Now this is a wild subject that confuses a lot of people. Which is why I’m throwing it in your face here. Because I believe in running your business with values in order to gain authenticity and coming across genuine.

What are values? According to our bff – Wikipedia – “In ethics, value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining what actions are best to do or what way is best to live, or to describe the significance of different actions.”

Aka, you value certain things in your life that bring you joy and happiness. Now, I’d argue that 80% of people don’t know what values they have. We ALL have them. But we might not given it any thought that what those are.

You might value freedom. Being free brings you joy and happiness. This is your value. It adds value to your life. Often our values when we first start are not all good, either. You might value freedom but you might also value control. So, you over control things and overthink because you’re always trying to have control over everything.

Ideally you want to work through these old values so that you can ditch them for new ones that speak to you. It’s almost like you’re in some Hollywood action movie where you need to take down the bad guy. The bad guy being the bad value and believe me, they don’t want to go down. You got to fight to win.

How exactly can you find values that mean something to you?

First, I’mma tell you right now that it’s a process. It takes time. You got to fight the bad guys first. But finding values that you’d like to have is rather simple. First, what do you enjoy? What brings you passion? Think about a day that brought you a lot of joy. What happened that day? Maybe you’ve taken a road-trip in the past and getting to drive through Sedona was something that you still cherish to this day. Why is that? Is it because it was sunny? Because you felt free? Because you got to drive? Because you had a destination? Because you had no destination? Maybe you loved the adventure aspect of it.

This might mean that adventure is one of your values. Maybe you love to laugh and run in the rain. That might mean that you value fun and grounded-ness. All you need to do is look at your actions and ask if this adds value to your life. Finding values is easy. Getting rid of the old ones ain’t.

If thinking about what you value is a struggle, you can Google “value lists” and see tons of them. They basically have words that you can choose values from. Choose the ones that speak to you, the ones you wish you were living with. I might like the idea of creativity, but if it doesn’t make me feel anything, it’s probably not the value for me.

Once you do have your values figured out, making decisions and choices should be easy. All you have to do is ask if this brings any value in your life? Does this align with my values? Someone might offer you and opportunity to make $100,000,000 within a year. You know this will take a lot of work. You check with your values and see you value adventure, family, simplicity… well, you know you can pass on this opportunity because wealth, working and leadership are not your values. And you’d have less time to have adventures and spend time with family. It means that taking this opportunity would not bring you happiness nor satisfaction. Money, yes. But you’d have to sacrifice a lot.

That’s why it’s important to have your set values. Goals won’t bring you happiness and fulfillment. Having values do. You end up enjoying the journey as well. Not just the end results.