I’m not sure the picture really matches our topic this week, but I couldn’t let it go to waste.
The weeks are flying by right now. I like staying busy, and my brain tends to eat itself when I don’t have enough to do, but I’ve felt a bit overwhelmed the past few months.
I’ve had a bunch of good opportunities lately, and it’s been hard to turn any of them down. This is a good problem to have, but it highlights an important point: for something to be an open door, it has to align with your values, your character, and your long-term plans to keep you from burning out and giving up.
The Value of Values
I love talking to people about their values. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I often ask people what their values are and then follow that question by asking what an invisible person who has followed them around for 30 days would say their values are.
This is a cool exercise because it highlights one of the primary problems I encounter in helping people recognize and assess the opportunities in their lives: many of us don’t realize that the values we think we hold and the values we actually live out in our day-to-day lives are different.
It's easy to tell ourselves that we adhere to humanity's best values. The most common values I hear people claim are things like integrity, family, honesty, respect, responsibility, compassion, loyalty, authenticity, faith, humility, and courage.
These are probably better than aspiring to openly negative characteristics like greed, laziness, and a cutthroat mentality, but I’m not entirely sure about that. There’s a hidden danger in thinking we value things when we don’t back them up with actions, time, and energy.
I’ve often found that the problems we don’t know we have are much more dangerous than the problems we do know we have. The invisible person question helps highlight this. I can’t tell you how many times someone has had to acknowledge that their time and energy didn’t align with the values they claimed to have once I asked it.
This isn't meant to be judgmental or critical. I came up with this question by recognizing that my time and energy didn't match the values I claimed to have.
Years ago, if anyone had asked me what I valued, I probably would have said something about spending my time wisely, caring for others, and hard work.
I had the hard work part down, but I realized one day that if someone saw me behind closed doors, they wouldn't think I spent my time wisely due to the amount of time I spent playing video games. They also wouldn't think I valued other people because I selfishly chose to do what I wanted most of the time. This realization changed how I spent my time.
Be Honest About Your Values
It’s also important not to deceive ourselves into thinking we have to claim certain values just because everyone else does or because it seems like the right thing to do. In assessing opportunities, we must pursue things that align with our values, or we'll burn out and fail to accomplish what we want.
I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not, but I value freedom to a near-pathological degree.
I will choose freedom over security in almost any instance, and if I’m not careful, I can get myself into trouble with it. This was an important realization for me because I have a family who relies on me. It's wrong for me to jeopardize their well-being in my pursuit of freedom.
By recognizing how much I value freedom, I’ve been able to make decisions that give my family some degree of security. If I hadn’t been honest with myself about how much I value freedom, I wouldn’t have been able to address it and make changes when necessary. I would have believed some nonsense about this being “just the way I am”, and the people who depend on me would have paid the price.
I don’t think I value community as much as I should. I care about other people, and I’ll do just about anything to help them, but when I need something, my first instinct is to figure out how to do it on my own. I can’t think of a time when I wished someone was there to help me, and I don’t know that I’ve ever been lonely. I enjoy time by myself and almost always choose to be alone.
Recognizing how much I value solitude was also important because it showed me that I need to choose to spend time with other people. As I've gotten older, I've also gotten better at asking for help. This has improved my relationships because, without meaning to, I had created a feeling of debt in others by helping but refusing to be helped. I didn’t mean to do this, but I did it because I wasn’t aware of a value that I held.
Alignment or Burnout
To do big things, you have to be willing to work hard all the time. This is impossible if the things you pursue don’t align with your values. If someone offered me job that required me to be in an office from 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday, following a set protocol each day, I wouldn’t take it.
The security might be nice, but it wouldn’t be an open door for me because it would clash with how much I value freedom. I don’t think I would stick with it for long, and that’s not the right way to do business.
Likewise, a job that required me to participate in a bunch of company events and group activities wouldn’t be something I’d stick with for long. My wife and I are complete opposites here. She loves the brokerage she’s at because they do volunteer work together and have dozens of team-building events and holiday celebrations throughout the year. I only have to go to a few of them, but even those few feel like too many. An opportunity like that wouldn't be an open door for me.
Be Honest About Your Goals
This one might seem obvious as well, but we have to be honest about our goals if we’re going to assess opportunities in any real way. This is a bit trickier than it seems because many of us have goals that we’re either afraid to admit or embarrassed about. This is a guaranteed path to bad choices.
When I talk about goals with business leaders, they often want to couch them in noble terms. This makes sense; we’re taught to do this from a very young age. But if we’re not honest about our goals, we may be headed in the wrong direction, and this will lead to poor assessment of opportunities.
I remember one conversation with a business owner who was intent on being the best in his industry. Something felt off, so I kept digging into the idea of being the best: Why did it matter to him? What was being the best going to do for him? This felt like a fruitless line of questioning at times because it seems obvious that we all want to be the best, but there is value in knowing why we want to be the best.
We kept digging into this question until he finally acknowledged that he wanted to be the best so he could “flex on” his competitors. He didn’t want to be the best quietly; he wanted people to know he was the best and to make it obvious.
This helped us change our direction, primarily by shifting the structure of his organization to put him at the forefront instead of being in the background. This inspired him to work even harder and aligned more with who he was.
I know some people will want to judge this, but this isn’t a matter of good or bad or right or wrong. Some people are workhorses, and some people are show ponies. We need both in this world, and you have to be honest with yourself about which one you are.
Years ago, I decided to invest in Instagram as the social media platform I would use because I read in a blog post that it was supposed to grow the most over the next few years. I didn't consider the fact that I don't have a good sense of aesthetics and I don't like taking pictures of myself. If I had my way, I would write and remain anonymous. Instagram was a poor choice of platform for me because of this, but I jumped in because I thought growing my business was more important than staying to true to my nature. I cultivated a following on Instagram through sheer stubbornness, but I hate using it and more and more often I neglect it.
If you can learn to be honest about who you are, what you want, and what your long-term goals are, it will save you a lot of time and energy because the open doors you walk through will align with who you want to be and where you want to go.
Knowing Your Values
There are thousands of exercises out there to help you determine what your values are, but the simplest thing any of us can do is look at how we spend our time, both internally and externally.
I have many of my clients conduct a time audit by having them track their time hour-by-hour for a month and then analyze the results the same way they would if they were trying to figure out where their money is going.
This isn’t always a pleasant experience, and they’re often unhappy with what they learn about themselves, but we can’t change our values if we don’t know what they are. This was how I found out I was playing too many video games, and it changed my life in several ways.
Not only did it free up time for me to do the things that mattered, but it also forced me to ask myself why I was so intent on escaping from reality. This led to an even deeper shift in how I lived.
You can also learn what you value by observing where your mind goes when unoccupied. What kinds of things do you daydream about? What do your repetitive thoughts center around?
Don’t accept easy answers here. If you often daydream about being rich, ask yourself what about being rich appeals to you. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re greedy or
shallow; a desire to have money might mean that you value security or that you want to have enough money to share with others. Dig into your why and see what’s there.
Our past is also a gold mine for determining what we value. Look at the times in your life when you’ve been most fulfilled or unfulfilled and see what was present and what was lacking. You’ll often find that your values were being lived out during the times you were fulfilled and that they were absent when you were unfulfilled.
Journal Prompts
· What are the top five values I hold? How do my daily actions and decisions reflect (or not reflect) these values?
· If an invisible observer followed me for a week, what values would they say I prioritize? How does this compare to the values I claim to hold?
· Can I think of a time when I pursued an opportunity that didn't align with my core values? How did this turn out?
· How do my current long-term goals align with my core values? Are there any goals that I need to adjust to better reflect what matters to me?
· Are there any goals I’m pursuing that don’t align with who I am or what I want?
· If I were to conduct a time audit of my past week, what would it tell me about my actual values?
· What do my daydreams reveal about my values and desires?
· When have I felt fulfilled in my life? What values were being honored during that time? How can I bring more of those values into my current life and decisions?
Until Next Week
Thank you for reading. I appreciate the feedback I’ve gotten on these recent posts, so please continue to share your thoughts as we explore this direction together.
Take care,
James
THE PICTURE DOES IN FACT FIT!!!
How many times can I say your posts are amazingly insightful and actionable! And I agree with Shantelle, the picture does fit! 😀