CHAPTER 07
DESIGN A VALUES-ALIGNED LIFE

Oprah famously has a quote on the wall outside her office that reads, ‘You are responsible for the energy you bring into this room'. In 2015, I was fortunate enough to see Oprah perform a solo event to a sell-out crowd in Brisbane, Australia. One of the many lessons she shared from her rich journey was the power of living with intentions — and this can be from the intention we set for the day ahead when we lift our head off the pillow to the intention we set at the start of our team meetings. She confirmed her stance that we are all personally responsible for the energy we bring into any room that we enter. When that energy is plugged into the clarity of knowing what's important to you here and now, it's a powerful force.

When we're sitting in Burn Out, we can be so caught up in the busyness of action that to stop, pause and set an intention sits at the very bottom of our to-do list (waaayyyy below even clearing out the limp lettuce in the fridge). That is, unless we have been purposeful about designing a life that amplifies those things that are important to us.

The second action in combatting Burn Out is to take the values that we have defined as being important, and bring these values to life. If we don't — if all we do is simply articulate what matters but do nothing with them — we diminish the power and impact they can have. They become words on a page or a plaque on the wall that gathers dust but holds zero meaning beyond that. Stepping fully into your values requires stadium-filling amplification.

FROM DIMINISHED TO AMPLIFIED

Coldplay are arguably one of the greatest bands of our time, maybe ever. If you ever get a chance to attend a Coldplay concert, run don't walk. It is an epic experience. The atmosphere they create through their music and the choreography of lights, their sheer talent and their energy is electric. They not only own the stage, but for the hours they are present they also own the whole stadium and surrounding suburbs. That's the power of switched-on, turned-up amplification.

It would serve no-one for Chris Martin and the Coldplay crew to dial back their talent, to whisper their songs and downplay their passion. We'd all miss out. And yet, in our day-to-day life we do this with the things that are important to us. In a world of politeness and inclusion, even when our values are clear, we don't want to be seen as imposing our values onto others. We don't want the backlash of others not buying into what we're pitching. And the result is we keep our values hidden.

As noble as this sentiment is, it means we end up diminishing our values rather than standing their sacred ground. To combat that — to turn the volume switch to full bore and move from diminishing to amplifying the ‘why' — the key is to design values-aligned actions.

Designing a values-aligned life happens across four areas:

1. your intentions
2. your behaviours
3. your environment
4. your rituals.

YOUR INTENTION DRIVES YOUR ATTENTION

As Oprah shared, intention setting has become part of her daily routine. The reason is that setting our intention drives our attention. The impact of shifting from busy task to busy task without getting clear on our intention is that our attention is left completely up for grabs. If we don't control where our attention goes, it is open to being dragged into any urgent thing that appears in front of us. If you've ever found yourself down a Google search rabbit warren — you know, where you started looking at local restaurants for Friday night, and soon you're filling out a questionnaire to find out which actor would play you in a movie (and you've somehow made three online purchases along the way) — then you've experienced an attention hijacking. While this can be okay occasionally, research is now finding that we are collectively struggling to stick to task because of the dopamine release we experience ticking off a million little things, ignoring the important thing that we want to get done.

Setting our intention drives our attention.

Sit in the driver's seat of your focus by setting a clear intention. If your intention is to support the new staff member in the team, your attention is on taking the time to connect with them at the start of the day, and to be aware if they look confused or lost. Pausing to set your intention, whether that means a quick ten seconds before a phone call or five minutes at the start of a meeting, will change what not only you, but also the people around you focus on too.

Our values give meaning to the mundane tasks of our lives. While working in the Northern Territory, Australia, I was mentoring a senior executive for a government organisation. Before we started our sessions, his manager spoke to me about how my client was terrible at finishing his paperwork, so much so that not only would he avoid all administrative tasks but he would also actually delete any emails asking him to do them. He wanted me to incorporate dealing with this into my sessions somehow.

Not one to beat someone around the head for not doing their paperwork, I dismissed this request and got to work on the more interesting conversations. My client completed a values assessment, and one of his top values was being able to ‘support people do their job better'. This was a key part of his role working in communities across the Northern Territory, and absolutely one of the areas he felt fulfilled in doing.

On our third session, he came in and said, ‘Al, this values stuff is really interesting. I've had a realisation: when I get an email from interstate asking for me to complete paperwork, there's someone who can't do their job until I've completed it. So I've been doing my paperwork every time I'm asked'. For him, being able to connect this mundane task of doing boring paperwork to one of his top values of supporting people to do their job gave him a greater sense of meaning.

When we're sitting in Burn Out, the goal is not necessarily about making less progress; it's about finding more meaning in the tasks we're already doing — reigniting the drive and connecting our actions with our purpose.

YOUR BEHAVIOURS SHOW YOUR INTENTIONS

Pausing and setting your intention is important, but doing so is useless if your behaviour doesn't follow. What we do, our behaviours, speak louder than what we say. As a parent, my words sometimes don't match my own behaviours — like yelling, ‘Stop shouting!' at my fighting kids. (Yep, that'll teach 'em.)

In our workplaces, we see this kind of mismatch all the time. At the extreme, it's the organisation that espouses health and vitality while its people work overtime in poor conditions. It's the boss who states they have an ‘open-door' policy, but bites the head off any team member who interrupts them during the day. Values are brought to life by the behaviours we engage in.

In your life, if one of your values is connection to family, getting clear on what that looks like, and what you need to be doing to bring that to life, is key. In order to amplify values rather than diminish them, and in order to design a values-aligned life, we need to get clear on the behaviours that matter. The behaviours that we are going to hold ourselves accountable to. And then go do 'em.

TRAITS VERSUS BEHAVIOURS

Before diving into an exploration of values-aligned behaviours, it's important to get clear on the definition of behaviours and the confusion relating to this that can happen in our language. This is a concept that makes sense on the surface but, when we dig a bit deeper, rarely can we clearly articulate specific behaviours that we are going to engage in.

I'm the director of Pragmatic Thinking,¹ a behaviour and motivation strategy company, and one of the key areas that our company is built on is supporting leaders and individuals in organisations to have the tough conversations. Confusion is often rife in conversations that are sensitive, personal and, well, just plain tough. One of the reasons for this confusion is the use of trait-based language rather than behaviour-based language.

In our best-selling book Dealing with the Tough Stuff, we unpack the difference between traits and behaviours, and it's useful to revisit this distinction here:

Do you know people who you describe as adventurous or lazy or unreliable? These descriptors are traits. A trait is merely a label — usually a descriptor of a combination of behaviours. For example, if someone is considered courteous, that would be a trait. It is a convenient way to describe a collection of behaviours, such as holding a door open for someone, wishing people good morning, or asking people if they would like anything at the shops. A behaviour is something that is directly observable. A trait is usually a combination of behaviours.

The more specific you can be about the behaviours that will bring your values to life, the easier it is to commit to and engage in these behaviours, and the easier it is to hold yourself (or have someone else hold you) accountable for these too. For example, rather than simply connecting with the value of ‘generosity' (you can display this in infinite ways), get clear on where, when and with whom you want to be generous. This could be baking cupcakes for the team every Thursday, spending time at a local soup kitchen once a month, or ‘liking' every picture in your Instagram feed (go, you good Samaritan)! This part is fun, because this is where you get to play with the actions of what matters. Do it your way, do it differently, smear your personality over what you're going to commit to.

Exploring behaviours is easier when you are clear on the context. For example, are you being generous at work, at home or with the weekend sporting team? Would you prefer to be generous with your time, generous in sharing the information you know, or generous in connecting people with the contacts you have? Know the value (generosity), clarify the context (social media) and define the behaviour (liking everything).

Here I outline a simple process to get clear on the specific behaviours you want to engage in, and you can also use this process with a team within your workplace too. Write down your value, get clear on the context, and then jot down potential behaviours. For example, the value might be caring and the context might be customers. A potential behaviour might be to send a thank you card and the new book by their favourite author.

To clarify the behaviours you are going to step into in order to design a values-aligned life, ask yourself the following questions:

• What does that behaviour look like?
• What would I or others see if I was living out this value?
• What are possible behaviours that would reflect this value in different contexts?

YOUR ENVIRONMENT REFLECTS YOUR VALUES

Corporate anthropologist Michael Henderson from Cultures at Work has spent his career studying cultures around the world and relating his findings to the corporate setting.² One of the things all cultures have in common (including some of the world's oldest cultures like Indigenous Australian tribes and Zulu warriors) is the signs and symbols that identify what's important to them — from artwork to stories, and tools to totems. When it comes to amplifying values, go visual. We connect with what we see.

Have you ever walked into someone's home and felt you know more about them than you've ever known before? Our environment can reflect what's important to us, and also provides a clean slate for us to create spaces we feel deeply connected to, rather than just a place where we display what's ‘on trend'. Be more deliberate and purposeful in designing your environment so it brings your values to life. Design spaces and places that inspire joy. Find a way to display your values so that others see them, feel them and experience them. Create spaces in your environment that connect you to what matters. It can be anything from photos of moments that mattered, to pictures that capture meaning for you and artefacts that hold meaning.

GET YOUR ART ON

This is your time to get creative, and there is no judgement here. What you create doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to connect with you. Design it your way, and play with the art of expressing your heart. The following list (overleaf) provides some ideas on how you can bring your values to life in physical forms. Ask yourself the question, what does that look like?

Play with the art of expressing your heart.

Get your art on and find meaning in the spaces around you through the following:

• Write down the movies or TV series that resonate with your values. Carve out time to reconnect with these movies and series.
• Create a playlist of songs that depict your values.
• Take and/or find pictures that you love and put them up.
• Find ways to dress according to what matters to you.
• Accessorise for activities — if writing matters to you, for example, get yourself a beautiful notebook.
• Create zones that reconnect you to your values (whether this is in the home, garden, park, car, work or the man-shed).
• Share the symbols of your values with others (through social media, emails or gifts).

WORK ENVIRONMENTS

In the work environment, we want others to buy into the team or organisational values, so the power of bringing values to life there is key. Connect with experts and designers, and collaborate with creatives who can help you bring these ideas and behaviours to life visually. Make sure, though, that the end result reflects the people who work there and the values the organisation stands for. Don't put in a slide and a table tennis table simply because Google HQ has one, for example. Create something that rings true for you. Create your own trademark in the work space.

In the work that we do at Pragmatic Thinking, we know that behaviour and motivation at work are closely influenced by design. Having a killer set of values can live and die by how they are shared. Typing them into an email or simply putting them onto a letterhead doesn't make them inspiring. Instead, partnering with designers can be the outlet for you to bring values to life through beautiful visual elements within posters, coasters, question cards, notebooks, stickers and even comics. In this way, organisational values become tangible and tactile — inspiring your people to not only be proud of them, but also live and breathe them at work and with clients.

RITUALS ARE YOUR ANCHOR

Rituals and routines give us an anchor in the busyness. We tend to get so busy that the important things get shoved to the bottom of the pile, added to the never-ending to-do list. So when things are crazy in this state of Burn Out — when that overwhelm hits us — those routines and rituals give us something to hold onto. They are the anchor in the storm. When I talk to people and clients, I often hear that they constantly feel like they're being pulled in a million different directions, and this is certainly also true in my own experience. It may be that those different directions are actually all really interesting and we want to sink our teeth into all of them, but the result is we end up just flip-flopping between a whole range of different things, making millimetres of progress in a few different directions, but really getting nowhere with anything in particular.

Once you've gotten clear on the behaviours you are going to engage in, and you've created tangible reminders of those things that matter in your space, rituals are the things that pulse and keep your values alive.

Use these three actions to turn your ideas into rituals:

1. Schedule it: we grossly overestimate how much time we have and underestimate how long things will take us. Which is why, when we put the stuff that matters to the end it never gets done. Flip that notion and put the things that matter into your calendar. Take five minutes on Sunday evening to schedule in the actions that matter for you this week. If it's a morning ritual, set yourself a time you can commit to; if it's a yoga class, block the time out; if it's an adventure with friends square it away. Once these activities that matter are in the schedule, they become your default, and you no longer have to make a decision. Honour the schedule and notice how your week changes.
2. Share it: find someone who can hold you accountable to this ritual. This is a person you trust who will check in on how it went, without judgement, but with the caring accountability to keep pulling you back to yourself.
3. Tweak it: adapt your ritual to still fit in when life changes. For example, what changes with your ritual when you're on holidays? How can you keep it up when you have to travel for work? Tweak it so it doesn't get dropped into the too-hard basket and become a good idea you had once but that never came to anything.

You've got to fight and nudge for these moments in your week. Imagine you're in a mosh pit with a million people, trying to get to the front of the stage. How do you just graciously and slowly but very persistently elbow your way through the busyness? How do you still stake out your ground and make a claim in that space? By designing your intention, setting your behaviours, crafting your environment and committing to your rituals, you can gently nudge and elbow your way back to those things that matter to you.

REFRESH AND REDESIGN

Your ‘why' can and will change, so having the foresight to invest in a redesign to refresh the palette is important. Google any brand more than 50 years old and you'll see the changes and iterations the branding has undergone — from visual changes to their logo to the change in focus of their work. The same is true for the internal work.

When you find yourself back in the grind, where the initial love of what you do every day has worn off, look for ways to refresh and redesign your intention, shake up the behaviours, revamp the environment and reset new rituals. Do this and it will keep what really matters alive.