Published 6 July 2016
Values are factors that you believe are important in the way you live and work. They are probably measures you use to tell if your life is turning out the way you want it to and they encourage major influence on your behaviour and also serve as broad guidelines in all situations.
Values determine your priorities and they tell you how to spend your time right here, right now. There are two reasons that make values important in your live and in the work place.
The first reason is that time is our most limited resource and time does not renew itself. Once we spend a day, it's gone forever. If we waste that day by investing our time in actions that don't produce the results we want, that loss is permanent. We can earn more money, improve our physical bodies, and repair broken relationships, but we cannot redo yesterday. If we all had infinite time, then values and priorities would be irrelevant.
The second reason priorities matter is that we human beings tend to be fairly inconsistent in how we invest our time and energy. Most of us are easily distracted. It's easy for us to fall into the trap of living by different priorities every day. One day you exercise; the next day you slack off. One day you work productively; the next day you're stricken with a spell of laziness. If we don't consciously use our priorities to stick to a clear and consistent course, we'll naturally drift off course and shift all over the place.
Because of these two reasons - limited time and a typically low index of distraction - consciously knowing and living by our values become extremely important. Values act as our compass to put us back on course every single day, so that day after day, we're moving in the direction that takes us closer and closer to our definition of the "best" life we could possibly live. The "best" is your own ideal, but generally as you get closer to this ideal, you'll enjoy increasingly positive shades of "better" even if you never reach "best."
The main benefit of knowing your values is that you will gain tremendous clarity and focus, but ultimately you must use that newfound clarity to make consistent decisions and take committed action. So the whole point of discovering your values is to improve the results you get in those areas that are truly most important to you.