Your Why: Putting it in to practice
Today marks the final episode of this series where we’ve focused on uncovering and harnessing your Why. It’s actually been incredibly helpful to me personally to re-visit this process and really dig deep in to what it means to live my Why, what that looks like, and importantly, how to translate that in to personal values which I can apply to every day life.
As I mentioned last week, I’ve sometimes struggled to take my personal Why and use it to help steer me in smaller, more everyday decisions and that’s why I’ve focused on distilling the big picture Why, my eulogy, in to a list of personal values. It’s these values that we talk about today, and after last week I know what my values are. Compassion. Adventure. Responsibility. Today we talk about how to apply them and the ways in which they impact our life.
I’ve spoken about this before, but having our values clearly designated also helps steer us when faced with a difficult decision. We can refer back to our decision or the options facing us and ask if they bring us closer to or further away from our values. Often, although not always, that’s enough motivation to make a decision that we can look back on and be glad of.
And finally, in a dorky kind of way, I also like to put some of my decisions on a values scale. I’ll ask myself, “On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being least compassionate and 10 being most, where does this choice lie?” The helpful thing with doing it this way is that we can see that not everything is going to be a 10. In fact, most things aren’t going to be a 10. But aiming for more compassion over less is a good place to work towards.
This approach means that I’m aware of compromise (I live with, work with and spend time with other people and compromise is always going to be part of that) and embrace the fact that sometimes I’ll fall short. That works for me and helps me to view things through a much longer-term lens, one that allows for tilting and the ups and downs of a life that is ever-shifting.
This week’s action is to nominate one change or decision you can make this week and to place it on your own dorky values scale. Is it more or less of your value? Closer or further away?
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of poggies on finding your Why. Feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
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