Identify and Live Your Personal Values to Succeed

Identify and Live Your Personal Values to SucceedIdentify and Live Your Personal Values to SucceedIf youd like to experience the most success in both your personal and your business work life you will live them based on the values that are most important to you. To know what you value most, it is extraordinarily useful to spend some time identifying your key personal life values. Sure, you can recite a few values that are important to you without doing this work. Most people can. But, if you want to use your values as a personal compass to light your way, youll invest the time to seriously consider what you value the most. Why Do You Need to Identify Your Deepest Held Values? Understanding your most deeply held beliefs gestalts the foundation for creating a life that brings you happiness, fulfillment, success, and even- joy. They provide the cornerstone that each individual needs for guidance and making choices. Your values help you judge the appropriateness of careers and jobs f or you. They help you select hobbies and volunteer activities. They drive how you interact with your colleagues and bosses and govern your relationships with your family and friends. Convinced you need to identify your values? You will want to start by talking about what values are and see some examples of values. What Are Values? Values are traits or qualities that are considered worthwhile they represent your highest priorities and deeply held driving forces and beliefs. When you are part of any organization, you bring your deeply held values and beliefs to the organization. There they co-mingle with those of the other members of the company to create an organization or family culture. This culture either serves your organizations goals effectively or it does not. (If not, you may want to consider how to change your corporate culture so the culture supports the accomplishment of your full organizational potential.) Value Statements Value statements are derived from and gro unded in values. They define how people want to behave with each other in an organization, an institution, a company, or a family. They are statements about how the organization will value customers, suppliers, and the internal community. Value statements describe actions that are the living enactment of the fundamental values held by most individuals within the organization. In one organization, a university health care center, all of the employees helped to identify the organizations core values. They ended up with the acronym, I CARE. Integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence were the values identified. Then each department took each of the values and developed value statements that the employees believed best exemplified the values in action in their department. An example of a value statement was, We will keep no student who needs care waiting for more than fifteen minutes. Another was, No student will need to remove items of clothing until they were seen b y a doctor and the removal was deemed necessary for a proper examination. The following are examples of values. You might use these as the starting point for thinking about and articulating your own values as a human being. Examples of Values ambition, competency, individuality, equality, integrity, service, responsibility, accuracy, respect, dedication, diversity, improvement, enjoyment/fun, loyalty, credibility, honesty, innovativeness, teamwork, excellence, accountability, empowerment, quality, efficiency, dignity, collaboration, stewardship, empathy, accomplishment, courage, wisdom, independence, security, challenge, influence, learning, compassion, friendliness, discipline/order, generosity, persistence, optimism, dependability, flexibility, change Why Identify and Establish Your Values? Your values are made up of everything that has happened to you in your life and ?theyinclude influences from your parents and family, your religious affiliation, your friends and peers, your education, your reading, your experiences, and more. Effective people recognize these environmental influences and identify and develop a clear, concise, and meaningful set of values/beliefs, and priorities. Once defined, values have an impact on every aspect of your life. They form the foundation for your decision making and your relationships with other humans. You demonstrate and model your values in action in your personal and work behaviors, decision making, contribution, and interpersonal interaction.You use your values to make decisions about priorities in your daily work and home life.Your goals and life purpose are grounded in your values. Choose the values that are most important to you, the values that you believe in and that define your character. Adopt them, commit to them, and then live them visibly every day at work and at home. Living your values is one of the most powerful tools available to you to help you become the person you want to be, to help you accompl ish your goals and dreams, and to help you lead and influence others. A value-based and principled person is most able to create a successful and fulfilling career and life. Dont waste your best opportunity.

How to Be Spectacular Every Day

How to Be Spectacular Every DayHow to Be Spectacular Every DayWe all want to be the best we can in our work lives. But sometimes, thats easier said than done. So this week, we took to the web to find some of the best ideas you can use to become even more awesome than you already are- at work and in life.Want more? Check out some of our great ideas for self-improvement

Michelle Obama doesnt believe in lean in should you

Michelle Obama doesnt believe in lean in should youMichelle Obama doesnt believe in lean in should youMichelle Obama was in Brooklyn on Saturday night for her Becoming book tour when she did something that surprised the people around her. She used an expletive. But perhaps more shocking was how she deployed the curse word to denounce a feminist philosophy that has recently informed working womens outlook.Marriage mucksmuschenstill aint equal, yall, Obama said.It aint equal. I tell women that whole you can have it all- mmm, nope, not at the same time, thats a lie. Its not always enough to lean in because that st doesnt work.Obama quickly cut herself off and apologized to the room for getting too comfortable onstage. But her words have an element of truth that Sheryl Sandbergs optimistic ideology about leaning in to have it all doesnt take into account.Women are steadily pursuing education and entering the workforce at higher rates, and those gains show that at least a sizable number of the female population want a career or purpose outside the household. But women still carry most of the burden as caregivers for children and elderly parents, and between 2001 and 2015, only 28% of women worked persistently full-time, year-around. In our current economy, that puts them at a severe disadvantage in terms of job opportunity and growth.According to a new report bythe Institute for Womens Policy Research, women who had worked at some point between 2001 and 2015 made 49% of what men did across the 15-year span. In a 2015 essay, New York Magazine contributing editor Lisa Miller explained how the labor forces unkind treatment of women affects not only older workers, but also young, ambitious professionals looking for role models.No single womans experience of success is generalizable to all women in spite of all the millions of books sold, Sheryl Sandberg only really knows what worked for her, Miller wrote. The better plan would be for a young woman to enter a workplace and, upon looking around, see lots and lots and lots of established, successful females from which to collate a vision of herself.Right now, that vision is a pipe dream - experts sayeven women such as Sandberg who have pioneered paths that make leaning in seem possible fall under scrutiny their male counterparts somehow avoid when their companies are in crisis.Though Obama may have wished she had worded her response differently, the uproarious applause it solicited is likely not only a sign of approval because the former First Lady let loose. Its also an indication of how much the message resonated with women who are trying to make a name for themselves but keep stumbling into a system that works against them, with people such as Obama as their few available role models.A good workplace is one in which you can look around and see versions of yourself five years from now, or ten, Miller wrote. But for women, this exercise in mirroring gets harder and harder as they push toward 40, and 50, and beyond - for the simple reason that older women with ambition dont stick around.