As a freelancer and entrepreneur, I've learned, the slow, hard way that establishing, learning and maintaining some good ground rules can save you a lot of time.
But this doesn't have to be restricted to building a business. This can and should relate to you as well.
Understanding more about yourself and who you are, taking the time to do some reflection on your values, your beliefs and what goes into making you happy, sad, angry and all the emotions in-between is what starts to get us somewhere. Once you know more about what makes you tick then you can start going out and seeking it, how exciting is that!
Values are like lighthouses - they are signals giving us direction, meaning and purpose.
The other wonderful thing about knowing yourself more is that it can help when it comes to making decisions. For example, say you're lucky enough to be deciding between two job offers and one is offering a great culture but the other has more holiday, go back to your values, align the job criteria against your values and the winning choice should shine through.
Now I realise it sounds like I'm oversimplifying it but once you've done some of the hard work, coming back to these 'cheat sheet' values can be a really helpful way to eliminate indecision.
No, seriously, it does.
When I first did the work on my values, it felt incredibly exciting. I was learning about myself and it made other things make a lot of sense. After some thought and reflection, it came down to the following five:
When I'm feeling good, it's likely one of these is in play. When I don't feel good, the reverse is likely to be true.
So why do I know it's going to be OK?
Well, knowing this much more about me means that I know now what I want to look for in everything. This might be in a job, a social setting, a partner, my hobbies or even something as small as a conversation.
When things don't add up, come back to your values. Once you start to learn how to put yourself first in this way, you can in turn be there for others.
That's how you know it's going to be OK.
Don't believe me? Get in touch :)