How Can I Plan My Life/Day Around What I Truly Value?
Questions have power! 32 Questions: A Personal Quest Through Questions is my book. This is your invitation to engage with important questions to ask yourself. This week is all about Question #4 in 32 Questions: How can I plan my life/day around what I truly value? I like this question because it is obvious, and yet easy to overlook and never really answer for ourselves. When we take the time to be clear I think it helps everything flow a bit easier in our busy, complicated lives. Any tool that helps relieve complications is worth considering. When we are living unaware (unreflective or reactive) we are not actively considering how to arrange our day to day decisions around our values. Taking time to identify our values and think about how to live based on those is a powerful shift. Moving from being unaware to being aware does not have to be hard. It does need attention. My theory is most people have two complementary (or competing) sets of values. I like to think of them as “aspirational values” and “operational values.” Aspirational Values are the values that we aspire to. The ideals that we hold and believe in, but we might not always achieve. Operational Values are the default values that we actually live by. An example might be helpful: Aspirational value is telling the truth. The Operational value is telling the kids that McDonald’s is closed on Sundays to avoid a huge meltdown and conflict. The operational value is peace. We may value telling the truth, but when faced with truth or peace, we choose a “white lie” to achieve peace! There is something subtle that happens when we say one thing and do another time after time. At the heart level, we start to wonder if we can trust ourselves. The internal conflict over “what I say” and “what I do” is not a fun place to live. It produces guilt and confusion at a deep level. This is why it is helpful to acknowledge our aspirational values and our operational values. At the very least when we are clear that two different forces are at work within us. Then the operational values have less guilt-inducing power. The easiest way to do this is to write two lists. Write your aspirational values; the values that you want to have, that you believe matter, the things that your faith, family or friends talk about. Then write a list of your operational values, the values that you actually live by. I have an aspirational value of shopping local. I see the impact that shopping at the farmers market and local shops has for real people. I love all the impacts of that decision. Yet, my operational value is efficiency and ease. So, given the choice of going to the farmers market and three other local shops to get what I need or swinging by the closest big-box grocery store, I am going to choose the big grocery store or Amazon almost every time. When I identify the tension, it has less guilt-inducing power. When it comes to talking about values, I say tell yourself the truth. How would your days look different if oriented around your true values? There are things that we have to do. Dishes are not going to clean themselves and laundry (unfortunately) does not fold itself. The question to consider is: would anything change if I lived a day, a week, a month or a year informed by what I value? Would you make different choices? If you had a clear understanding of your values, operational and aspirational would that help you structure your time with more intention? Resources: Question 1,-What does my ideal day/week/year look like? This was my first essay from 32 Questions. Reactive and responsive living is really what this question is about too. How to Transform Podcast: 4 Approaches to the Future In my conversation with Ray on our podcast, How to Transform, we talk about one of my favorite tools, the 4 Approaches to the Future. A lot of my thinking about values is influenced by this concept, on this podcast you get to learn about it directly from Ray! Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Enter your email to subscribe– It’s only ever used to notify you of new questions from The Art of Powering Down.
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