How Your Unique Values Can Help Answer Life’s Biggest Questions
- May 3, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 24, 2024
Written by: William Rees, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We’ve never had easier access to information. To clickable, downloadable hacks and How To’s on any question that comes our way.
From baristas in their mid-20s to attorneys in their late-50s, clients arrive at my certified coaching practice, Keylight, having searched high and low for clear, quick answers to the big, bold questions each of us wrestles with, sooner or later:
What am I doing with my life?
How do I connect to the people who matter the most to me?
How in the world should I move forward and,
Where in the world am I even going?
I respect my clients and the complexities of the human experience far too much to vainly proclaim that a pre-packaged hack for these big, bold questions can ever be unlocked with one quick click on an online link. (Unfortunately)
But what I have observed about life and what I’ve learned for certain through all my work as a coach is this:
When you know who you are then you’ll know just where to go.
That core belief is the bedrock of the ever-inspiring work I do with each Keylight client. From our very first coaching session, I am helping men and women of all ages remember, realize, and really know exactly who they are.
There is no online cheat sheet or YouTube guru brilliant enough to hand you that insight – the verified answer as to who you are. The only link that’ll ever click for any of us as we search for answers around Who We Are and Where We Best Head is the direct link to our unique and usually unrealized core values.
Our values always know the way.
Not enough airtime or attention is devoted to the under-explored power of personal values and how our values impact every aspect of our lives from our careers, moods, and relationships, out into our increasingly disconnected society.
Your central values are essentially a cutting-edge GPS system pre-installed inside your soul. This ingenious system senses precisely where you are at all times and is able to intuitively chart the most efficient and scenic routes for advancing your life’s journey.
Every intersection we arrive at in our lives interacts with our inner values, at some level. A job promotion that’s proven to be painfully dull and drab may be underestimating your core value of creativity perhaps. A spouse’s request to cut back on family spending may agitate your value for freedom of travel. An election result might deeply rattle some of your most deeply-rooted values, be they empathy or autonomy, honesty or security.
When we’re knocked off track, take a wrong turn, lose the way our inner navigation system automatically alerts us. Since, maddeningly, there is no speaker nor touch-screen installed in these systems, we are alerted to our wayward routes in subtler ways whenever our thoughts or actions neglect our central values.
We’re sent shadowy signals in the form of apathy, anxiety or overwhelm. Through frustration, fear, lack of fulfillment.
And when we find ourselves back on track, brighter and usually bolder signals quickly appear through flashes of inspiration, excitement, and enlightenment.
Our values know us better than we know ourselves.
It’s important to remember there are no columns that separate “good values” from “bad values.”
All values are valid and integral to what we need in our lives to feel authentically connected to ourselves and securely connected to those around us.
But unless and until we’ve identified our core values, we’re quite unequipped to successfully steer our personal journeys down paths that will properly honor who we are and the elements we need to become our best and brightest selves.
Without true clarity about our values, we dart down detours that leave us empty and exiled from where we’re truly meant to be.
This is the key reason the first and most freeing work I do with coaching clients is to help them identify the values that have driven their most rewarding adventures. With their unique values clearly articulated, they’re armed with two incredible new tools:
First off, clients now instantly have an incredibly detailed description of who they are. Which is the only hack, in an age oversaturated with them, that actually supports us in productively answering the question:
WHERE in the world am I going in my life?
And secondly, my clients gain a sharpened, super-charged sense of sight. They become increasingly adept at viewing not only their own feelings, needs and dreams through this clarifying lense of their core values, but they are also able to see the feelings, behaviors, and hopes of the people around them with keener respect around what others’ values may be.
Our values connect us to the best in each other.
In today’s world, conversations around values are often used as justifications to separate us from one another and to instantly excuse us from the opportunity to grow with and toward one another.
I have seen through my work, however, that clear communication around values is, in fact, one of our most effective tools for cooperation and connection.
For instance, a husband who’s identified he greatly values Stability isn’t trapped as a terrible, ticking time-bomb of a match for a wife who’s realized that she deeply values Adventure. Relational conflicts around differing values arise and multiply only when we’re aiming to negate or nullify the distinct values in one another.
If we, instead, approach our values as different, distinct, notes in a harmonic chord, then a Stability-minded husband can quite capably collaborate with his Adventurous wife on how to establish structures and routines in their marriage that allow him to feel secure and safe.
And he, in turn, is set up to partner with his wife to invite opportunities into their shared lives for her to express her Adventurous spirit so that she, too, feels vital and invigorated in their partnership.
Awareness around our personal values instantly creates a stunning ripple effect. When you’re in tune with your values you quickly become less frustrated and flummoxed by the differing values and actions of others.
Centered squarely on your own productive path, you’re perfectly positioned to recognize that everyone’s values are unique and useful. You’re newly equipped to act as a curious
collaborator with all sorts of individuals, supporting the key values in each of us in order to honor our best and brightest selves.
Looking for an easy, upbeat way to clearly identify and honor your unique values? Book a Free Discovery Call with leading Life + Career Coach Will Rees at www.keylight.life.
William Rees, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
William Rees is a leading Career and Wellbeing Coach and the founder of Keylight, the top-tier coaching practice renowned for empowering individuals and duos to cast their endeavors in vibrant and visionary light. Drawing upon his two decades as an award-winning filmmaker, Rees instills a cinematic sense of adventure and wonder into the personal and professional pursuits of his diverse roster of clients. Honoring the idea that The Greatest Art Form is Life Itself, Keylight’s poetic and powerful approach to self-development quickly unlocks clarity and creativity for uniquely inspired living.
