Live Happier Tip: Name Your Values

This weekend a friend of mine and I were watching the movie City Slickers.  In the movie Billy Crystal and his friends have gone on a vacation to a ranch to drive cattle.  While there he meets an old cowboy named Curly (Jack Palance).  My favorite scene in the movie is when Billy and Jack are talking about the meaning of life.  Jack says 'you know what the secret to life is?" and he holds up his finger.  Billy says "your finger" and Jack says "no one thing, once you figure that out nothing else matters (he said it a little more cowboyesque so I edited it)  Billy says "what's the one thing and Jack says "thats what you have to figure out".

I remember seeing that clip in the theater and thinking ONE THING?!?!  That is just too hard to come up with one thing!   It is my belief that we need to figure out what our thing is whether that be one thing or five things.  I do believe we need to put a limit on it at some point just for the sake of focus.  Once we figure out our top five things than we can direct our lives and our life decisions around those five things.

For me the easiest way to do this is to look at our top five values. When we are aware of our values then we have a core place to work from, when we are making life choices.

Here are a few examples:

Let's say you value family and that is in your top 5 values then you will make decisions that allow you to support/spend more time with your family.  If you value social change you will make every day choices that inspire social change, through the clothes you wear the, the websites you go to the products you use etc.  If you value creativity than you probably engage in activities that feed your artistic side whether that be drawing, painting, idea developing or writing.

The glitch comes when we value something but we aren't making choices around it.  For example, you value family but you are working all the time so you miss important family events. Or you value creativity but you never give yourself time to be engage in artistic activities.

I believe--like Curly did in the movie City Slickers--when we come up with our one thing (or 5) it makes it easier to focus on what's important in our lives.   Therefore the small every day choices or the big life decisions become easier because we can always go back to the question what do I value?  When we are living from our values--we are living happier.

For a list of values check out my website, click here.

I will be presenting more on this topic during my Live Happier series this fall. Check out my website for more information.

Perspective

Well I have returned from South Africa--such a fabulous trip full of life lessons which I plan on sharing here over the next few weeks.

When I left on the trip I said to a friend of mine that I wanted this trip to be life changing--she then said to me "what would you want to change about your life?" At the time I couldn't come up with a response and I decided I would take that question with me to South Africa. Within the first few nights I realized the thing I wanted to change the most was worrying about stupid meaningless stuff.

Throughout my trip I was frequently reminded of the movie Grand Canyon--in the movie Danny Glover is telling Kevin Kline about his visit to the Grand Canyon and the fact that he felt because these rocks had been there for millions of years they were laughing at him and all his problems--and it helped him put his life in perspective--as he said made him realize in the spectrum of the whole world his life was small "as small as a gnat on the back of a cow when you are driving by at 60 mph" I absolutely love that quote and frequently when I am feeling overwhelmed by my life I think about it. It kept coming to me as we drove through complete poverty in many areas, or as we witnessed the ocean and the mountains. In that place and time I was able to concentrate on what really mattered to me. Does it really matter if I miss a workout, it is it really important if I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning, will my life be dramatically altered if I have no plans on a Friday night?

Perspective is an amazing thing. Looking at your life and figuring out "what really matters here"? How much time do I waste spinning out on the stuff that doesn't matter....it is a life changing realization.