In this lesson, you’ll explore values—chosen life directions that provide a sense of purpose and meaning. The lesson emphasizes the importance of clarifying what truly matters to you and how aligning your actions with these values can lead to a more fulfilling life. Through exercises and reflections, you’ll learn to distinguish between values, goals, and results and how to use your values as a compass to navigate life’s challenges. In exploring your values, you’ll also discover how they are often the flip side of what you find painful in life.

After this lesson, you should be able to:

• Describe what values are and aren’t.
• Construct values statements.
• Find values in painful situations.

Handouts you’ll need

• Constructing values worksheet
• What values are and aren’t
• The flip side of values transcript
• 4Ts

In addition to these handouts, you’ll need some 3 by 5 index cards, which may be ruled or unruled.

Summary: In this podcast, you’ll learn about values. What values are and aren’t. In a nutshell, values are statements–thoughts in your head. They are made up of what you want to keep doing and how you want to keep doing it in areas of life important to you. Values are the directions you want to go in life. They’re like compass headings keeping you on a course toward valued living. You also learn the difference between values and results, how to construct values, and remember what’s important to you.

Summary: When you value things in life, thinking painful thoughts and feeling difficult feelings are a normal part of the human experience. In caring about or loving someone, there might be a fear the person will hurt you or you’ll get hurt. In this podcast, you’ll discover that pain comes with valuing things. And in that pain are the very things you care about values. So, when you try to move away from the pain by doing something on your solutions list, you miss the opportunity to live your values.