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Welcome back to the Growing Tree of Life, our weekly exploration of personal growth and well-being.
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What are your core values ?
Issue Number: #055
Date: 1 February 2024
Reading Time: 2 minutes
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I hope your last week went well. Our journey to self-discovery continues, and today, we're going to delve deeper into the essence of your core values.
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In the last newsletter, I encouraged you to record experiences from your past—those that fill you with energy, those that drain you, moments of positive emotions, and instances that trigger negativity. These personal accounts are essential pieces of the puzzle that will reveal your core values.
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Discovering your core values is the key to unlocking a life filled with purpose and meaning. It helps you uncover the very essence of who you are, find your purpose, and create an authentic Life Plan.
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To guide you on this journey, let's take a look at some of my own experiences:
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I organized my life's chapters into distinct periods: childhood, teenage years, army service, early jobs, family life, and more.
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- When I was a child, I used to attend Sunday school, and I was drawn to helping prepare the lectures. Around the age of 10, I took it a step further and started giving my own Sunday school lessons to the other kids. I loved reading the stories in the Bible, finding out what they meant, preparing visual aids or games, and sharing them with other kids.
- When I was a Pioneer (similar to Scouts or Royal Rangers), I always helped prepare programs for other kids and organized events.
- In school, I loved to read books, write reports on them, and deliver presentations in front of the class.
- As I entered the workforce, I naturally assumed the role of mentor and guide, helping colleagues and teammates. I developed a knack for delving deep into complex subjects and making them more understandable. I created presentations and manuals, sharing them with others to help them be more successful. That led to me being quickly elevated into supervisory and managerial positions.
Do you notice the common thread?
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- Passion for teaching and sharing knowledge.
- A strong desire to convey what I learned.
- The ability to take something intricate and make it accessible to everyone.
- Teaching, mentoring, and guiding were not just passing interests but enduring values.
- A sense of fulfilment derived from helping others learn and grow.
So, from all the above, you can see that the love for learning, simplifying, and sharing knowledge to help others are fundamental values in my life. The emergence of teaching, mentoring, and guiding others started in my childhood and continued to shape my life.
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In each of these experiences, my joy and fulfilment stemmed from the following values:
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- Curiosity ~ discovering new things and learning as much as possible about them, covering all possible angles.
- Understanding ~ sorting gained knowledge and simplifying it to make it accessible to everyone.
- Helping others ~ sharing the newly acquired knowledge to help others succeed, either with on-stage presentations, written manuals and reports, or in one-on-one coaching and mentoring.
*All three values—Curiosity, Understanding, and Helping Others—became apparent even in different ways later in life when I always tried to discover and understand why people do certain things—what happened to them to act this way? How can I help them to do things in a way they would benefit from?
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This core value of helping others learn and grow shone through. But that's not all.
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Now, let's delve into another example. Among my notes, I documented draining experiences like traffic jams, aimless meetings, or tasks misaligned with my goals. The common denominator here? A lack of progress and direction, an inability to affect change. Hence, another core value in my life emerged:
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- Purpose and Mission ~ the drive to make meaningful progress and move forward.
- Autonomy ~ the ability to select what I will focus on, how I will do it, and when.
These are my core values, and knowing them is invaluable. I use them whenever I have to make a decision about my life. Whatever I decide to do must fulfil at least one of these values, the more values it adheres to, the better.
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So, how can you identify the common threads within your notes and uncover your core values? Here's your roadmap:
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Seek Patterns: Scrutinize your energizing and draining experiences, positive and negative emotions. Do any recurring themes emerge?
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Reflect on Stories: What do your experiences convey about your deepest priorities? What values do they embody?
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Identify Your Values: As you analyze your notes, pinpoint the values encapsulated within these patterns.
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As always, there are no right or wrong answers. There are only your answers. It's not about others, not about what you "should do" or "shouldn't do". It's about you.
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Understanding your core values is a transformative step toward self-discovery. It empowers you to make choices that align with your true self and passions. Your values are your guiding stars, illuminating the path to a life filled with passion and purpose.
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In our next newsletter, I will share a list of over a hundred values you can go through. They will help you pinpoint even more precisely what really matters to you.
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Thank you for being an invaluable part of the Growing Tree of Life community. Together, we'll continue this thrilling journey. Until next Thursday!
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Lubo
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Lubo
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