Time Management Tips: Five Essentials About Values
Time management tips are the royal road to meaningful living, helping you make decisions that uphold your values. Do you want to start today? Then clarify your values now and update them regularly.
5 essential knowledge about values
-
Values help you define who you are.
Values create the framework of your life. They influence your actions and help you define not only what is important, but also what is essential to you. Values help you answer questions like “Who am I?” and “How do I choose to use my time?”
-
Your values can be consistent or they can change over time.
Here are 3 possible scenarios of how you can experience your values over time. What model applies to you and how has it shaped your life?
- Your values remain relatively consistent throughout your life, gradually becoming more refined and outlined.
- An important event in life reorients your perspective. From this altered point of view, what matters to you can change completely.
- Your values undergo small and repeated revisions as you address the challenges and changed landscape of successive decades.
Either of these possibilities is viable, if your values support it. In each case, you develop an internal guidance system to guide you through your day.
-
Values clarification helps you determine what is important in your life.
Through various exercises and self-exploration, value clarification is a process of gaining perspective on what is most important to you. Openly clarifying your values presents options, dilemmas, and questions that guide you toward your individual truth. If you have difficulty setting priorities, try clarifying your values. Then the timing choices will be much easier for you!
-
Pulling back the layers helps you focus on the essence of a value.. As you develop new knowledge and understanding about life, you may delve into the core of a particular value. For example, you could put a lot of importance on honesty:
- Does that mean you speak your mind no matter what, even though it could devastate someone else?
- How do you frame your honest communication?
- How do you encourage others to be honest with you?
As you mature, the nuances deepen and your values develop a new richness and complexity.
-
By observing yourself, you will notice what is most important to you.
Stand outside of yourself and watch it move through your life.
- Do you make decisions from an integrated place?
- Are your actions consistent with your beliefs and values?
- Are your relationships based on mutual support for integrity or old patterns of collusion that work against you?
Notice when certain values hit a deep, resonant chord and help you prioritize your options. Those choices that simplify and improve your life are your core values.
Values are deeply personal and determine how you experience your entire life. Remember, you always have the right to set values that speak to your truth! And you always have the power to use your time accordingly. Put your best energy into your timing choices, and your life will fill you up!
Now ask yourself, what choice can you make right now to align your time choices with your values more powerfully?
