Values are the honest answer to the question, “What is most important to me?” Values define and refine your “intuition,” the feeling of what is right and what is wrong. Values provide the high-level direction for your decision-making. Not knowing your values and their relative hierarchy can get you into a lot of trouble. Frustration and destructive behavior, self-sabotage, and even crime are only a few symptoms of a simple, yet unconscious, problem: dis-alignment with your highest values.
Not knowing and not conforming to your highest values does not have to lead you to prison. Consider the times of making hard decisions, or hardly making decisions at all! If you knew your highest values, and what is most important to you—and in which order it is important to you—the decisions would make themselves. You would only have to choose the actions and strategies that align with your values. That would make you, naturally, feel aligned, satisfied and confident. Identify the values you’re holding currently and the hierarchy in which they are organized.
Step 1: Getting into a state of relaxation: Whenever working with a higher level structures, such as beliefs or values, it is always advisable to do so in a state of relaxation and having positive expectations. #
You do not work here with strong negative emotions, and having any random emotional storm might cause a conflict and hinder your exploration of your true values in life.First things first—do anything you have to do to become relaxed and comfortable. If you work with a client, induce a light trance, use some relaxation script (progressive relaxation is good, but remember to wake your client up before proceeding). Your client should be wide awake and not in hypnosis while working with this pattern.
Step 2: Complete a list of values by answering the 3 to el… #
What is most important to you? If you had your 80th birthday tonight, celebrating with relatives and friends, what kind of words would you most appreciate them saying about your life? If you had to give up on everything you have, but got to keep one characteristic of your “old life,” what would it be? Refer to the list of common values below to get some ideas.
Step 3: Establish the hierarchy by comparing each value to another. #
At this stage, you take each of the values you selected in the previous step and rank their importance.You do so by taking each value, in order, and comparing it to the other values. Is “health” more important to you than “affluence” (most likely)? So now “health” is bumped up the list, before “affluence”. Is “health” more important to you than “faith”? If so, it goes up the hierarchy again. And so on. You take each value and compare it to each other value in the list. It takes time and patience. But when you’re done, you will feel a very unique emotion: decisive composure.
Step 4: Conduct an eco-check. #
In many NLP patterns, we have a “Test” step as the last one. In this pattern, we prefer to do an ecology check since you cannot really test your values. Either you feel right about a value or you don’t. But your current values and the hierarchy in which they are organized might not be very useful for your current outcomes. Values and their hierarchy are changeable. Perform an eco-check by asking: “Does any of the challenges in my life seem logical now that I look at this list?” “Is there a better way of organizing my values so that they would fit my current needs? Common life values: Health, Love, Freedom, Contribution, Fun, Creativity, Family, Growth, Passion, Carefulness, Affection, Accomplishment, Decisiveness, Wisdom, Service, Talent, Simplicity, Virtue, Reliability, Friendship, Respect, Resolve, originality, Openness, Mindfulness, Longevity, Leadership, Intimacy, Generosity, Gentility, Faith, Grace, Enthusiasm, Experience, Uniqueness, Endurance, Dominance, Direction, Commitment, Security, Balance, Beauty, Care, Courage, Encouragement, Fitness, Agility, Helpfulness, Hospitality, Mastery, Impact, Modesty, organization, Peace, Power, Privacy, Reason, Realism, Serenity, Sympathy, Toughness, Trust, Youthfulness, Wonder, Punctuality, Productivity, Perseverance, Intuition, Independence, Flow, Discipline, Self-actualization, Charm, Certainty, Awareness.