Using Your Values to Make Decisions
By Steve Pavlina
Once you know and understand your personal values, you can consult them whenever you need to make a key decision. Should you accept the new job you’ve been offered? Should you pursue a new relationship now? How much time should you spend with your family? These can be tough decisions without a clear right or wrong answer. You may choose to answer them differently at different points in your life.
Your values list provides a shortcut for making these decisions intelligently. When you’re confronted with such a decision, you pull out your list and check the prioritization of values. Then ask yourself, “What would a person with these values choose to do in this situation?” It’s usually the prioritization of your values that will answer the question.
For example, if you’re offered a job promotion that will shift your work weeks from 40 hours to 60 hours but double your salary, should you take it? If values like success and achievement are at the top of your list, you’ll probably say yes. If freedom and family are at the top, you’ll likely decline the promotion. By clarifying your values, you’ve already done the hard thinking required to discover what’s most important to you. So now when you’re confronted with such decisions, you’re able to reduce them to a values comparison, and the final decision falls into place. If the promotion equates to increased success but reduced peace in your mind, then you can compare those values to learn whether it’s a good idea or not. Your goal is to increase your fulfillment of your highest values without sacrificing them to lower values.
Remember that this is only one of many paradigms for making decisions. As such it has limitations, but you should find that it brings clarity to your decision-making.
