finding happiness through your values

By: Dris Mi
Edited date: October 3, 2022Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

values based decisions making

 

 

 

Most of the time when we feel lost, unhappy, unbalanced or unfulfilled, it is because we feel that something is missing in our lives. More so, this is usually because our values have not been met or they are simply unknown or missing.

Our values guide our decisions, they motivate us, they make us happy, and they play a fundamental role in our level of satisfaction, in everything we do and live by.

For instance, if fun, freedom, communication, growth, love, and work are our key values, and if any one of these is somehow missing, we might feel stagnant, bored, detached, where nothing seems good. We could have a certain level of freedom because perhaps we work from home or maybe in an office environment, we have excellent relationships with our colleagues and managers. Even if we love what we are doing in our job, we will not be happy or feel fulfilled if one of our core values is missing.

These important values play the same roles in our relationships. We need fun, freedom, communication, growth, and a lot of love in order to feel complete. Our values play a role in our physical environment, and in the relationships we have with friends and family. They also play a role in the activities that we do in our free time, as well as in our personal growth. Our values guide our behaviors too.

A few years ago, I wasn’t aware of my core values, and I was lost. I was trapped in an unhappy relationship and an unfulfilling job. I was chasing things that never seemed to come, and somewhere along the way, I forgot to live in the present moment. I wanted to be successful, make money, and be popular among my friends and colleagues, but I neglected my mental health. I attached my sense of worth to material things, and I forgot about real relationships. I lost touch with myself and drowned in a sea of anxiety. I was stressed, unhappy, and always worried about what might go wrong. It’s not surprising that I lost balance.

All that time I lost the connection with many of my values. At work, there was no more Growth, no more Passion and no more Love for what I was doing. I felt stagnant and unfulfilled.

At home, my relationship suffered from bad or even totally absent Communication with my ex-partner. No communication lead to no understanding and no togetherness. I realized that my values were: communication, understanding, growth, togetherness, passion, and my core value is love. No wonder why I was so unhappy and depressed!

Our emotional well-being, our ambitions, motivation, and overall happiness are guided by our core values. So, when our values are met, we feel great. When they are missing, we feel lost. This is why it is so important for us to be aware of what our values are and to work towards meeting these in every aspect of our life.

Here is how we can bring our values from a subconscious level to a conscious level:

• We can start by asking ourselves what we need in a relationship and what is important to us. Our mind will immediately lead to a value that is important, such as “Trust” for example. And we might agree that yes, trust is important in a relationship. Great, so we have established that, so what is next?

• By thinking and digging a little deeper we should come up with another value that might be greater than trust in our relationship, such as passion! This way, we can keep on collecting words that we feel are important to us in our relationship until we find our core value.

How do we know which is our core value? Our core value is the value that is greater than any other value. It’s the ultimate VIP value! The one where we feel that there is nothing more important than this value, such as peace, love, happiness, and limitless fulfillment. It will be different for each person according to their upbringing and life experiences.

It’s important to keep our values in mind, or handily written somewhere, and every time we feel uncomfortable, unhappy or unbalanced, we can go back to them and check if one of our values is missing, and ask ourselves what we can do to change our environment or how to meet this value. What could be the concrete validation of that value we could incorporate in our life.

So, what are your values?

Read this: core values in a relationship.