A free exercise from Your Mindful Year

Let's find out what your values are, and whether you're living by them

Most of us could have a go at naming our values. Far fewer could point at last week and show where they showed up in our actions and behaviours.

And that is normal.

Living by our values gives us a sense of purpose and makes important decisions a no brainer. If we are paying attention, that is.

The danger is that we get busy, we drift from what is important to what is urgent and that creates a kind of unhappiness that is sometimes difficult to pinpoint. We are wired to notice when our actions and our words don't match, even when we can't say what's wrong.

This is an invitation to revisit your values with curiosity and to see if there is a gap between intention and action. And, the most important bit: you can choose to do something about it.

This tool will help you select five values showing you the one that needs most attention from you. Then you can focus on that one for the next five weeks.

1Choose ten values that resonate, from sixty.

2Narrow to five by choosing between them, one pair at a time.

3Look honestly at where your last seven days went.

4Build your five week tracker for the value that needs it most.

The list of values ahead isn't exhaustive, but it's a good way to get the clarity you need to begin. It takes about eight minutes.

Step 1 of 4Choose ten

Which ten of these matter to you?

Don't overthink it. Go on instinct, and pick the ones you react to rather than the ones that sound admirable. You'll narrow them down next.

0 of 10 chosen

Step 2 of 41 of 15

If one of these had to go, which do you keep?

Step 2 of 4Complete

Your working five

These are the ones you kept

They may shift as you get clearer, and that's fine. For now, treat them as your working set.

Step 3 of 41 of 5

Think about the last seven days only. Not a good week, not a typical week. Last week.
If last week was a shocker, use it anyway. One rough week isn't a verdict on your life, and it's more honest than a week you've smoothed out from memory.

How much of your time, energy and money actually went here?

Step 3 of 4Complete

What you said, against what you did

Here's where the gap is

The green bar is how highly you ranked each value. The orange bar is where your week actually went. The distance between them is the interesting part.

Before you look: this isn't a scorecard. Life gets busy and we drift from how we meant to live, and a week that went to obligations rather than values is an ordinary week, not a failure. A GPS needs two things to get you anywhere, the destination and your actual location. You already have the destination. This is the other half.

Your widest gap is

Next, you'll pick five small ways to close that gap and get a five week tracker with them already filled in.

Step 4 of 4Almost there

Where should the five weeks go?

You'll build your tracker on the next screen and can download it straight away. Over the following five weeks I'll send you one short email a week to keep the practice going. No more than that.

First name

Email

You'll get one short email a week for the five weeks, then my newsletter, which turns up every few weeks rather than every few days. Unsubscribe whenever you like.

Step 4 of 4Last one

Your focus value

Write five small ways you'll live this out. Make at least two or three embarrassingly small. Small enough that you could still do them on your worst day, because consistency matters more than intensity.

Tap an idea to use it as a starting point, then edit it:

Done

Your five weeks start now

Print this or save it as a PDF, and put it somewhere you'll actually see it. At the end of each week, mark how you went. Some weeks you'll manage all five. Some weeks two. That's the practice working, not failing.

Value Tracker

Five ways to embody this value	Wk 1	Wk 2	Wk 3	Wk 4	Wk 5

Your top five:

Why five weeks, and why only one value

Because we need time to track, reassess, make mistakes and improve.

One value, five weeks, five small actions. Small enough that you could still do them on a bad day, because consistency is what does the work here, not intensity.

Actions speak louder than words.

Every time we choose to take action, however small, towards acting like the person we want to be, we cast an important vote for our future.

Then you choose another one and go again. And remember, we are all a work in progress.

Your first email arrives in a few days. Over the five weeks I'll keep the practice ticking along, then you can pick your next value.