|
Live A Values-Charged Life
In The New Year
Dear Friends,
What do you value in your personal and professional life? Does your life - what you say and do, your moods and emotions, and how you take care of your body - reflect what is truly significant to you?
The year-end can bring up a panoply of reflections, both disappointing and favorable. Some reflections dredge up sadness or anxiety due to goals unmet, disciplines not followed (again...), perhaps connections weakened or lost. Others are
wonderfully gratifying as a result of accomplishments attained,
relationships forged and deepened, and new adventures pursued.
A primary cause of our (re)actions and responses to ourselves, other people, and events is due to the conscious and unconscious values each of us hold, and follow, or not.
In HOW, Why How We Do Anything Means Everything... in Business (and in Life), author Dov Seidman discusses what he believes makes for a significant, successful, fulfilling life. It requires "becom[ing] a person capable of getting your HOWS right, of focusing not just on the WHAT of the outcome, but simultaneously on the HOW you do WHAT you do." This will require, says Seidman, "be[ing] reflective, especially about your own nature...Self-reflection lights the way on a journey of self-improvement, guiding you through the good times...and the struggles. Governing yourself means working on yourself and trying to do things better year over year and week over week. If we reflect, not only will we improve, but we will develop...the ability to see the HOWS in everything we do, as we do them." (292-293, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2007).
So our HOWS: our values, and resulting actions, interactions, reflections and practices, matter. Our self-satisfaction, success at work, relationships, and impact on the world reside not in the WHATS alone, but in our way of being underlying our every doing.
While
the year-end prompts reflection, the new year provides each of us a
pristine launching pad into wonder, possibility and opportunity. It is
a time to identify what brings meaning to our lives (Values/HOWS), which in turn
prompts us to consider avenues we might pursue (WHATS) - internally and
externally, personally and professionally.
May this New Year prompt you to discover and follow your values, because as Seidman says, "if you believe in a set of core values and you pursue the expression of those values in everything you do, you will deliver more excellence to others and, in a world of HOW, win." (301)
Which values center and charge you? I invite you to join me in an exploration and deepening of your values so that whatever you do comes from and leads to a life of significance and connection.
Opening eyes,
Dana
_______________________________________________________________
|
Are you forward thinking? A 