Alanz Eyes

Finding your highest values

March 17th, 2007 - Posted by Alan Howard

Deidre and I are in Sydney right now, taking it easy and visiting those that we’re close to. We’re here essentially to catch up with her friends and family, but I’ve taken the time to catch up with my friend Peter as well. He was going to run a ‘making wealth’ seminar today, but it was postponed instead. Luckily for me, he took me through it anyway.

Not only was it a privilege to enjoy a one-on-one session with him, it was an eye-opening experience for myself. The essence of the seminar - I’ll call it that, even though it was just him and me - was to discover your values in order to align yourself with them. When you understand what’s really important to you, you can move forward in your life in a way that’s harmonious to your purpose, rather than at odds with it.

Think about what your values are. You might come up with all manner of values, including family, health, financial stability, etc. But when you look at your life today, in a really serious and in-depth manner, you can see what your true values are by seeing what you do with your life right now.

For example, you might say that spending time with your family is one of your highest values, but then you realise that you’re working 14-hour days and hardly seeing them. It might look like spending time with your family is NOT one of your highest values, because if it was, why aren’t you spending time with them? So this process might help you discover that one of your highest values is actually being able to support your family.

When you can determine the true values in your life, you can find harmony in your purpose. Instead of kicking yourself for not spending time with your family, you can realise that your purpose - at this time - is to support them and help them achieve their own goals.

For myself, I discovered that one of my highest values was loyalty. Freedom, of course, is one of them too, and I originally thought I valued freedom and independence. However, I came to understand that loyalty was far more appropriate for me. I discarded independence, as you can’t be independent of those you’re loyal to…

After working out my top 5 values in life, I had to put them in order of importance. That was:

1. Loyalty
2. Financial Security
3. Freedom
4. Growth
5. Integrity

My loyalty to those I love is of more importance to me than my financial security, because I would give someone I loved all of my savings if they were in dire need of it themselves. But freedom was less important than my financial security, because you can’t really be free if you can’t afford to travel and do the things you want… And then growth and integrity come as 4th and 5th.

Now that I know my top 5 values in life, I can work out how to live my life in alignment to those values. One of the exercises that I will be doing when I get back to Canberra (when I have the time to do it) will be to write down 200 things that I can do if I have the financial abundance to do them.

If you have all the money you could ever possibly need, what would you do with it? How would you use that money to further your highest values?

The object of the exercise is that, after writing out 200 (or more if you can think of them) things you would do if you had unlimited financial abundance, you begin to realise that some of the things you write are things you could do right now.

So then you start doing them. Right now.

The seminar was great, and I’m really glad that I was able to attend. I’m really glad Peter was able to take me through it. He’s such a good friend….

One of the things I wrote down was that when I have financial abundance, a portion of my continuing income will be donated to him in order to help him further his own goals. Of course, his own financial abundance will allow him to do that, but you can never have enough money or resources to change the world…

Entry Filed under: Create Your Reality