MOVING-TOWARD VALUES

While it's absolutely true that you and I are constantly motivated to move toward pleasurable emotional states, it's also true that we value some emotions more than others. For example, what are the emotional states that you value most in life? What are the emotions that you think will give you the most pleasure? Love or success? Freedom or intimacy? Adventure or security?

I call these pleasurable states that we value most moving-toward values because these are the emotional states we'll do the most to attain. What are some of the feelings that are most important for you to experience in your life on a consistent basis? When asked this question at seminars, my audiences invariably respond with words like:

Love

Success

Freedom

Intimacy

Security

Adventure

Power

Passion

Comfort

Health

It's certainly true that you probably value all of these emotions, and that they're all important for you to feel. But wouldn't it be fair to say that you don't value them all equally? Obviously there are some emotional states that you'll do more to achieve than others. In truth, we all have a hierarchy of values. Each person who looks at this list will see some emotional states as being more important to them than others. The hierarchy of your values is controlling the way you make decisions in each moment. Some people value comfort over passion, or freedom over security, or intimacy over success.

Take a moment right now, and discover from this list which of these emotions you value most. Simply rewrite the list in your order of importance, with 1 being the emotional state you hold as most important, and 10 being least important. Please take a moment now and fill in the blanks in your order of importance.

" Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

JOHN WOODEN

So what did you learn by doing this ranking? If I were sitting next to you, I could probably give you some quality feedback. For example, I'd know a lot about you if your number-one value was freedom, followed by passion, adventure, and power. I know you're going to make different decisions than someone whose top values are security, comfort, intimacy, and health. Do you think a person whose number-one value is adventure makes decisions the same way as someone whose number-one value is security? Do you think these people would drive the same kind of car? Take the same kind of vacation? Seek out the same profession? Far from it.

Remember, whatever your values are, they affect the direction of your life. We have all learned through our life's experience that certain emotions give us more pleasure than others. For example, some people have learned that the way to have the most pleasurable emotions in life is to have a sense of control, so they pursue it with incredible vigor. It becomes the dominant focus of all their actions: it shapes who they will have relationships with, what they will do within those relationships, and how they'll live. It also causes them, as you can imagine, to feel quite uncomfortable in any environment where they're not in charge.

Conversely, some people link pain to the idea of control. What they want more than anything else is a sense of freedom and adventure. Therefore, they make decisions completely differently. Others get the same level of pleasure through a different emotion: contribution. This value causes that person to constantly ask, " What can I give? How can I make a difference? " This' would certainly send them in a different direction from someone whose highest value was control.

Once you know what your values are, you can clearly understand why you head in the directions that you do on a consistent basis. Also, by seeing the hierarchy of your values, you can see why sometimes you have difficulty making decisions or why there may be conflicts in your life. For example, if a person's number-one value is freedom, and number two is intimacy, these two incompatible values are so closely ranked that often this person will have challenges.

I remember a man I counseled at one time who was constantly feeling this push-pull. He consistently sought autonomy, but when he achieved it, he felt alone and craved intimacy. Then, as he pursued intimacy, he became fearful he would lose his freedom, and so he'd sabotage the relationship. One particular relationship was continually on-again, off-again while he cycled between these two values. After I helped him make a simple change in the hierarchy of his values, his relationship and his life was instantly changed. Shifting priorities produces power. Knowing your own values helps you to get more clarity as to why you do what you do and how you can live more consistently, but knowing the values of others is equally important. Might it be valuable to know the values of someone you're in a relationship with, or somebody you're in business with? Knowing a person's values gives you a fix on their compass, and allows you to have insight into their decision making. Knowing your own hierarchy is also absolutely critical because your top values are those that are going to bring you the most happiness. Of course, what you really want to do is set it up so that you're meeting all of your values every day. If you don't, you'll experience what seems like an inexplicable feeling of emptiness or unhappiness.

My daughter, Jolie, lives an incredibly rich life in which her highest values are almost always met. She is also a wonderful actress, dancer, and singer. At the age of sixteen, she auditioned to perform at Disneyland (something she knew would fulfill her value of accomplishment if she succeeded). Incredibly, she beat out 700 other girls to win a part in the fabled amusement park's Electric Light Parade. Initially, Jolie was ecstatic. We, along with her friends, were all so delighted and proud of her, and we would frequently drive up on weekends to see her perform. Her schedule, however, was extremely taxing. Jolie had to perform every weeknight as well as weekends, and her school term wasn't over for the summer yet. So she had to drive from San Diego to Orange County every evening in rush-hour traffic, rehearse and perform for several hours, then drive back home in the wee hours of the night so she could get up again early the next morning in time for school. As you can imagine, the daily commute and long hours soon turned the experience into a grueling[120] ordeal[121], not to mention the extremely heavy costume she had to wear which hurt her back.

Even worse, however, from Jolie's perspective, was the fact that her demanding schedule cut drastically into her personal life and prevented her from spending any time with our family and her friends. I began to notice her wandering about in a series of very unresourceful emotional states. She would cry at the drop of a hat, and began to complain about things on a consistent basis. This was totally unlike Jolie. The final straw was that the whole family was preparing to go to Hawaii for our three- week Certification program—everyone except Jolie, who had to stay home in order to continue to work at Disneyland.

One morning, she hit threshold and came to me in tears, undecided and confused. She felt so frustrated, so unhappy and unfulfilled, yet she had achieved what seemed like an unbelievable goal only six months earlier. Disneyland had become painful for her. Why? Because it became an obstacle to her ability to spend time with all those she loved most. Plus Jolie always had felt that the time she spent at Certification, where she participated as a trainer, helped her to grow more than virtually anything else in her life. Many of her friends from around the country attended this program each year, and Disneyland was beginning to feel frustrating to her because she really didn't feel like she was expanding or growing there at all. She was feeling pain if she decided to come with us to Certification (because she didn't want to be a quitter) and pain if she continued to work at Disneyland because it would mean she'd miss out on the things that seemed so important to her.

We sat down together so that I could help her take a close look at what her top four values are in life. They turned out to be: 1) love, 2) health and vibrancy[122], 3) growth, and 4) accomplishment. By turning to her values, I knew that I could help her get the clarity she needed to make the decision that would be right for her. So I asked her, " What does working at Disneyland give you? What's important about working at Disneyland? " She told me that she was originally excited about it because she saw it as an opportunity to make new friends, receive recognition for her work, have fun, and experience a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

At this point, though, she said she wasn't feeling very much accomplishment at all because she didn't feel like she was growing anymore, and she knew there were other things she could be doing that would accelerate her career more rapidly. She also said, " I'm burning myself into the ground. I'm not healthy, and I miss being with the family tremendously."

Then I asked her, " What would making a change in this area of your life mean? If you left Disneyland, spent time at home, and then went to Hawaii, what would that give you? " She immediately brightened. Smiling, she said, " Well, I'd get to be with you guys. I could have some time with my boyfriend. I'd feel free again. I could get some rest and start exercising to get my body back in shape. I'd keep my 4.0 grade point average in school. I could find other ways to grow and achieve. I'd be happy! "

Her answer as to what to do was plainly in front of her. The source of her unhappiness was also clear. Before she started working at Disneyland, she was fulfilling her top three values: she felt loved, she was very healthy and fit^ and she felt like she was growing. Thus she began to pursue the next value on her list: accomplishment. But in so doing, she'd created an environment where she achieved, but missed out on her top three values.

This is such a common experience. We all need to realize that we must accomplish our highest values first—these are our utmost priority. And remember, there is always a way to accomplish all our values simultaneously, and we need to make certain we don't settle for anything less.

There still was one final obstacle to Jolie's decision: she also linked pain to leaving Disneyland. One of the things she avoided most in life was quitting. I certainly had contributed to this view, since I believe nothing is ever achieved by those who give up whenever it gets tough. So she saw leaving her work at Disneyland as giving up. I assured her that making a decision to live congruently with your values is not quitting, nor is foolish consistency a virtue. I would be the first person to ensure that she continue if I thought she was just giving up because the work was too tough. But that was not the case, and I offered her the opportunity to turn this transition into a gift for someone else.

I said, " Jolie, can you imagine how you'd feel if you were the first runner-up, and all of a sudden the winner stepped down, and now you had a chance to be in the parade? Why don't you give that gift to someone else? " Because part of Jolie's definition of love is contribution, this immediately tapped into her highest value. She stopped linking pain to quitting, and now associated pleasure to her decision.

This values lesson is one she's never forgotten, and the most exciting thing was that she found a new way to meet all of her values that began to move her more precisely in the direction of her goals. She not only began to feel more fun and happiness, but shortly thereafter she got her first job in a San Diego Starlight Theater production.