Why Aligning Your Values With Your Work is So Important
Our values are things that are important to us.
They can include things like: health, freedom, integrity, trust, honesty, loyalty, faithfulness, and many other concepts.
Values are central to our motivation, behaviour, relationships and our happiness.
When considering a career or a new job or what business to start it is very important to find something that aligns with your values.
If we don’t then we can end up not enjoying what we are doing and even hating it.
Stress is the biggest cause of illness, disease and mental health problems.
Recently I worked with someone who was very unhappy in their job.
But they felt that they had to stay there otherwise they would be deemed a failure by others.
Because the job paid good money they thought that was a good reason for staying.
But this person hated every day at work.
It was taking its toll physically, mentally and emotionally.
They had come to resent the job they had and had been signed off work with stress.
When we did a values-elicitation exercise we found that money was way down that person’s list. In fact they hadn’t even included it as something they value.
When we put their values in order of importance (1 to 10) we found which values were most important to them and which were least important to them.
What we found was that their current job (which was the cause of their stress) wasn’t aligned with their values at all!
So I asked this person to think of what kind of job they could do that aligned (as closely as possible) with their most important values.
Now this wasn’t an easy exercise to do, but it was definitely worth it.
This person has now resigned from the job they hate and has applied for jobs more in line with their values.
Remember this …….
You should value yourself enough to design a life in line with your highest values.
Otherwise you’ll just become a slave to the 9 to 5.
To help you here are the videos of how to do a values elicitation exercise (they are a few years old but the process is the same):
PS: This is how I decided to start my business teaching self-defence and then moving into teaching physical intervention, conflict management, etc.