I’ve been having lots of conversations recently about living in alignment with values and priorities. Learning how to do this for myself is the most important piece of work I’ve done in my life.
Regardless of who you are or what you do, it’s completely up to you to lead your life in alignment.
I thought I was pretty good at doing this but my recent diagnosis highlighted that I wasn’t as great as what I thought.
What is living in alignment?
This means that you have crystal clear clarity on your values and priorities. In other words, what is really important to you. Once you have that, you can then ensure your actions are aligned to this.
For example, one of my clients’ values is ‘courage’. When we were exploring the actions, she needed to adopt to support her value it was clear that she hadn’t been living in alignment with it because she didn’t have clarity. Now that she has this clarity, she knows she needs to make decisions that support her being courageous; she needs to step outside of her comfort zone more, speak up in meetings, attend networking events on her own. These are courageous actions for her. Now that she knows this, she can decide whether she lives in alignment with her value of courage or not.
Why live in alignment?
One of the main reasons I believe that you live in alignment is to avoid regrets down the track. That is a big one for me. Like my clients example above, she doesn’t want to walk out of a meeting wishing she’d spoken up. She has committed to doing it.
Some others reasons include
- Living a life with deep meaning
- Decision making is easier and becomes quicker
- You feel more authentic and embrace who you are and what you stand for
- You feel more confident
- You inspire others to do the same through your actions – this is a key leadership trait
- You build trust because your actions match your words.
- Your relationship with you deepens and you are more connected to who you are.
I share more about how I did this in detail in my latest podcast episode. You can tune in here: