Working With Beliefs and Values

Working with beliefs and values involves working at a deeper level to effect change and empowerement in our lives. Things that have held us back for a lifetime can be diffused, and we become free to make choices for ourselves as to how we want to be, and what we want for ourselves in our daily living.

Values

Values are the qualities that we are attracted to or propelled away from. They are what we move toward or away from in life – the things which we are prepared to spend time and resources in order to achieve or avoid.

Our values give direction and purpose to our activities. Our actions and decisions are driven by our values – we seek to move towards appealing values or to move away from unwanted ones.

Values are Subjective

People’s values differ considerably. We should be careful of thinking that because someone declares similar values to you that you and they will be in tune; they may not. There are three main ways in which differences can occur:

1. We may have different notions of the declared values – what one person means by ‘fun’ may be very different from another persons meaning.
2. We may have different criteria or evidence of fulfilment for the value.
3. We will likely give different importance to the value i.e. have the value at a different level in our personal hierarchy of values.

Lack of clarity or agreement on the meaning of values and the evidence of fulfilment for values can be a major source of difficulty in personal and professional relationships.

Applications: Working with Values.

Values are powerfully motivational. Values management is an important part of enjoying a congruent and fulfilling life. I help clients become aware of:

• Your own values
• Your values hierarchy
• Your evidence of fulfilment for these values
• Any values conflicts either within the hierarchy or between, say your home values and your work related values
• How your daily activities contribute towards or undermine your values

Motivating others

Knowing person’s values and their criteria for fulfilment of these enables you to:

• Understand the reasons why they do, and do not do, what they do
• Motivate them by helping them to recognise how a course of action will fulfil their own values.

Beliefs

A belief is a generalisation or decision or conclusion about something. It is a conviction that something is true about oneself or about the world.

A belief is an opinion and cannot be proven by fact and yet we will use it unquestioningly as a guide for how we live our life. And, since a belief is a generalisation, we act as if it is true and cease testing, checking or evaluating it. For this reason each belief has the potential to be very useful or very limiting.

There is a structure to how beliefs are formed, types of beliefs, and how they can be changed. Limiting beliefs can be identified and removed or changed – replaced – with new, more useful ones.