Personal Values 2024

Define your personal values in 2024 to increase your happiness, your success and the meaning of your life!

There are three reasons why in 2024 I am focusing on educating about the benefits of defining and living your personal core values:

• Holistic approaches to health and well-being often overlook and underestimate the importance of living in alignment with your personal values.
• This is an approach that is useful for everyone, regardless of other practices, and I encourage you to incorporate it as a tool in your mental health routine.
• In my private programs and coaching sessions in 2023, I have seen the positive impact of getting a grip on your values at all levels: first by identifying your values and finally by integrating them into your daily life.

So my students have inspired me to talk more about our shared values in 2024. That puts us right in the middle of the topic.

Core values are personal ethical values or ideals that guide you in decisions, relationships and problem solving.

We know that core values develop through life experiences, family patterns, social conditioning and the consumption of content, events and opinions. Our beliefs that reinforce our core values are often the unquestioned beliefs that we accept as truth based on our current knowledge. The good news is that we can also change our values and beliefs when we realize that they no longer serve us.

Benefits of living in line with your personal values:

• ACHIEVING GOALS: Identifying your core values can help you develop and achieve personal and professional goals because they give you a vision from which long-term goals can be derived. They help us to stay on track, set priorities and make decisions that are in line with our beliefs and needs.
• IMPROVE SELF-AWARENESS: Deepening your self-awareness requires attentive self-reflection. The self-awareness you gain by connecting with your personal values will encourage you to stay true to yourself in any situation.
• STRESS REDUCTION: Helps you to manage stress by focusing on what is important in life.
• INCREASE HAPPINESS: When you understand your values, your life becomes easier and you become happier because you can use your values to make truly informed decisions about how you want to live your life.
• MORE MEANING: Understanding our values can help us live a life that has more meaning and is in line with what we want and what we believe is right. Creates a greater sense of purpose. Values are like meaningful signposts in our lives.
• BETTER RELATIONSHIPS: Develops a style that is focused on treating others the way you want to be treated.
• HELPS SOLVE PROBLEMS: You make your decisions with a sense of ethics, self-respect and integrity, which motivates you to be resilient in moments of conflict or great challenge. When you make decisions in line with your personal values, you feel like your true self.

Your personal values are the best compass for your unique journey. – Chris Hutchinson

Recommended steps:

Step 1: Determine your personal core values. I recommend that you use one of the many free value tests available online. Try these: Personalvalu,   Gyfted   or Azimuthpsych  or find your own test. Another option is to create a list of common core values and prioritize them.

Step 2: It is important that you live your core values in your daily life.

• Use them daily: as a solution and prioritization aid, as important motivators, integrate them into your regular conversations. Consider using them as a guide when choosing your friends.
• In the evening: Check whether you have lived your day in line with your values.

Most people have between 5-10 core values that they embody in their lives.

Top values in 2024

I’m starting with my first value and will add another one each month with a brief explanation. Feel free to share your values with me to enrich our discussion.

Authenticity (1/12)

I love the work of Gabor Maté and the way he explains authenticity in this video.

To understand how important authenticity is to the healing process of trauma, I recommend you watch many of his videos to understand the conflict between attachment and authenticity that we all experience in life.

Wisdom (2/12)

For me, wisdom is a feminine force. Knowledge is more yang (masculine energy) and wisdom is infused with yin (feminine) energy.

Wisdom in its highest form gives us a 360 degree perspective and direction in all that we are and do. Wisdom means sharing the truth with others so that they can benefit from it. When it comes to current teachers, I like to refer to Teal Swan. Even though she is controversial, I feel that she resonates with me more than Socrates in many areas (as far as the topic is concerned).

Growth (3/12)

Personal growth is a process of understanding yourself and challenging yourself to reach your greatest potential. It means regularly asking yourself how you want to develop and how you want to get there. Fortunately, we can decide for ourselves if, when and how we want to grow and in which direction we want to develop.

Some people divide the areas into mental, social, spiritual, emotional and physical growth – but for me it’s all connected and one and the same. Is personal growth an important value for you and what do you focus on? And do you, like others, track your achievements?

Forgiveness (4/12)

Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, intentional decision to let go of feelings of resentment or revenge towards a person or group that has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.

Forgiving someone can feel like giving up our right to justice. It can be difficult to forgive when we feel like the person who hurt us needs to be held accountable for their actions.

Forgiveness is easy for me – until it isn’t. And then it’s a long process that I approach with metta (Loving Kindness Meditation) and other techniques when my ego insists on fairness and being right, which it may want to fight for, but I don’t think that’s helpful. So my great teacher and his books on forgiveness and kindness will always be and remain the Dalai Lama.

Love – Compassion (5/12)

You may think who doesn’t have love or compassion as one of the most important core values in life. But does everyone really live in harmony with this value? In their daily thoughts and actions?

I see more of a difference between people who “serve others” or “serve themselves”. A basic orientation in which people differ, of course with fluid edges on both sides.

Even people who “serve others” or have made this their goal in life have moments when they have to put themselves first, for example in a difficult situation or when someone crosses their boundaries. But usually the aspect of love and compassion is at the forefront of their daily actions and thoughts.
Where do you stand?

Honesty (6/12)

While most of us appreciate values such as honesty in others, we don’t always show it ourselves. Honesty requires courage and should be practiced with empathy and sensitivity. For me personally, kindness is always more important than honesty and must be practiced with awareness. A major challenge in this area is when we want to stand up for ourselves and practice authenticity at the same time.