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IDEA TO ACTION QUOTE: We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny - McGee
 When faced with similar situations people often make different decisions. This is partly because peoples' core values differ, and values are a major motivating force, influencing how people attach meaning, worth and importance to things. If your values are not the same as another's, then it stands to reason that your choices will differ. This is what happened for Bahati and Upendo, two women faced with an opportunity to take up postgraduate studies.
Bahati, a teacher had always wanted to study law in order to be equipped to defend the rights of girls in her community. She had always felt strongly about the way girls were forcibly circumcised and married off to old men in order to raise money to pay school fees for their brothers. Unfortunately she did not make the grades to make it to law school after high school. She was offered a place to study education and had been teaching for 3 years when she saw an advertisement for full scholarships for women to study law in America. She looked through the requirements and knew she met them all, and sent her application. She knew her young family would miss her, as she would them, but felt that it was also an opportunity for each one of them to grow in new ways.
Upendo read the same advertisement. It had always been her childhood dream to become a judge. She loved the way judges looked in their wigs, and was drawn to their authority. Besides, she had a strong sense of fairness and being on the bench would give her the opportunity to make fair judgements. Upendo also wanted to stay close to her family. She was married and had two children, and felt that staying away from them for a whole year was detrimental to the growth of her children. She knew that if she was not the primary caregiver to her children she would not be settled in America, pursing further studies. She opted to stay with her family, at least until the children were older. She believed that other opportunities would present themselves in time.
Faced with a similar situation, what would your decision be? What values drive that decision? Whose values are you using to judge another's decision?
Both Bahati and Upendo were satisfied with their choices, because the choices were congruent with their core values. If you do not honour your values in the decisions you make there is a sense of dissatisfaction and unease.
Today I share another exercise to help you determine what your core values are. This exercise does not start with a list of values to pick from. Instead, it requires you to reflect on what really matters to you by writing your own obituary. Think about what people would say if they wrote your obituary today. How does it compare to what you would want them to say? The gap between these two versions represents the gap between the life you are living, and a life that honours your core values.
This exercise calls for deep reflection, one of the tools used in life coaching to bring about change. As Norman Vincent Peale says, "one of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is." | 
