Why Clarity of Values is Essential to Living with Alignment
The other night my husband and I spent some time working on our Aligned Parenting Workbook (because I not only wrote it but highly believe in it AND USE IT).
Anyway, we were specifically working on our values inventory.
And while I believe all of the exercises in the workbook are valuable, the values assessment is essential.
You guys, this is super important. To live with alignment we need to know what the target is and it’s usually our CORE values.
If you are not clear on what you or your family values most, you will WASTE a lot of time.
I promise that if you do not have a clear sense of values you will end up spending a lot of time living out other people’s values. Ask me how I know.
Um. . because I’ve lived it.
For a long time I was busy chasing after what other people were doing like their values were automatically supposed to be my values too that I never stopped to ask “what do I want to be about and what do I want our family to be about?”
Well, several years ago I finally asked. And decided to follow the path of alignment for myself and our family.
And so even though my husband and I have done the exercise before; it’s important to revisit periodically to make sure that our actions and activities are aligned with our values.
Honestly, all of the values sound good. Sure, I want to be about generosity and kindness and adventure and creativity and EVERYTHING. But if I try to be about everything, then nothing really ends up being truly THE most important and I end up spending my time and energy on activities and projects that really are not my passion.
I don’t want that for myself and I don’t want that for my family.
So together hubs and I went through our individual lists and come up with a family list with values that we feel are the “most important” for us.
We then hold up potential commitments and activities to our list to determine if they “fit” with our most importants (our core values).
If they do then we try to make them happen. If they do not, we shelf them or give them less priority to other things.
Friends, do this for me. Do it for yourself and for your family.
TODAY take some time to go through this values assessment. Pray about it if you want beforehand, asks God to reveal what He wants most for you/your family. And then circle your top 5-7 values that you want to LIVE out.
Values List
Because living with alignment and being a person of integrity is being clear on what you value as most important so you can show it through your actions.
Living out of alignment keeps us following the “shoulds” of others instead of our own truths. Let’s start shaping our own path!
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