Value Your Values for Fulfilment

We’ve spoken before about our “Hierarchy of Criteria”, the levels to which our concerns take precedence. Developed by Robert Dilts, as a reminder, here are the logical levels…

 Environment → Behaviours → Capabilities → Beliefs → Values → Identity

The concept is that each area (or level) is reliant on the one above it for successful application. For example, we will be unable to successfully behave in a particular way if we have not learnt the skill or have the capabilities required to do so.

Whenever I’m talking to someone about goal setting, this is my “go-to-tool” because it explains clearly why most goals we set are not achieved. Everything needs to be in place higher in the order for a change to stick.

For example, there are many people who set New Year’s Resolutions of “I will go to the gym more this year”. From a coaching perspective, the first thing we notice is that they are talking about a behaviour. If we are looking to solidify this as a goal, we must check higher in the hierarchy. Do they have the capability to go to the gym? Do they believe going to the gym will provide for them the exact result? And to go just one level higher… What value is in place that is the reason why you are not already undertaking this activity?

And there’s the rub… More often than not, we have values in place that are providing what we are looking for – which is why we are where we are. If we’d like to change a behaviour, we need to find the reason behind the value that has stopped us from doing it already.

As you can see, going higher in the hierarchy, if we do not see ourselves as an athlete, a sportsperson or a fitness fanatic, adjusting the behaviour is going to be very difficult to maintain. Before long our values and identity re-align our behaviours and we’re back to where we started.

The first part then for setting goals that stick, is in knowing your values, and knowing them well. Once this is in place, we can define our goals with our values in mind so there is already the congruence between value and behaviour, or we know our values well enough that we can adjust them if necessary to make a change to who we are.

If a value we have is “Life is to be enjoyed and savoured”, it is likely that we enjoy taking things slowly, relaxing, smelling the roses – not really activities that would motivate us to get to the gym. However, if we want or need to make a health change, we could adjust our value to be “A healthy life is to be enjoyed and savoured”, or “Life can only be savoured when it is healthy”.

All of a sudden, going to the gym, and in fact any healthy activity won’t be a struggle because it naturally aligns with the new value. The surprising point to note is that values are actually easier to change than behaviours because they only need to align with your Identity. Once your identity and values are in place, the lower levels – beliefs, capabilities, behaviours and environment all appear to fall into place naturally, with little struggle at all.

We’ll talk about this more in the future, but for now, why not complete our Values Worksheet. Discover what values you have in place that are the major influencers in your life.

The first section steps you through defining and discovering your values. The second section assists in refining and consciously strengthening the values you wish to play a more active role in your life. You can download our Values Worksheet here.

Please leave a comment about what you discover about yourself and how you found the exercise.

Build the values you want for your life so you can…

Live Your Ultimate Life.