Getting Guidance From Your Value System

25. February 2009

A useful way to get greater clarity over where and how you are pinching off a higher experience of abundance in your life is to explore your value preferences and their related successes.
Have you noticed how it is the things that you value most that give you the most satisfaction and enjoyment? Sounds obvious doesn’t it, but have you ever really considered that and how it relates to other aspects of your life?

What Do You Value Most?

Consider someone who really values their health and well being and how they will naturally and seemingly effortlessly put a good deal of thought and energy into maintaining their health and well being through diet and exercise etc. even if they are perhaps neglecting other areas. On the other hand someone who really values playing computer games and watching TV will effortlessly spend hours on those activities, and quite possibly to the expense of their general health and well being. Simply put, you tend to get more of what you value because you direct more energy and desire towards it. Energy follows consciousness.

Conversely you can also get more of what you don’t want when you focus upon the things you don’t want. For instance if you start considering the shortcomings of your job or partner for any length of time you will then find ever more things to complain about and be critical of until you could end up feeling miserable and depressed.

It is very useful to practice recognising where your value system is working well for you and noting how that feels in contrast to an aspect of your life that does not seem to be going or flowing quite so well.

Time And Money

In my life for instance I have always highly valued my time and because I value my time I make an effort to enjoy everything I do. I also seem to have an innate ability to spend little time at all doing anything I do not like. On the occasions that I feel I have to complete an uninspiring, onerous task then I can generally re-frame my approach to it so that I enjoy it. I enjoy life, plain and simple, because I value my time and I value my life. On the other hand I do not care for people wasting my time by being indirect or dishonest with me or by using a 1000 words when 100 would have done fine.

By contrast though when explore how I value money I begin to notice some subtle differences. Yes, I enjoy money and manifest a very comfortable living, I also recognise that I really do not value it in anything like the way I value my time. This may account, in part at least, for my erratic cash flow situations over the years. My money approach has always been a bit “easy come easy go” even if it hasn’t necessarily come easily by any stretch. I’m just not that bothered by money, so money can’t always be bothered with me?

I don’t care for a miserly penny pinching approach to money at all and aspire to being generous wherever possible. However I have come to recognise some things through my many dealings within the superyacht industry and particularly how much the super rich value their money. Yes, they can afford to spend huge sums on ostentatious luxuries but they will only do that if they feel they are getting good value in return. They’ll haggle over prices until they are sure they know they are getting good value.

Certainly some are simply on an ego driven power trip to see how much they can chisel off a price just because they can but as a whole it is still always about getting value for money. These guy’s always want the very best for the best price and they manage their money to extract the best return in all areas. This may mean they value money more than the well being of their suppliers and staff and it may mean they spend so much time valuing and pursuing money that their personal and family lives suffer. One thing remains though, they value money and thus they have money even if they do not always have a wholly happy or “balanced” life.

T Harv Eker, for instance, makes this point quite bluntly in his book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth “…money is extremely important in the areas in which it works, and extremely unimportant in the areas in which it doesn’t. Anyone who says money isn’t important doesn’t have any!”

Now you can read any number of books or articles and none of it will make a blind bit of difference until you actually apply the principles therein to your life, which can be a struggle because we always tend to resist change. If you’ve read this far though it is fairly certain you have some commitment to personal growth. Bravo! Here goes, try this.

Look And Learn

By drawing from what you already know in another area of your life you can bring more flow and ease to the process of transforming less productive thought and behaviour patterns because you are simultaneously changing whilst holding an awareness on comfortable, positive, familiar territory.

  • Identify one key area that you consider to be working well in your life.
  • Examine how that really feels, study the felt quality or energetic of it, the levels of ease, joy or resistance.
  • Now compare this with an area you are struggling with. How does it feel different to you? Compare the relative sensations of gratitude for instance.
  • Next, explore your options for making this difficult area feel more like the successful area. How could you think differently and adjust your values about, food, love, money or whatever? How can you can transform your thinking so that you feel similar sensations when reflecting on an area that previously wasn’t working so well in comparison to an area that is working?

Change your thoughts and you change you life, step by baby step, moment by moment, day by day…

Enjoy!

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