THE VALUES UPON WHICH I WILL RUN MY LIFE
AND ACHIEVE TRUE HAPPINESS
Note: There are various effective approaches to this. You will find it useful, I think, to quickly scan these pieces to get an overview and some ideas:
These are also items to revisit later, but for now just quickly scan them for now, as we must keep our focus on the "core" (the trunk and roots of the learning tree) in order to make more progress quicker. We will be using Branch Learning to allow us the option to, now or later, climb out onto a branch of special interest.
DO RAPIDLY...
Do this exercise at a super-rapid pace, spending no more than 15 to 20 minutes in total. You will return later to refine this, but the best "bang for the buck" right now is in doing it very fast and intuitively (quicker from what you already know). (You may wish to copy and paste this into a word document, so you can type in what is of value to you and have plenty of space.) One or two or three items per space is just fine for now.
This is to be a hierarchy, based first on what directly produces happiness and then on what will produce more of that which produces happiness.
Answer these questions rapidly. The blank spaces are for your answers. I've provided some suggestions or ideas at the bottom of each space. Leave these empty, to return to later, if you can't think of anything right away.
The first shot at this is a "quick and shallow" run at it, designed only to increase awareness in the first stage of high productivity increases with little effort. The next shot will be to flesh this out more when we get to the Productivity Level II books (see Books, to see if it is out yet).
QUICK SCAN
What, other than activities, has me feeling happy about my life and about me?
THE END RESULT I WANT IN MY LIFE
Try not to list any of the intermediate items or the "means to" but that which, in and of itself, is all you need/want.
__ Happiness
__ Satisfaction (contentment is implicit in the "factors" below)
WHAT DIRECTLY IMPACTS MY HAPPINESS - THE MAJOR FACTORS
This directly causes deep, ongoing, non-conditional happiness and is NOT a passing experience that causes temporary fleeting happiness that disappears.
__ Feeling of competence, that I can handle life well
__ Feeling I am skilled in my profession, and valuable.
__ Feeling of contributing value to others
__ Feeling of "doing the right things" in my life.
__ Appreciating my life and holding it in perspective with reality
__ Being kind to another
__ Contributing to the benefit of another
WHAT WILL CONTRIBUTE THE MOST TO ACHIEVING THESE MAJOR FACTORS
Decide which of these to head toward.
Possibilities:
__ Growth in terms of learning how that which is important works and how to work them so that I can experience life and its pieces at a higher level. I acknowledge that this is possibly the most valuable as it helps cause and enable many other things in my life - and that it is gift to myself that keeps on giving good results in my life.
__ Doing "service to others", contributing to the world in some way.
__ Pride in having done what is right and sticking to my values.
WHAT WILL CONTRIBUTE TO MY HAPPINESS
Possibilities:
__ Great relationships (a significant effect)
__ A long term partner in life (research suggests a minimal to about a 10% effect on happiness level)
__ Children (these do not add to short term happiness even though this is meaningful, but may be helpful later on)
__ Make good money (define this, recognize that beyond a certain level there is very little effect for making more)
__ Feeling financially secure for the rest of my life
__ A well established acknowledgement of gratitude for my life and for the world.
MY HIGH VALUE ACTIVITIES I WANT TO EXPERIENCE DIRECTLY
Some possibilities:
__ Socializing with super supportive, positive, progressive people I know
__ Focused time with my spouse, kids
MY HIGH VALUE VALUE-ENABLING ACTIVITIES
__ Learning any area of importance to me, so that I do it well
__ Learning wisdom
WHAT CAN I LEARN THAT WILL INCREASE MY ABILITY TO EXPERIENCE THAT WHICH IS OF VALUE TO ME?
(Including increasing my ability to create that experience and to appreciate the experience.)
What can I do to enable those things that enable me to experience life better?
CONTRIBUTORS BUT OPTIONAL
These are "nice" to do, but not necessary to my happiness. They are more in the nature of "enhancers".
Some possibilities:
__ Travel (define how much and what - put some trips or experiences on your bucket list)
__ A hobby
__ Satisfaction of becoming a wine connoisseur (beware this could have only "faux" value)
WHAT I WILL ELIMINATE OR REDUCE
Things which I do that are of little value or actually cause damage (things that are candidates for eliminating).
Some possibilities:
__ TV __ all; __ all but one hour/day
WHAT I DO THAT MAKES LIFE HARDER
Some possibilities:
__ Stay up too late.
__ Don't sleep enough.
__ Eat too much.
__ Don't exercise enough.
__ Hang around with people who do not add much to my life.
__ Don't take care of my relationships
__ Overstress myself
__ Mismanage time,
__ Overload myself,
__ Create chronic anxiety for myself
__ Fail to allocate time to the most important things first
__ Don't draw boundaries often enough or well enough
__ Constantly being late
__ Not keeping promises
Many more...
I WILL NOT... (These are suggestions and you might want to add other items.)
__ I will not live a life of "fillers", killing time, passively looking for "hits" (the
__ I will not allow others to determine my life or to push out what is of the greatest
value.
__ I will draw boundaries and honor them, in order to be able to do what is of most
value in my life.
__ I will learn what is necessary to live a great life - and not dawdle on this!
Note that this is a beginning awareness exercise, from which a more final determination and writeup will be derived later. The point right now is to use your general awareness of these from this exercise in order to choose, add to, reduce, and/or delete activities that you now engage in. You'll be asked to do those at the appropriate time.
Note that what you do now indicates what you actually value in real life and/or it indicates that you have not yet learned "how something works". [An undesired result indicates that you do not yet know what is sufficient, by definition. This is much misunderstood and results in all sorts of inappropriate criticism. You simply have not yet arrived at "sufficient knowing".]
You may actually value "anxiety relief" or "getting approval to confirm your worth" (often in terms of having to please others and/or avoid displeasing others) more than your stated top value of adding to the happiness of your spouse. By acting on this, you lose the value you could get from the relationship and have it become of negative value in terms of how you feel about yourself, how your spouse feels about you, how happy your spouse isn't, and how he/she treats you (causing a negative feeling for you) in a vicious cycle/spiral that you should defuse(!). (Note that this is based of "effectiveness" and not at all based on the erroneous concept of fault. See No Fault.)
A contributing cause also could be "poor time management", so an activity that should be of high value would be learning and greatly improving your time management. Emotional confusion could be a contributor, so your valuable activity would be to implement such items as strategies that reduce "confusion causing" anxiety in a healthy, effective way. (Note that anxiety, which is "expressed fear", will mobilize the fight/flight response, which will shut down many of the other body functions and reduce the ability for your higher brain to think well, often compounding the problem!)
We also can have values that are "misvalued". We may think that contributing to others is our salvation in heaven, so earthly things take a backseat to that. Or we may think that it is sinful to be selfish (a very crude, unthought-out belief), so we need to learn more about that misconceived belief or lack of perspective in placing relative value on conflicting beliefs and/or in assigning relative value - and then implement self care that will enable one to serve others better, rather than taking away from the net contribution we can make (i.e. we can "have our cake and eat it too" in a sense, but what we are doing is actually "expanding the pie" so it is bigger and there is more to go around - which is a key result of good productivity skills!!!!)
Of course, many of us know of and think we understand the wisdom provided by the stewards/stewardesses in an airplane "put on your own air mask first and then your child's" - but then they fail to do what is analogous in their own lives. They don't take care of themselves, which causes themselves to suffer but also causes them to be less able (as they don't have enough "oxygen") to serve others. They are doing the opposite of productivity wisdom!!!!
I bring in the above "views" as different ways to look at value and selecting activities of high value.
