Living in your Highest Values and creating a Fulfilled Life.
Confusion and misdirection around Values is one of the biggest distortions in personal development, and I was in this “conventional trap” for a while, myself. Until just recently, when I discovered the resources that I am about to present to you in this entry.
Many people believe they know their values, but they are actually listing aspirations, ideals, or moral preferences, not what truly organizes their behavior, and not what is truly, genuinely built-in for them, specifically and uniquely.
Values in the Context of The Brain’s Classification (Categorization) System
What is often missed about Values, is how Values actually function within the context of the Brain. The Values System is how the Brain constantly categorizes experiences.
At the level of the Brain, the Values System performs 3 main functions — Meaning creation, Category assignment, and Value prioritization.
Values come from Voids (or needs, at a given time).
Values come from perceived voids. You have the things that you have now because of the perceived lack of something that you may have experienced. That lack, created a void, a need you wanted to fulfil. And as a result, your brain created a value based on this void, or need.
For example, you may have had the need for Growth in your life, so your brain may have create a value based on Learning or Mastery of knowledge, Study, or Personal Development. It determined that this is valuable to you for your need for growth. And so it categorized experiences as meaningful if they were related to this Value, and considered others less important.
Your Values are Unique
Your values are unique. And your mind is programmed to fulfill YOUR values according to a particular hierarchy, from the most important to the least important.
Your brain will drive you to allocate resources in order of your values, choosing and giving more time, energy, focus, discipline to the first four highest values.
“You came into this life with an amazing gift. And YOU are unique. These gifts emerged from all these experiences you had and also from the house you were born into, and from the heritage you took or have from your family. And ALL these create a specific PUZZLE of things that become important to your brain, to your mind, and you will have these as VALUES.
And this means, because these are UNIQUE, you have a very important place in this universe which is ONLY yours to fulfill and NOBODY can take that place.” — Monica Ion
What Values are and what they are NOT
Your mind and body will support you when you live according to your highest values.
When you are living in your lower values your brain and body may hinder you.
Your ability to achieve goals will be based on whether they are aligned with your highest values.
Scope, Category and Self-Concept
Your brain collects information you put your attention and energy on, as content. It structures this content into meaning, and then files it into categories based on this meaning. Your brain essentially gives a category to the information you pay attention to (the content) by way of giving meaning to it (structure).
And how you FEEL about that categorization you file information under is the way you have generalized that experience.
Another way to say category in this context is Value. Value can be also synonymous with Intent, in this context as well. Whatever that experience means to you (the intention) is how you file it under a particular category in the mind (a value) — and you have a hierarchy of values — some more important and some less important — as I have mentioned above.
And what’s further more interesting, is the accumulation of all generalizations that you make about your experiences, relative to yourself and your values, becomes the “self-concept” — or your identity.
And so, A VALUE is a generalization about an experience that’s important to you, it becomes a mental measuring stick.
A high priority value is what your nervous system spontaneously prioritizes.
It is what your behavior consistently demonstrates is important.
It’s what we pay attention to.
It’s what we perceive as meaningful.
It’s what we ACT ON.
It is the driver of motivation and decisions.
It determines how we classify benefits versus drawbacks.
It how we assign and interpret events, therefore formulate the nature of our perception.
They shape the polarity interpretation of reality, and determine which side of the polarity we emphasize.
Living in your Highest Values
Your Highest Values are what truly fulfills you, motivates you and where your true potential lives.
In your Highest Values, you can take actions repeatedly, persistently and you are inspired to do so without any external means for motivation — the motivation is internal, it’s alignment with the core of who you really are.
You spontaneously prioritize actions related to your highest values and you can sustain them over time. From this place, you live in alignment with the true core of who you really are, because everything you do, comes from an internal drive to satisfy who you really are. There is a great deal of satisfaction (fulfillment) in living from your Highest Values.
It functions as an incredible internal compass that fulfills you in everything that you do. It nourishes you from the inside.
It is our unique purpose in life to understand and fulfill our life through our Highest Values.
Your Mission, Your Calling, Your Highest Values
Whatever is highest in your values, you are spontaneously driven to take action for. You feel, in a sense, “called” to do that. Your identity, your purpose, and your expertise revolves around your Highest Values.
When we live by our Highest Values, we increase the probability of living authentically. And we have the greatest potential to know who we are.
Your identity revolves around what you Value the most — but is that YOURs or somebody else’s? If you prioritize and organize your life accordingly to what YOUR Highest Values are, you get to be yourself, and what you do feels like it’s the most fulfilling way to live — it is YOUR playground.
“When you are in that alignment with your mission, with your soul, and with God, you can achieve amazing things. And you can grow exponentially.”
“If you are thinking that you should do something else, or it would be better for you to be in a different way or to act in a different way, then you will start to be not happy about yourself, and not aligned with yourself, and try to be somebody who you are not ; you are misaligning and your ability to manifest drops.”
“A lot of us learn to give up on yourself in order to please somebody else, to raise to somebody else’s expectations, to take care of somebody or not upset somebody.” — Monica Ion
How to determine what Your Highest (demonstrated) Values are?
I learned my method of evaluating demonstrated Values in my life from Monica Ion in one of her amazing workshops; however, I can recommend that you try the DeMartini Method of evaluating your Values in your life, as well. This takes a little bit of dedication and commitment regularly, weekly, monthly, and quarterly, to really see patterns and understand what values are driving the creation of your life. You can do this by simply looking at:
- What is in your immediate space, and what does that represent to you?
- What activities do you carry out throughout your day, or your week — how are you spending your time? And what does that mean to you? Why do you do those things?
- What do you give your energy, focus, and attention to? What does that mean to you? What energizes you and what drains you?
- How do you spend your money? What do you spend your money on and why? And how do you feel when you spend your money on those matters?
Do you want to go further, and learn more about Values?
Here are several other resources that I can recommend that you can learn from to go deeper.
1. Monica Ion was one of the first resources I learned from about Value demonstration determination.
This link: https://inspiredlifecircle.com/intensive-watch/ contains a public video in which you will be able to find “How to identify your priorities” in the last 3 months, at minute: 57:07. And if you want to go even one step further, she explains an exercise on “how to bring money into your priorities” (and your mind will work with you to achieve financial success) at minute 1:58:43.
2. The DeMartini materials.
In addition to these four prompts, you can also proceed in greater detail and do the full 13 questions in the DeMartini method.
I also highly recommend you read through at least the introduction (in the amazon Sample) of DeMartini’s book called “The Values Factor: The Secret to Creating an Inspired and Fulfilling Life.”
3. Steve Andreas ‘s works and Damon Cart
Damon Cart is an incredible resource to learn about Steve Andrea’s Scope & Category and the Self-Concept. I recommend two immediate videos that I know you can fully benefit from if you decide to put the 3–4 hours aside to watch either or both of them.
-1: Better than 10,000 Hours of Manifestation Elite Training (4+ hours) — YouTube
-2: Identity Shifting Elite Course (3+ hours) — YouTube
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