TIP 52
ALIGN YOUR VALUES AND VISION
Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
The key to having fulfilling work is to do something that is in alignment with your highest values. I’m not referring to values in the moral sense of right and wrong, but rather in the sense of doing what you truly love to do—that which is of intrinsic worth to you personally. When you are living in accordance with your values, you are most fully alive and most fully yourself. For example, you might value creativity and invention. You might value travel and adventure. Or perhaps peace, being spiritual, or honoring God. You might value risk, speculation, and experimentation. Or perhaps grace, beauty, or elegance. Maybe you value improving others, contributing, serving, and encouraging. What about leading, being a catalyst, or inspiring others? Maybe you feel most alive when you are part of a community and feel connected to others, or perhaps when you are playing games or sports. People value different things. When do you feel most fully alive? What are you doing? Are you planning and designing? Are you coaching and energizing others? Take a moment to reflect on the peak moments in your life. Look back and see what the highlights of your life have been.
In reviewing the highlights of my own life, I realized that giving my high school graduation speech was at the top of the list. Even though I was absolutely terrified, it was very exhilarating. My underlying core value in this event was to lead and inspire others. Once I realized this was a core value, I decided that professional speaking would be a part of my work and started doing as much of it as possible in my spare time. I signed up for Toastmaster’s International on my lunch hours at the bank to practice speaking. I volunteered as a course leader for a personal development training program in New York. I then started leading my own seminars for free in my tiny apartment, inviting friends and encouraging them to bring their friends. This was the beginning of my speaking career and my first small steps to align my values with my work. I also valued travel and adventure, which ties in nicely with an international speaking career.
The most rewarding careers are those that allow and perhaps even demand that you express your values fully. We are our best when we are fully living our unique values. Take a few minutes to review your personal history and list the peak moments of your life. Next to each, write down why that moment was important to you. Now write down the value it reflects. One client wrote that she had a terrific childhood; she used to explore the woods and spend time playing outdoors. She realized that she valued being surrounded by natural beauty and missed it terribly in her job at an advertising agency. She decided to spend more time in nature and took a weekend job as a volunteer park ranger. She loved it, and after a few months she decided to find full-time work in the National Park Service.
Identifying your core values is the key to finding work that is deeply rewarding and fulfilling. If you are struggling with this exercise, you might find it helpful to do the series of assignments in one of my other books, Coach Yourself to a New Career, where I talk about values and provide various exercises to help you clarify your own values in depth. (See Appendix D for additional information and tools.) Take a few minutes now to jot down the peak experiences in your own life, list the underlying value that made that experience great for you, and then start thinking about how you can start expressing your top four or five values more fully right now in your life. This is an essential step to creating a life and career so wonderful that you’ll never want to retire from it!