by the late Bill Harris (1950-2018), founder of Centerpointe Research Institute
Your values sit at the root of your thoughts, feelings and actions...all of which, in turn, directly impacts your results in life.
So it is really, really important to take a magnifying glass to your deepest values, and uncover those things that drive you at your deepest level.
Then, you can put those values to work for you in productive, powerful, and even magnetic ways to attract the things, people and situations you desire most in life.
So, let’s begin.
What Are Values...Exactly?
Values are unconscious filters that determine what you focus on and how you spend your time. Simple as that. (Simple and powerful.)
Go beyond your basic values of being a good parent, son/daughter, friend, worker, philanthropist, etc. and look at the things that drive you. If you were to list your values you might include:
- Financial Independence
- Fulfilling Relationships
- Marriage/Romance
- Meaningful Work
- Travel
Let’s call these the PULL of the push/pull dynamic. Focusing on these things in a positive way will give your mind instructions to create them.
'Pull' Values
You also most certainly have some values that you focus on in a negative way, such as:
- I don’t want to stay in this lousy town (job, relationship)
- I don’t want to get hurt in a love relationship
- I don’t want to live paycheque to paycheque
- I don’t want to be alone
- I don’t want to fail
Let’s call these the PUSH of the push/pull dynamic, as in push away, so that you avoid these things at all costs.
'Push' Values
However... and this is critical to know:
Your mind doesn’t discern between the push and pull, the positive and the negative. It works to create whatever you focus on.
And the more emotion you pour into your values, thoughts, and feelings, the harder your brain works to create them for you.
In other words, focusing on things in a negative way will give your mind instructions to create negative things.
When you identify your “negative” values, you can examine them for what they really are: Life rafts, bulletproof vests, bubble wrap to keep you from harm.
And while they had a purpose in your life when you were younger (they helped you navigate a strange, “dangerous” world), they no longer serve your highest, best good.
So, it’s really important that you get to the root of the values that are driving you, trying to keep you “safe” and working all the while beneath your conscious mind.
Clear up problems in your values structure and you will create dramatic and positive changes in your ability to create (and automatically attract) what you want in life.
Conflicting Values
Another dynamic of your Values Structure is that two or more of your values can often conflict with one another.
You may value, for example, these conflicting things:
- Freedom vs. Family
- Security vs. Adventure
- Career vs. Fun
Unless you identify and clearly prioritise them, these conflicts in your values will compromise your results and create guilt, stress, and sometimes shame.
So how do you sort this all out?
I will give you specific exercises below to help you:
- Discover what your values are
- Eliminate conflicts between your values
- Resolve the emotional charge from “negative” values
- Structure your values to focus on what you want
- Create a solid value structure that leads to happiness, inner peace, and effectiveness in the world.
I urge you to find some quiet time to yourself to consider these exercises thoroughly.
This is not a quick-and-easy To Do List or a magic wand. It requires thought and intention on your part...even a little bit of courage.
But the results are AMAZING, I promise. And I’ll walk you through the entire process.
So let’s begin!
The Values Clarifier: Practical Exercises
(You may want to get yourself a pen and paper to complete this.)
1.Ask yourself the question, “What’s important to me about life?” and write down the answers.
Write quickly, without a lot of mental analysis. Just write what comes to mind without a lot of extra thinking.
2. Now, pause, and then ask yourself: “What else is important to me about life?”
This will give you a second level of values, those that are less conscious and less obvious than those you elicited in Question #1.
3.Think of a time when you were totally motivated, a specific time.
Rewind your memory to the moment right before you felt the feeling of motivation, and notice what occurred right before you felt that feeling of motivation.
(Examples: I saw a possibility. I got excited. I felt afraid. I saw a relationship between two things. I felt frustrated.)
What happened right before the feeling of motivation is a value.
You can confirm this by asking yourself, as in the examples above,
“Is _____________ important to me?” List those additional values.
4. Copy the values from Exercises 1-3 on a blank piece of paper.
Divide your paper into three columns: “My Values” (in order of importance), a second column labeled “Push/Pull” (I’ll explain what these are later) and a third column labeled “%”. (Just trust me; this will be very powerful!) Set this page aside for now.
5. Now, take these values and list them in order of importance, from the most important to the least important.
This process will cause you to deeply consider what is important to you in life, and is not always an easy process.
You may find that some values are very close to each other in their importance to you, making it difficult to choose between them.
In making these choices, and discovering the order in which your values are important to you, you will learn a lot about yourself!
6. Look at this values list you have created, which should now be in order of importance,
Ask “Does this look like me?”
Make any changes that seem appropriate.
IMPORTANT NOTE: It is very important that your values list be a list of what your values really are (in other words, what is really important to you, and what you really focus your attention on), right now - not what you would like them to be or think they should be.
If you realize you have made a list of what you want your values to be, or what your mother or father want your values to be - instead of what they really are start over, and realize you just learned something about yourself!
7. For each value you list in Exercise #4, ask yourself, “Why is this important to me?”
Write without a lot of thinking or analysis - just write down whatever comes to mind, in the exact words or phrases that come to you, as you ask the question. Do this for each of your 10 Values.
8. Notice, for each value, if the reason why this value is important to you involves something you do want (PULL), or want to avoid (PUSH).
Label your second column in Step 4 accordingly.
9. Look over your list again, noticing the “pushes”.
These are probably the key areas you have trouble with in your life—and the values around which you have trouble finding satisfaction and fulfillment.
See if you can notice any commonalities between two or more values in which you are moving away from what you do not want, or the issues in your life that might cause you to move away from what you don’t want in these areas.
10. Examine your list again, and notice if there are conflicts between any two values.
In other words, compare each value to all the others, and ask yourself if you can have both values at the same time, or if they conflict with each other in such a way that it is difficult or impossible to have both at the same time.
List pairs of values that seem to be in conflict. Above all, be honest with yourself. List the conflicting pairs of values you found.
11. Reconsider your list of values and make a new list.
Some values will probably have disappeared from your list as a result of this process, and some may have moved to a different place in the hierarchy.
Use your intuition to tell you which values are no longer in your list, and where each remaining value goes. You may also find that there are new values. If so, add them to the list in the proper spot.
12. Add new values to your list that have spontaneously risen during this process and eliminate the values that don’t serve you.
As you do these exercises, you may discover something about yourself you don’t like, or realize that you have been sabotaging yourself in some way.
Count that as a victory! Now you know, and can do something about it.
Don’t waste a moment feeling bad about what you’ve done in the past, or what you think is a defect in yourself.
The whole reason for doing this is to discover how you may be creating what you do not want, so you can change it.
Whatever you discover is cause for celebration.
13 Finally, I want you to make a commitment to creating resourceful values that lead to happiness, success, and inner peace.
Download, sign and print this statement and read it aloud once in the morning and once before bed each day.
My Commitment to Creating Resourceful Values that Lead to Happiness, Success, and Inner Peace
I, ___________________________, knowing that my values help create my life, promise to be conscious of what I value and what I focus on. When I experience unwanted results, I will examine my values, making sure that I consciously focus on what I want.
I will resolve all conflicts between values, and consciously choose to value that which leads to happiness, inner peace, and success.
By choosing my values, I create my experience of life. I therefore take charge of my mind in order to exercise this power and create the life I want.
Signed: ________________________
Dated: ________________________
Now congratulate yourself!
You just did A LOT of internal work. This will make ALL THE DIFFERENCE in your future results in life.
Well done! You are on an incredibly powerful new path.
Centerpointe Research Institute was founded by the late Bill Harris in 1989.
The Institute produces as it’s flagship a product called ‘Holosync®,’ an audio program formulated to recreate the brain wave patterns of experienced meditators.
If you use this program daily, you can achieve the same results in 8 times the time it takes for traditional meditation.
If you would like to get a free e-book called ‘The New Science Of Super Awareness’ by Bill Harris, please visit this web site.
When you sign up, you will also be able to get the audiobook version for free, as well as a free demo of Holosync®.