A Definition of values

Values can be personified in people that you love and admire. Identifying the specific values embodied by your heroes can inspire you to adopt those values for yourself. To uncover the values that you associate with your loved ones and role models:

• Identify and write down six people who are important role models or valued connections for you.
• Think of the values they embody. 

Your values are a major determinant of career choice, work decisions, and career transitions, as each may lead you down a different career path. 

That’s why career counselors have a large toolbox of strategies and inventories, including values inventories to help match their clients to a compatible career area.

• Having a core values list helps you make better decisions. The decisions you make come more quickly and efficiently than they would without it.
• Being unconscious of your core values makes you likely to keep repeating the same mistakes.

The core values that are most valuable to each of us come from our own personal experience, not from being taught.

As you put them into practice you’ll get better at internalizing these values and they’ll express themselves subconsciously with smaller decisions, as well.

Knowing your personal values changes your behavior.

For instance: When you value health, you don’t have to wrestle with managing impulse control as much. If you know a particular food or activity isn’t good for your body, you don’t want it.

1. Start with a beginner’s mind, someone with no preconceived notions of what is.
2. Create your list of personal values. 
3. Chunk your personal values into related groups. 
4. Highlight the central theme of each value group. 
5. Determine your top Personal Core Values. Whittle your list down to 5 - 10 core values and rank them in order of importance.
6. Give your personal values richer context. Highlight values into memorable phrases or sentences.
   
7. Test the ecology of each value. Review your list a day later: Are they personal to you? Do you see any values that feel inconsistent?

Find out what characteristics or ways of behaving makes you feel good. Answer the following questions:

• What's important to you in life?
• If you could have any career, without worrying about money or other practical constraints, what would you do?
• When you’re reading news stories, what sort of story or behaviour tends to inspire you?
• What type of story or behaviour makes you angry?
• What do you want to change about the world or about yourself?
• What are you most proud of?
• When were you the happiest?

Once you’ve come up with a list, it's important to prioritise your values.

It can help you get even closer to defining what’s important to you. Prioritising helps you to ensure that you’re spending them on the most important things that'll have the biggest payoff in your life.

If you scan the landscape of your life, you’ll notice certain experiences peak up. It’s so valuable to delve into these “peak moments” and extract the key ingredients.
Make a list of the ingredients that truly mattered in your peak moments; don’t be distracted by the counterfeits.

When you look at all the ingredients that matter to you, they might at first seem entirely disconnected. Let’s say you love French, drinking coffee, playing with words, analyzing and categorizing, and being a leader within a community. How could you construct a career from these? 

Seek an umbrella; something that all of these ingredients can fit beneath.

If you are planning your first date with somebody, make sure to pay a special attention to the topics you want to engage in throughout the date. Keep the conversation smart and the exchange of experiences alive.

When going on a first date, make sure your mindset is a positive one, no matter what your previous dating experiences felt like. Embrace the fear of a possible failure while hoping for a pleasant outcome.

You must make your boundaries about you.

Once you get clear about what matters most to you, then you can take the bigger step of communicating that to the others.

You are not responsible for what they say, their reactions or for the daily choices they make.

Since you can't change other people, change how you deal with them. They may be motivated to change if their old ways no longer work.

• Black and White Thinking: There are heaping piles of nuance to most things.
• Unrealistic Expectations: Cynicism is bad, but a little skepticism is essential.
• Selective Attention: If your brain is always looking for the negative, you’re gonna find it.
• Disqualifying the Positive: Sometimes we go into problem-solving mode and focus only on what is broken.
• Predicting the Future: “This will never work” or “They’re going to think I’m stupid.” You don’t know the future. So don’t act like it.
• “Should” thoughts: It’s usually just an insistence that the world bends to your will and is a great way to amplify frustration.

Doing little positive things is better for happiness than occasionally bagging an elephant:

• Enjoyable stuff
• Achievement stuff: Defeat your goals in single combat and feel like a conquering hero
• Meaningful stuff: Do volunteer work or just help someone
• Physical stuff: Exercise. Not only keeps you alive, but it’s like miracle grow for your brain
• Social stuff.

There's only so much that you can achieve working on your own, that's why it's important to delegate effectively. To successfully delegate:

• Explain what your team's role and goals are. Or even formalize it in a team charter, which can also be useful for keeping the team on track.
• Think about the skills, experience and competencies within your team, and start matching people to tasks. 

Whatever approach you prefer to adopt, you also need to bear in mind that different people have different needs when it comes to motivation. 

One size does not fit all. Some individuals are highly self-motivated, while others will under-perform without managerial input, and you need to be able to handle both.