Personal Effectiveness through Values Clarification

In the last few years, I have been running groups for young people who wanted to become more personally effective. In the way we understood effectiveness in a personal context, we always included the idea of having at least some congruence between what one thought was important to him or her and how that person conducted him/herself on a day to day basis. In other words, being personally effective meant that one needed to know what was important to him/her and to make sure that these priorities were reflected in one’s daily life.

This is when we talked about values. Values are a set of beliefs held by an individual or shared by a group of people. In as much as values can be shared with a group of people, these beliefs are often very subjective and do vary from one individual to another. They often also form a constellation of beliefs that is called values system.

Although our values can change over time, they often guide our behaviors. As such, knowing our values is one way to help us clarify what is really important to us and to make sure that our behaviors are congruent with our value system. Only with such understanding can we evaluate the way we behave. With such self-monitoring evaluations, we are able to help ourselves become more effective.

There are many ways through which one can clarify one’s values. The steps outlined below are particularly useful for those who have never done any similar exercise before. As the steps described below is admittedly time consuming, one may do these steps across a period of time (e.g., 2 hours a week for a period of 2 months) rather than in one sitting. Here are the steps:

• List down your priorities. Write down what/who you care about in your current life in no particular order.
• Understand what makes them important to you. For each of the items you listed, write down what makes it important for you. How do you feel about this particular matter/person in your life? How does the presence of this in your life make a difference for you? Be honest. After all, you are doing this for yourself. It is important to note that this is the most time consuming step, and you may spend the most time doing this, even going to back to items a few times over.
• Prioritize. Rank all the items you listed in order or importance to you (e.g., “1” can be the most important, in descending order).
• Understand the priorities list. List down the elements of your choices. In other words, what made you choose your first priority as such? What made them so important to you?
• Compare priorities list with your actual daily schedule. Using this list of priorities, list down the amount of time (given a typical week or month, perhaps) you spend doing activities address each of these priorities.
• Congratulate yourself. At this point, congratulate yourself for getting this far in the process. This means that you are serious in wanting to become more personally effective.
• Evaluate your daily schedule. What consistencies or discrepancies did you notice between your list of priorities and actual time spent doing these?
• Identify realistic goals. What changes can you make in your life given the insights gained from the earlier steps? How can you improve your state of personal effectiveness?
• Commit to improvement. No matter how small, commit to some action plan that you will undertake given a specific time frame. Make sure you are also able to evaluate how you were able to implement these changes in your life.

 The steps I just outline, if followed properly, can be a powerful experience in setting your life on a track that makes sense to you. As your behaviors become more and more consistent with what is truly important to you (otherwise known as the “bottom line”), you will also notice that you become increasingly more satisfied with the way your life is going. Now, that is personal effectiveness.