Are you living your values?

My heart is so full, I got to spend the last few days with my girls, grandson and Dad.

One of my highest values is family, and I feel so grateful that I’ve created a life that allows me to really be in integrity and alignment with my highest values.

At times in the past when I’ve felt conflicted with values and needs, it tends to lead to loss of energy, exhaustion and burnout and feeling really stuck, and or unhappy with myself and how I’m living my life.

One of the things I’ve discovered in years of learning how our mind works, is that when we are living our values congruently and in a way that also meets our 6 human needs, that is when we feel truly happy and a deep satisfaction with ourselves and our life.

Below is a quick exercise of one way to elicit your most important values and get clear on them.

To get clear on what your values are, ask yourself; “What are all the things I value or are most important to me in life?”

If you are stuck for ideas, search “Values lists” on the internet.

When I first did this exercise, I wrote down about 25-30 things.

Then I asked myself, if I could only keep 5 of those things on a boat with me, otherwise it would sink, which one’s would I keep?

It was a great way of figuring out which ones were most important to me.

I first eliminated 5 at a time, when it got down to the top 10, it was so much harder to work out, so I kept on asking myself, is this value more important than this one, and I would compare it to each of the other remaining values on the list.

I did this with each one until I got down to 5, then I went through and rated them 1-5 in order of importance.

The next exercise was to ask myself, was I living my values in life and in that order or importance?

It provided some great clues as to what areas I needed to bring greater awareness and focus to.

The next step was to align my values, with how these were also meeting my 6 human needs. (As these are the unconscious targets we try to attain in our life.)

This is one of the areas, that I support my clients with.
When we understand what needs we are trying to meet through our behaviours, the whole game changes.

Years ago, I discovered that I used to emotionally eat, in an unconscious attempt to meet my needs for certainty (security and safety), love and connection (I’ve had a hard day, I’m all alone) and variety (different tastes and textures and trying to make myself feel differently).

Even though this was in direct opposition to my value of health and left me feeling guilty and so angry and ashamed at myself.

Unfortunately, we will break our own values and morals in an attempt to meet our 6 human needs.

Understanding how to meet my 6 human needs in a way that also aligned with my highest values created immense alignment and joy in my life and I felt so proud of myself again.

If you’ve ever felt stuck with a repeating behaviour, such as constantly over-giving, unable to rest or emotional eating, drinking, gambling or smoking or something else, that feels like a deep conflict with your own values, this is absolutely something I can help you with.

Email me today at admin@sallyholden.com.au to find out more info and let’s get you aligned, free and feeling empowered to live your best life and no longer be living with inner conflicts and behaviours, that are draining your energy and exhausting you.

Love and Blessings,
Sal x

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