A Growing Me

• What do we do makes us different, it’s our behaviors.
• How do we react to things makes us different, it’s our feelings and emotions.
• What do we wear and how do we look makes us different, it’s our personal outfit and outlook.

But WHY do we behave & react differently? On top of the environment we were in, fundamentally it’s how we think, and ultimately what we VALUE differently that make us different.

• Someone who values family more than career, would try to end work on time and spend time with family.
• Someone who values time more than money, would pay for services even though there’s a big cost, to save time.
• Someone who values authenticity more than relationship, would talk about the truth even though it may not be something pleasant to hear.

Values shape who we are, what we do, and play a big role in happiness in our life too. Understanding our values and people around us, we can avoid a lot of conflicts and manage our emotions a lot better.

My own simple definition: It’s the core characteristics that we believe in, that are important to us.

You may have different values on different dimensions, on life attitudes, marriage, career, family, health, community, nature, relationship, money, curiosity, peace, freedom and many different aspects.

• What an ideal day look like for you?
• What makes you angry?
• Who is a role model that you admire? Could be someone in real life, in a movie, or in a book.

The keywords you get from these questions form the majority of dimensions that you values the most. You can rank your values and select the top 3. For example, some people may have the top values to be:

Family, Impact, Health. You may think that these are the top values for everyone, but that’s not necessarily true. Look at how many people that over worked and neglected health or family, the core reason was how much they valued career over others.

When your value has been stepped on, you feel extremely angry. It hits the more core parts of our hearts. For example, if you value family a lot more than career, when someone puts extra work for you that ruined your plan to spend time with family, you may be extremely angry with it. But if someone values money a lot more at that point of time, he may sacrifice family time for work commitments, and may easily get angry at kids who disturbs them from work.

Two exercises for you:

1. Think about a recent scenario that you got others angry or others got you angry. At that time, what was the other person’s core value? And what was your value?
2. Spend time to talk to people that are around you, friends and colleagues, find out what they value the most. You may find that the people that you’re most comfortable with, are the ones that share most common values with you. And discovering the different values on the people that you’re not comfortable with, you may find new solutions for a better relationship.

I remember that when I just graduated from university, my main goal was to find a job and be able to survive. My mind was fully focused on how I can make more money and save money. I would not spend money over higher quality of food (health was not prioritized obviously), and a stable career with steady revenue was really important to me. I hardly went home as air tickets were expensive items.

Money > Health > Family >>> everything else

However when I was able to settle down more, managed to get a roof over my head, having kids, my priorities and values changed significantly. Families and health got a lot more important. I also started to explore more about how I can be more helpful to others, and create some positive impact to the people around me.

Family > Healthy > Being Impactful >>> everything else

Accept yourself that at different life stages, priorities and values might be very different. However creating awareness around what values you want vs. what actions you’re doing, may guide you towards what you really want. Sometimes we’re too buried in daily busy work, and forget about what we value the most.

Welcome to leave me a reply in this post about what are your top 3 values right now. Alternatively you can email me at renee@agrowingme.com if you’re interested for a discussion around our values or improve this post!

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