try to fit in with widely held, popular and accepted values. But it’s normal to want something different from others and it doesn’t mean they or we are wrong or different.
We all grow up and live under different circumstances and our circumstances often define our values.
Our conscious values are things we believe matter most to us.
Perhaps in our social network, our friends and peers are all saving for a house and we feel that perhaps the right thing for us to do is save for a house too. So we begin to think of home-ownership as a source of stability and it becomes something we value. Deep down however, we desire freedom and the ability to travel and move around as we wish. We know that a house will bring responsibility and a sense of commitment that may mean we have to sacrifice our freedom.
Mindful Question/Reflection
Are you currently working towards goals that you personally value or are you working towards goals out a sense of obligation or feeling of expectation that you should be working towards it?
The decisions we make to satisfy the expectations of others are least likely to be the ones that satisfy us.
Conforming to what others are doing is a form of peer pressure. We tend to think of peer pressure as being something that happens most when we are teenagers, at high school, but realistically we face peer pressure our whole lives.
Group think, can be a big influence on our behaviour and peer pressure can make it hard to live according to our personal values. Sometimes the best thing we can do is just pause for a moment and ask ourselves whether our decision is something we really want, or what we think we should be doing, or have to do.
Our desire to fit in with the group can be so strong that it can make us change our behaviours. Even when we know that it is wrong.
Sub-Conscious Values: The best way to identify our subconscious values is to look at how we spend our time and our money and what our mental and emotional focus has been on. The way we are spending our time or money might not align with our values but that is often because we haven’t uncovered what our values actually are.
For instance, let’s say self-development and education are two things that we value. But instead of setting money aside to do the short course or training in the areas we’re interested in, we’re constantly buying new clothes, eating out or going out meaning we have no money left over for these things.
Mindful Question/Reflection
Do you think that your current spending aligns with your values?
Once we have identified our values, saying no to a new dress, for the sake of stepping closer to being able to take that course or attending that training, becomes a much easier decision to make. It becomes easier to balance and manage our behaviour and habits as we have something to use as a tool to give us perspective and focus.
Once we identify our values, it’s important to hold awareness around our values.
Mindful Exercise – Uncovering Your Values
Our values are an important element of our relationship with wealth, as they will drive our intention for creating wealth, our goals and our decision-making, as well the way we earn our money and how we spend our money.
