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First Instructions

First of all, I want to congratulate you for being here and wanting to take a step closer to knowing yourself better. Not everyone has this desire, so good on you.

Why is knowing our own values so important and how could that help us become the healthiest, happiest, and best version of ourselves?

Although values can exist in both the conscious and subconscious parts of a person's mind, our subconscious part runs our life 90% of the time, so I believe we cannot hope to act against our core values and feel good about it, even though our conscious mind may want us to and will make us think that some values are our own when in some occasions they aren't.

Let me give you a personal example that will explain what I mean. Until the age of 27, I truly believed that one of my core values was money. I cared about it a lot, and on many occasions, I sacrificed my time, health, relationships, and even my purpose (which I didn't even know at the time) in order to acquire more.

Pursuing money over my other values made me miserable, and it all made sense when I discovered what my actual core values were, I'm talking about inner peace, freedom, and health.

When I became aware of these values through a similar exercise to the one you're about to do, I became very conscious of them. This made it impossible for me to neglect them again, and it drastically reduced the number of decisions I make that don't align with them. Whenever I do make a decision that goes against my values, I feel stressed, frustrated, and not like myself again. This usually brings my awareness to the fact that I'm going against my values, and I then make the necessary corrections to align myself back with them. Something that wasn't possible in the past when I wasn't yet aware of what values were or what mine in particular were.

Are there right or wrong, better or worse values?

Not really. As long as you're not hurting others, your values are your values. So, for example, if money is more important to you than your health or love, that's okay too, even though so far I haven't come across one single person that did this exercise and had that result.

We don't necessarily have to have the same values either. The real game we're playing here is the awareness game and our goal is to embrace who we really are.

Can values change? Yes. Values exist both in the conscious and subconscious mind. Some values may be hidden in the form of a shadow, which is defined as the unconscious aspects of the self that are typically considered unacceptable or negative by us. Shadow work, which we have a complete and separate course about on our website, is the process of bringing these unconscious aspects of the self into conscious awareness and working through them to integrate them into the whole self. Values could either never change, sometimes it would take a long time to change, or they could change in an instant. An instant change in values could be due to a traumatic experience, a change in perspective, a sudden change in our environment, sometimes it's not even about us but perhaps about someone close to us.


Probably the best example of a quick change in values that I have seen, is when people are told by their doctor that they have a major illness and limited time left to live. Suddenly, even if they had not valued it before, these people start to place a high value on their health and relationships as you would guess right? Their perspective suddenly changed.

Now, let's jump into the first part of the test Section A and let’s find out what your values are, shall we? I assume you have already printed the three pages from the link above. If you haven't, please do so, before we start filling up Section A of our test sheet.

Instructions "Section A"

In Section A of our test sheet, we have a list of values that are also the most common values among people. I have left three blank spaces at the bottom of the page in case you have some extra values that are very important to you and you want to add them to the list. Simply rate each value by ticking only one of the four circles on its same lane based on how important they are to you.

I need you to empty your mind and not attach any agenda or desired outcome to this exercise. Do not think about anything or anyone in particular, such as your business, partner, or what you should do or what others would want you to do. Focus solely on yourself and what you truly value in the present moment.

Is happiness very important to you? Then tick the fourth circle. Is family not important? Then tick the first circle, and so on.

Some values might not resonate with you, or you might give them a different meaning than another person might. That's perfectly fine since this test is to discover your own values. Associate the meaning that is most important to you with any of the values on the list. For example, the Family value can have a totally different meaning for different people. For some, it's strictly related to bloodlines such as parents, siblings, or children. Some would include close friends in it too. Some would want nothing to do with their bloodline and consider their friends their only family. Some may consider their dog their family. The possibilities are endless, so what I need you to do is to find the most important meaning to you about any of the values on the list and rate it based on that. If you want to make sure to remember what you meant when you rated a value, write your personal meaning next to it.

Once you have finished with this, you can move to Section B.

Instructions (Section B)

From Section A, select the 10 most important values to you and write them down in order of importance on the list in Section B. Don't spend too much time overthinking the order of importance at this stage, just sort them out in less than 2 minutes.

If you have 13 values rated as Very important in Section A, only pick your best 10. If you only have 7 values rated as "Very important," then go ahead and pick 3 more from the Important ones so that you have a total of 10 to work with in this section.

Instructions (Section C)

In the first part of the exercise, you will compare each value in Section B to every other value also in Section B.

For each pair of values, you will need to decide which one is more important to you today.

Once again, stay present here and do not pick based on what others expect from you or what you would like to value more in the future, this exercise is about you and what really matters to you right at this moment.

So just go ahead and circle the value that you believe is more important for each pair.

In the second part, once you have gone through all the pairs and circled at least one value per pair, you will count up the number of times each value was circled.

Write this number down next to each value on the very last part of Section C.

Instructions (Section D)

Now simply select the three values with the highest number next to them to identify your top 3.

You may want to take 5-10 minutes or more if you need, to really contemplate these 3 values.

They might bring something up for you and this can be a very pivotal moment for you, especially if you never meditated on this before, so take all the time you need before jumping into the last exercise.

Instructions (Section E)

Well done! You have discovered your top three values.

From now on, you can pursue a life where you honor them as much as possible, if you like.

In the following exercise in Section E, I ask you to write examples of how you live each of these three values in both your personal and work life.

Conclusions

Depending on your current level of values-awareness and application in daily life, it may take some time to consistently live by your values, in both everyday and work settings.

The last exercise in Section E should have provided clarity on where you stand.

Do you honor your values only in your personal life and not at work? Or do you honor them only at work? Maybe you don't honor them at all?

Regardless of your answers to these questions, you are now more aware of your reality, and awareness alone is a great start.

What's better than awareness alone? The skill of "setting healthy boundaries with others".

Those who do not share your values may try to obstruct your journey, consciously or subconsciously, not because they are bad people, but because their ego will want to protect them from what's new and unfamiliar.

They will challenge your values in various ways, and it will be up to you to find the most efficient way to deal with them. We offer a course on this topic, and we hope it will help you and provide great value to you.

As mentioned earlier, some values may be hidden in the form of a shadow, which refers to the unconscious aspects of the self that we typically consider unacceptable or negative. Shadow work involves bringing these unconscious aspects of the self into conscious awareness and integrating them into the whole self, so make sure to check our courses below in case any of the mentioned course makes sense to you.

In case you want to improve self awareness, we suggest starting with Meditation. Vipassana will teach you how to stop reacting to body sensations, which in majority of cases control people lives and decision.

Also feel free to book a 1-on-1 live call with Nick if you need support, guidance, or customized direction to choose the most efficient path for you, based on your personal goals and challenges.

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