Aligning Your Values Workshop

man-and-compass Our values are the emotional states that are of importance to us: those states we wish to seek and those we wish to avoid.

‘Seek’ values are those states which we want more of, emotions that make us feel good. They may include love, freedom, challenge, safety, doing good in the world, etc.

‘Avoid’ values are states that we actively avoid, that we do not like and we wish to move away from. They may include conflict, failure, being judged, danger.

There are many different combinations of values and each of us will have our own mix.

Since our values direct us towards the emotional states we want to experience and away from those we want to avoid they strongly influence our decisions. Those decisions, and the results of those decisions, give us our experience of life.

What is the problem?

The problem with values is that we did not get the chance to choose them for ourselves. Most of our values were adopted during our early lives. We picked them up along the way from our experiences or the values of the people who were important to us. They were formed at a time that is long gone but unconsciously they still guide us even now.

A value that was useful to our very young, inexperienced, selves when we were growing up may not serve us very well in our current lives, some values may still be helpful, some may not.

Usually many of our values are hidden from concious view and we find ourselves acting out in ways that make little sense. What we conciously choose and aspire to seems to be sabotaged in favour of something else. If you don’t know what is important how can you make decisions that honour what is really important?

What if, as a result of early life experiences, two of your most important values are safety and challenge – then you might find that taking on challenges might be very difficult no matter how much you want to.

The two values will be in conflict. You will experience an internal civil war that may make no sense to your concious mind. These values and the conflicts within and between them are often below concious awareness and play themselves out in procrastination, self sabotage and indecision.

What is the solution?

What if you could find out what is important to you (the ones that are really important to you, not just the ones you think are important)?

When you know what is important to you, you can use this knowledge to make decisions that align your actions, and your life, with what is important. You will be able to be genuinely motivated and congruent in your actions. You will also be aware of the unconscious values that have been triggering unhelpful responses and be able to deal with them.

What if you could clean and polish your values? Resolve any conflicts within your values, the blocks that stop you fully experiencing those feelings. Updating the infantile or distorted versions of those values to something more useful.

When you have released these internal conflicts, you will be able to more easily experience those emotional states that you’ve always wanted. You will be able to be more congruent which will feel good to you and those around you.

What if you could resolve the conflicts between values? So that your values could support rather than compete with one another.

What if you could loosen the grip of those ‘avoid’ values? As well as aligning the values you are drawn towards, what would it be like if you could reduce the disruptive effects of those emotional states you are trying to avoid.

What you will get from attending this workshop

When you identify and align with your deepest values you will be able to:

choose actions and goals that are consistent with your deepest held values
be drawn to and experience your valued states with greater clarity and enjoyment.
take action without feeling conflicted or pulled in different directions.
become someone who really does ‘walk their talk’.

Who is this workshop for?

If you want to align your life with what is important and live a more purposeful life this workshop is for you.

If you are a coach, therapist or counsellor who wants new ways to help their clients then this workshop is for you.

How does this work?

This workshop is based on the Values Intensive workshop created by Steve Wells of www.eftdownunder.com. We will use Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Simple Energy Techniques (SET) to explore and clarify our values, and to resolve conflicts within and between them.

Day 1

Finding out what is important to us: Identifying the important values that drive our behaviour for good or ill.
Resolving conflicts within values: Releasing the stoppers that lurk within our values and stop us getting the feelings we want. So that we can feel the feeling we want to feel.

Day 2

Resolving the conflicts between our values so that we can be free of internal conflict.
Loosening the grip of the values we move away from.

This is an experiential workshop. You will be working on your own stuff, in individual, pair and group exercises. If you take part you will come away changed for the better. After all this workshop is about what is important to you.

You will need to have had some experience of EFT to take part in this workshop.