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Wesley Verhoeve's avatar

Needed to read this today :)

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David Noël's avatar

Love this, Steve. This resonated with me a lot.

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Alison's avatar

Identifying my core personal values has been one of the most impactful exercises I've done. Now I have a North Star to orient myself towards daily in a way that's much more meaningful and fulfilling than creating superficial goals. My values are now the foundation of my vision board, goals, and habits.

I wrote a post about my favorite values exercise based on the book The Values Factor by Dr. John Demartini here: https://www.tendtoself.com/articles/identify-your-core-values

What I like about his exercise is that it's rooted on identifying your values based on what you actually make time for. Our highest values determine our attention, retention, and intention: what we notice, what we remember, and what we intend or act upon. What we value most shapes how we process information, what we remember, and how we act, so that our minds, emotions, and intentions all work together to fulfill those most meaningful values.

I highly recommend going through this exercise too and seeing if you get similar values. 💚

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Ryan Vaughn's avatar

Beautiful and insightful. I find myself orienting in the same way. I also love the way values are always present-focused, relevant in this very now moment, while goals are either past or future, at least one temporal degree removed.

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Steven Schlafman's avatar

Such an important point!

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Kat O'Brien's avatar

This is great, Steve. Wasn’t familiar with this exercise of exploring and narrowing down values. Nevertheless, this year for the first time, I decided to choose intention words (which aren’t unlike values). Similarly, I ended up with alliteration with Possibility, Passion, and Purpose.

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Steven Schlafman's avatar

That’s so wonderful to read, Kat. I swear the alliteration is a sign! How’s it going so far?

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Kat O'Brien's avatar

Going quite well - thanks, Steve! The year is odd to a fantastic start in most ways, and those are good words to remind myself of in challenging moments or decisions.

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Vijay venkatesh's avatar

Love this post. Just devoured it. Thank you.

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Valerie Hirschhauser's avatar

Love this, replacing my goals with my values has helped me to realize that goals are in fact quite fluid, but that's not how we approach them. When we set a goal, we want to push through to achieve it, but I've found that qualities like resilience and perseverance can bring us further away from the things that are truly meant for us and that we're ready for in a particular season of our life. Pushing through the resistance might bring us closer to pre-set goals, but for all one knows further away from our true ambitions..

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Rodrigo Lopez's avatar

❤️🙏

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Miriam Cruz's avatar

Wow LOVE this and so glad to have found you! This topic has been on my mind a lot lately (recent reflection here: https://miriamcruz.substack.com/p/how-do-you-live-in-alignment-with). I'm going to link your Notion in my post! That's such an accessible way to move through the practice. Thanks for sharing all these resources!

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Rodrigo Lopez's avatar

“I embraced a more fluid and organic approach, allowing intuition and intention to guide my path based on what unfolds and what I most value.”

Bravo Steven.

With admiration,

🙏

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