We are living through a time of massive change. Almost every day brings dramatic news.
But most of this ‘news’ will never affect us directly. And a week from now we will have forgotten what happened today and moved on to another batch of supposedly urgent “Breaking News”. (Can you remember what news was “breaking” seven days ago?)
Riding this emotional roller coaster of ups and downs might seem exciting for a while. But if we’re not careful, our life becomes a giant game of snakes and ladders: pushed up a ‘ladder’ one minute and down a ‘snake’ the next, draining our energy, and distracting us from what matters most to us.
When everything is a priority, nothing is.
If we want to change this pattern, our first step has to be to get clearer on what matters most to us: not just our short term objectives but our long-term priorities.
This means we need to understand our purpose and especially our values.
Other posts in this series will tell you how to find your values. And once you know them, there are then three ways in which you can use them to address the short-term issues (and news items) that arise:
- First, whenever a new issue or news story arises you can ask yourself, “Is this relevant to my values?” If not, then this issue or news story is a distraction from what matters most to you. You can ignore it: it is somebody else’s fight.
This saves you wasted time. It jumps you over the snakes.
. - If you decide that an issue is relevant to your values, then knowing what those values are enables you to focus and define more quickly the outcome(s) you want instead.
This shows you where the top of the ladder is. And that lets you move faster through planning to execution of the outcomes you most want to create.
. - Finally, the more clearly you know your values, and the more you live in line with them, the more energy and inspiration you will have to climb faster to the tops of the ladders that matter most to you.
That gets you where you want to be sooner.
We are living through a time of change. The distractions all around us aren’t going away any time soon. In fact they’re going to get worse. But we can change the ways that we respond to these distractions.
By knowing our values, and taking action to live in line with them, we can avoid the snakes, focus on the tops of the ladders, and climb to the tops of those ladders faster.
This not only keeps us focused, it also makes us feel alive.
Do you know your values? What proportion of your days do you spend focused on what truly matters most to you?
Adapted from The Churning, Inner Leadership: a framework and a set of tools for building inspiration in a time of change.
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Photo By Leonard J Matthews via StockPholio.net