I'm sitting here at my desk with a huge smile on my face after watching a Jimmy Fallon & Billy Joel video someone posted on Facebook.

Why am I sharing this with you?  Because it's just contributed to one of my values and core desired feelings of HAPPINESS for the day and it took about 3 minutes of my morning.  It made me smile & laugh! {Note: I'm a massive Jimmy Fallon fan, his videos are hilarious!!}

 

You know that feeling when you can't get the grin off your face, you feel lightness in your chest and happiness just takes over everything.    I love that feeling and you know something else, I not only love that feeling, but I love it every single day.  It's like a drug, a drug you want to more and more of and the amazing thing is that once you realise that you can give it to yourself by the things you decide to do, then you seek it out everyday until you find it.   That's a pretty great pursuit to have if you ask me!

So how are you going to find yours?

Well today I want to talk about identifying your values.

What are Values?

Values are beliefs are what guide us in the way we make decisions, live our lives and interact with others.  Most of the time our values and beliefs have developed from our family and childhood stage of life.  Many people lack real clarity about what their most important values are if you were to ask them.  I think all of us think we know what our values are, which is great, but how well do you know them, what do they mean to you and how do you apply them to your life every day?   Taking the time to do this exercise is a great start to moving your mind in the right direction.   I have to say that since defining my values and having them sitting on my computer (image below) and my journal has had a huge impact on guiding my actions, mindset and focus for the day to ensure I fulfill all or some of them in some way.  

So today's task is for you to work out what your top 5 values are.  You need to have less or more that's up to you but 5 is a pretty good number.   Once you've done this exercise I would love you to share in the comments below what yours are!

How to Identify Your Top 5 Values

The process of identifying your top 5 values is fairly simple, but not necessarily easy.  It will be easy for you to pick 10-15 values, but it will be much harder to get to your top 5 values.  But getting to those top 5 is where the the ‘good stuff' is, so it’s worth the effort.

1.  Review the values list below and write down the 10 to 15 values that you consider to be the most important for you.
2.  Reduce that list down to the top 5 values.  Ask yourself which values are really the most important to you.  
3.  Put your top 5 values in priority order of importance

Tip:

You may want to use post it notes and use a ranking system, or another way which I used was to go through the list and cross off the ones that didn't resonate with me.  I had 20 by this stage

Once I was left with the ones that were more aligned with me I started my 2nd round of elimination, this time being tougher with what was a NON-NEGOTIABLE. This took me down to about 10.

As you continue to do this, you’ll soon whittle your values list down to 5.  I also grouped some, for example : Love (Family, Friendship), Happiness (Fun, Adventure, Humour), Creativity, Knowledge, Connection & Collaboration.

There are no hard and fast rules to this, so do what works for you.  I know that fun, adventure and humour all contribute to my Happiness so I grouped them under that heading.

Your Top 5 Values List

At the end of this process you should have a prioritised list of your top 5 most important values in order.  Keep this list handy — write it down somewhere so you can easily refer to it when needed.  It will help you when you've got a difficult decision to make or you just need something to center you.

That's all you need to do for today.  It's just about one step at a time.  Really look at this list and think about what you do in your life that you think helps you live these values everyday.

For me:

Love – I give and get lots of kisses and cuddles from my family

Happiness – the above obviously gives me happiness but then in happiness I also mean laughter, so I try and laugh – I mean really laugh or experience something uplifting every day.  Usually there's a video or music or something that is in my Facebook feed or I see that gives me a chuckle.

Creativity – I don't get this every day but I try and think of how I can do things differently that could help me learn something new or do something better.

Knowledge – I'm lucky that in my job I learn without fail every day

Connection – I try to schedule things in my diary so that I can meet up with people, phone a friend, connect with the hubby in the evening or have an interaction that makes me feel like I've given something.

If you don't already know, the name THE CONNECTION EXCHANGE came from my own experience that when I connect with someone awesome there is an exchange of learning, love, knowledge, friendship, experience, happiness or insight.

I want this to be a place where you exchange all of these things through the experiences you have with me and the wider CE community.

I would love you to share your values once you've done this in the comments below!

Go on, be brave!

You'll feel all the better for it, I promise! 🙂