How to Find Your Core Values - 4 Easy Steps

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Tired of going through life influenced by external factors and disempowering belief's? It's time to use these 4 easy steps to create your core values system and start living a life with empowered purpose.

Before I started my own Brazen journey, I never thought about the core values that were guiding my life. To tell you the truth – I didn’t even know what a core values system was, never mind how to find one in 4 easy steps.

Then I came across the definition below in a book I was reading:

BELIEFS –

The emotional connection to the stories we tell ourselves.

(What we think)

VALUES –

The emotional states that are important to us.

(How we want to feel)

And I thought to myself, “I want to feel happy!”

Instead of living a life anchored to the belief’s that were causing me misery and overwhelm, I was going to focus on doing things to change the way I felt.

So with that eureka moment, I got to reading, researching and working on how to cultivate my own set of core values to make me happy! And you know what? The 5 core values I created for myself not only changed the way I felt, but also completely changed the belief system that was so hard wired into my life.

Now my life is totally directed by my core values. I have achieved goals I never thought possible. My emotional state is constantly in the pursuit of those feel good emotions and yes, I am much happier!

Do you want to:

Get clear on what is actually important in your life?
Create a defined direction for everything you do?
Make quick decisions aligned with your personal intentions?
Live a life which makes you feel good?

Then you’re ready to learn how to find your core values in 4 easy steps!

What’s more – I’ve even got a free workbook for you to use to make the process even more simple!

CLICK THE LINK – GRAB YOUR DOWNLOAD – SET YOUR VALUES – CHANGE YOUR LIFE

How to Find Your Core Values – 4 Easy Steps

1 – Identify Your Pleasure Values

Make a list of the 10 most important values for your life

Think about:

What emotions give you the most pleasure?

Which feelings are most important for you to experience in your life on a consistence basis?

Look at the list below to give you some ideas.

It can take a while to create a definitive list, so take your time. You may also find your pleasure values are totally opposite from how you currently live your life. But that’s OK. Identifying the things that are important to you is making a plan for the future – no matter what your starting point.

Once you have a list of 10 values. Put them in order of importance.

2 – Identify Your Pain Values

Make a list of the 10 emotional states you want to avoid

Unsurprisingly, this step may be much easier than the first. If you’re anything like me, you will probably be able to rattle off a whole list of emotions you do not want to feeling on a daily basis.

From; anger, frustration, failure or guilt, write them all down and then create a top 10.

Look at the list again.

Is the way you’re living your life creating the emotions you’re trying to avoid?

With your list of 10 pain values, re-write them in the order of the most important emotional states you want to avoid experiencing on a regular basis. (1 being the most important.)

Look at your top 10 pleasure and pain list side by side. Taking the first 5 values from both lists – do you recognise any conflict between how you want to feel and the emotions you are trying to avoid? Are your pain values creating barriers to your pleasure values?

Step 3 is about to change that!

3 – Cultivate The Right Values

Decide who you want to become

So you know how you want to feel and you know what feelings you want to avoid. Let’s look into the future and think about the goals you want to achieve.

Do your pleasure values help you achieve those goals?

The values you’ve written so far, have been a reflection of your present situation, mindset and beliefs. It’s now time to think about the type of person you want to become in the future!

Re-write your top 10 pleasure values in the order you think they will rank for the new version of yourself. Think about the life and emotional state you want to create for your future self which will help you achieve your goals.

Don’t rush getting clear on those values. Review, revise and re-write until you are clear about what you require emotionally on a consistent basis.

Now re-write the top 5 pleasure values and top 5 pain values in order of importance for your future self. (This is the most important step when moving towards the life you want to experience.)

4 – Set the Right Rules for Your Values

Make it easier to feel good

Your rules are the beliefs about what has to happen in order for you to feel good about an experience. These beliefs are the trigger to creating the feeling of your pain or pleasure values.

It’s important to make it easy to feel good and hard to feel bad.

The rules you set must empower you to feel joy and take action.

Look at my example below for my health value which is number one in my core life values.

Make sure the rules you write for each of your core values empower you to stay motivated. Re-write and revise your rules so you can make feeling pleasurable emotions achievable.

And that’s it!

You now:

Have a defined value system to create the life you’re moving towards.
Know the rules for each value and those rules are empowering and achievable.
Are aware of your pain values and your current beliefs about their benefits.
Ready to set goals for your life aligned with your new value system.

In 4 easy steps you have learned how to find your core values. And with the free download of my Values Workbook, it’s even more simple!

From this point on, before you make any decisions, take any action or agree to other peoples requests – check that it aligns with your core values. You will soon start to see that by living by your core compass and new rules, life will have a way of feeling so much better.

Let me know in the comments below how you get on.