Many of us live our lives and base our decisions on the things we feel are most important to us. Things like career, family, friends, money, self etc. Because these centres of focus are highly impacted by our surroundings we can sometimes become hostage to the external environment as it impacts the things we hold dear to our hearts.
Think of career, as an example. If we lived our life and made our decisions based on what would advance our career the most, we might be extremely disappointed when someone else gets the job that we feel we had earned or were more qualified for. Through this way of living we become unhappy, unsatisfied, or feel unappreciated. Ultimately, someone else’s decisions, or the market conditions we face, dictate how our life, happy or sad, goes from there. We ultimately give away the keys to our happiness.
You can likely think of similar examples for the other centres of focus and how life could end up if we were to base our decisions on trying to manage and control these.
So what’s another way to live? What is another centre of focus that we can base our lives around to avoid giving our external environment the keys to our happiness?
The answer is to base your life around your values. Unlike the ever changing relationships you have with your career, your family, your friends, or money, your values are not circumstantial. Your values are deeply rooted and are based on timeless things that are not swayed or shaken by changes in the day to day environment. They are like your north star, always there guiding you and leading the way to your life’s purpose.
The key is to align your life's choices with your values. It may be hard to do this at first, however, an enormous amount of power and happiness can be tapped into by aligning your life with your values. As you start to do this you will realize how draining and exhausting living your old life was. Magically, new opportunities that come up will be more in line with your values and will be easier to choose between. Living a value-based life will benefit all areas of your life, including career, family, friends, and money by allowing you to have much more balance and harmony, where you do not sacrifice one to fulfil the other.
The question is, what values represent your north star? What is at your core that cannot be swayed or shaken by external factors? How are you living your life today? Do you find yourself reacting and trying to manage the external environment or are you living and choosing from your values? What small adjustments can you make today to better align and follow your north star?
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