Valued Living
Waking up to each day is magical. The beauty and freshness of being alive is inexpressible. Awakening to the absolute awe and wonder of this precious human life we’ve been given is undoubtedly a key secret to accessing the fullness of life. This fullness comes with living on purpose. The questions, “what is my aspiration for life?” or “what is my intention?” are great ways of simply checking in. “What do I aspire to?” is another way of inquiring. Each day can be a small scale version of this, “what do I aspire to today?” and a step further, “what is my intention for this afternoon, this meeting, this evening?” are all valuable ways of consistently checking in to see if how you’re spending your time is in line with your values.
With the purposeful life, we are acting more and more in accord with our decided upon values. We have made the decision to become aware of what we value and are brave enough to check and see if we're living according to those values. It is brave because it opens us up to the unsettling sight that we are spending a large part of our time engaged in actions, relationships or roles that we actually don't value or enjoy, but instead are entangled in habituated patterns that have one key element: they are oddly comfortable and this comfort is scary to leave. Another way to put this is that we get stuck in habitual lifestyles that potentially were appropriate at a certain time in our life but now are simply unhealthy and unsatisfying means of being in the world. Despite being unsatisfying, we often feel stuck or trapped because the alternative is leaving predictable comfort for the unknown.
Clarifying what we truly value as opposed to what we were told to value or conditioned to value is foundational to living the purposeful life. Values clarification is foundational because it is the way to see our distinct ways of navigating through the world and how we often fall back into ways which are self-sabotaging or at least not in our best interest. Sadly, these self-sabotaging ways consume massive amounts of precious time. If you want to see what you truly value, look at how you spend your time.
One little exercise you can do is to log your activities in a calendar for one to two weeks, either on the hour or simply mornings, afternoons, evenings and nights. Write down what you are doing and how you feel. This can be a great starting point to look at what you’re doing each day, who you’re spending your time with and the feelings you’re experiencing. You may start to see connections which can prompt a desire for change towards spending more time in valued behaviors and relationships and less time in unhealthy, dissatisfying activities and interactions.
Mark Stoll, LPC, NCC