Are You Ready for Change?
Necessary for successful change are the attitudes and qualities brought to the process rather than any technique you may follow, and these qualities have been known for millennia. These qualities...
When considering change, having a direction you would like the change to take you is important. This can be as simple as knowing how you would like things to be after the change has occurred. But any positive change you invest time and energy into ought to be guided and fuelled by what deep-down you hold to be important. These deep motivations are called values.
Values act as signposts to guide and keep us moving in the direction of most importance. Values may include being loved or respected by others, demonstrating love and caring for others or the environment, being healthy, showing compassion, experiencing happiness, fun, peace, or a desire for adventure. You may have been raised in such a way that you also value truth and honesty or commitment.
Values energise and motivate actions, so if you value love, for example, you wish to promote love towards others and receive love in return. You action this value by being kind, compassionate and considerate of others. If you value adventure, you may action this value by globe-trotting to new and exotic world destinations or by reading Wilber Smith novels if you have a more modest budget. Actions informed by our values are termed committed actions.
Values differ from goals in important ways that fundamentally distinguish the two. Goals are short term accomplishments we aim to achieve. By their very nature they can be listed and checked off as we proceed through life. Values, on the other hand, are directions and pointers toward a valued life which are never completed in the way goals can be. We may have multiple goals informed by our values and typically we have lots of values to do the informing and to energise and motivate our actions.
Before embarking upon significant change, why not take a few moments to consider and write down what is important to you. What do you hope to achieve from therapy? What are your values, which can serve to guide and fuel your change process? Perhaps more importantly, what values can you return to for motivation and guidance if you find you’ve lost your direction or gone off track to re-energise your motivation?
If you would like to undertake an exercise to help you identify your values, we have developed a worksheet you can use for this purpose.
Want to download this post as a PDF file? Click here.
Download the related worksheet here.
Please indicate if you agree or disagree and share your own thoughts or other readings with our audience.
Was this post helpful?