Know Thyself

My coaching process is largely based on helping my clients to develop and then ponder "powerful" questions. Many of these questions, at their core, deal with my clients values - more plainly put, these questions deal with what's really important to the person.

Values are the ideas and principles we hold most highly in our lives. They are personal and unique to each individual. It is through our values that we define ourselves. They are our magnetic north, and by following our values, we find our true selves.

It's important for us to identify and understand our personal values, because it's important to know and then understand who we really are. Going through the act of discovering our values can give us the opportunity to realize, not only what is truly important to us, but also which of our values we may have been holding onto that aren't actually ours at all.

Many of our "values" have been unconsciously inherited from our parents or our social environment, and when we do this work we may come to find that we have no, or little actual investment in some of them at all. We may, in deed, find that there are some other things that are important to us that we may have never consciously considered.

After our values have been identified, they should be placed in a hierarchy. This way we can be clear about which things in our lives are deal-breakers and which, while still important, can slide aside to accommodate someone else.

Once we understand what our values are, we can engage the concept of personal integrity. The first part of this concept is telling yourself the truth. The second part is aligning your thoughts and your actions with your values. And, the last part is holding your values as commitments and then keeping your commitments to yourself.

Communication is greatly enhanced by having a conscious handle on who we are. When we know what our values are, we have a tool by which we can measure who we're being against who we are, or at least who we want to be. This tool also enables us to have basic fact based conversations with others about who we are from the perspective of what's important to us. We can talk about what we need, what we want, and where we have wiggle room.

Aside from the fact that this process of discovery will help us to know who we are and to be able to communicate that, we will then also have a clearer ability to identify, understand, and handle value conflicts. (Most conflicts are value conflicts, both internal and external, and one telling sign is the discomfort of stress.) The next time you're upset you can ask, "Which of my values is being stepped on?" or "Where am I standing outside of my values?" Then you can address that issue directly.