Purposeful living: Integrating your core values in everyday decisions
Abstract:
Wherever I turn, everyone seems to be “purposeful” and “intentional” these days. My impression is that by now, these words mean something different to each individual.
There’s a wonderful, exciting core in purposeful living, though, which I’d like to explore with you. Your mission today is to learn how you can live purposefully by integrating your core values in your daily life.
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Background: Definitions
Before we proceed, I feel we need to all be on the same page regarding what we’re actually talking about. So here are two definitions.
Purposeful living: a Life that expresses your own purpose; purpose being not what you do, it’s why you do it. This Why can be expressed in activities, jobs, your life in general.
Core values: Values make up the original, the deepest authentic core of your being. To find your top 5 values, check out a list such as this one and weigh them against each other until you’re left with 5.
Task: Integrating your values
First of all, to live purposefully and integrate your values, you don’t need to change your job, at least in most cases. Instead, I suggest you start by asking yourself the following questions. Your answers will suggest your further course of action.
What part of your life already expresses your values?
Can you do more of that? Shift the emphasis?
Is there one value that’s represented less than the others?
In what way could you integrate it more? Think job, passion, hobby, relationships, voluntary work, sport.
From here on in, you can determine your next steps. Monitor your progress regularly and make adjustments as needed.
This is an excellent time to get coaching, by the way. Every coach with a recognised qualification knows about values and can help you integrate them into your daily life.
Transkript
Here follows the exact transcript of everything that’s said in the video. You can find the same text as subtitles in the video itself (subtitles are activated via the symbols on the bottom right).
'Purposeful living' is such a buzzword these days. Let's strip away the hype, shall we?
Hello and welcome to this week's Wild Spirits News. My name is Sibylle, and I help women between 40 and 60 to do lots of what they love and to find their unique life purpose. If that sounds interesting, check out my website, wildspiritscoaching.com.
Today's topic is 'Purposeful living - integrate your core values into everyday decisions'. W herever I seem to turn these days, people 'live purposefully' or 'intentionally'. These terms are so overused that I'm beginning to feel like they have lost all meaning or rather, they mean whatever the individual chooses for them to mean. There is, however, a wonderful and very exciting core to purposeful living that I would love to explore with you. So your mission today is to learn how to live purposefully by integrating your core values into your daily life.
Background
The background to this is 'Definitions'. Before we proceed, I feel it would be a good idea if we all were on the same page when it comes to certain terms that I'm going to use in the rest of this video. So here are two quick definitions.
The first is 'Purposeful living'. So, to me this is living according to your own life purpose, expressing your life purpose in your life, the life purpose being - as I've said before - not something you do, not a job or a career, but rather why you are doing the things that you're doing. And this is why it can be expressed in any number of things: in a job, in your everyday life, in your relationships even, in your hobbies, passions and interests.
The second definition is your core values. Values are the deepest, the most authentic part of your being. They are unchangeable, and they're unique to you. In order to find your five top values, you could- You could do that by checking out a list such as the one that I'm going to link in the description of the video. You can download that list, and then you look at these values and weigh them against each other until you're left with the five that mean the most to you. That doesn't mean you don't have any other values, it just means that these are your five top values. These are the ones that are most central to you and your being.
Task
The task is 'Integrating your values'. First of all, you don't need to change your job or career in order to integrate your values or live purposefully, at least in most cases. The few cases where you might have to do this are those where your job goes directly against one of your values, because that can be quite dangerous, that can actually be detrimental to your health, your physical and mental health, if what you do in your job or a relationship or elsewhere is in direct opposition to one of your core values. In every other case, you can work around it. So instead, I have put together a couple of questions that you can ask yourself, and based on your answers to these questions, you can determine your way forward.
These questions are: "What part of your life already expresses your values?" For example, what part of your job is already most aligned with your top values? And once you've identified that, you ask: "Can you do more of that?" Can you maybe shift the emphasis, shift the focus a little bit so you will do more of the things that are aligned or the most aligned with your values? "Is there one value that's represented less than the others?" And if so, "In what way could you integrate it more?", like, what could you do jobwise or in your relationships or again in a passion, hobby or interest, to put this value more front and center, or to even start expressing it, if it is one of your core values.
And like I said, based on these answers you determine your next steps. Also monitor your progress regularly, maybe once a month or so, see where you are, make adjustments, because these things change. I mean, your values are unchangeable but the priorities of which value might be the most important to you, that can change in the course of a lifetime, so don't hesitate to make adjustments and keep adjusting. also how you express your values and in what way you're expressing them.
By the way, this is a perfect point in time to get coaching. Coaches like myself, but every qualified coach, every coach with a recognized qualification knows about values and can help you integrate those into your life more, if you wish to do that.
Let me know
And that brings me to the last point which is as usual 'Let me know'. Leave a comment below the video or reply to the email that you got the link to the video with and tell me where you stand on this. Do you maybe think it's just a buzz word and devoid of meaning when people speak of purposeful living, or do you try to live purposefully or more intentionally, or will you in the future? Maybe this video has inspired you? Just let me know, I'd love to read it, and of course I'll reply.
And like I said, if you'd like some more, check out my website, wildspiritscoaching.com, you can also join the community of Wild Spirits there by signing up for the newsletter, Wild Spirits News. It's 100% spam free, one email per week, and I share a lot of exclusive content there that I don't talk about anywhere else, so it's really worth it signing up for it. I'd love to have you. Have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye!