3 Steps to Turn Your Values Into Action

It’s a discouraging feeling, but certainly not an unfamiliar one - we all set goals we struggle to deliver on. Perhaps you’re feeling it now, at the end of January, as your goal to run more or build your professional network becomes one of those disappearing New Year’s resolutions every one of us knows too well. Why is it that some of our strategies can feel impossible to achieve?

The way we set our goals, and the strategies we build for them, can make or break our success. Oftentimes, our goals are too broad or not achievable during our set time frame or simply not personal enough to us as individuals. 

Leading research into organizational change, positive psychology, and behavioral science agree that real and sustainable change is best achieved when we base it on personal values that are 1) Self-directed; 2) Based on an emotional connection; and 3) Hopeful and optimistic. 

We have validated these findings with feedback from our own Turning Values Into Action workshops. These participants spend focused time analyzing and articulating their priority values that they can then use to craft specific actions and strategies to align their choices more closely with these values. And by framing their strategic change this way, they can approach an otherwise scary and overwhelming change in a hopeful and optimistic way that motivates them to keep going. 

By crafting your own values-based personal strategy, you give yourself a lens through which you can make decisions, identify and arrange your priorities, and craft a long term investment in your goals and the power to say ‘no’ to those choices that detract from those goals. Here are some tips we recommend when getting started. 

  1. Assess your priority values. Spend time articulating what these look like in practice in your everyday life. Beyond simply saying you value Autonomy, or Health, or Learning, state how this manifests in your daily life and work. Does it mean that you value a workplace that gives you the freedom to explore and make decisions?  An approach to your health that includes prioritizing sleep?  A focus on learning for professional development, or creating space for you and your team to be curious and explore new tools and resources? 

  2. Identify the gaps between these priorities and your current choices and capabilities. This gap can provide an estimate of what work needs to be done in order to live up to your values. By assessing where you are and are not practicing your values, you can identify a measurable, achievable goal. A helpful method for this may be writing down draft statements that capture the change you want to make. You can then turn these into a couple of simple, actionable goals. 

  3. Take small, incremental steps. Once you have identified specific actions you want to take, start small and build on each incremental success. Focus on these small wins so you can stay motivated. You wouldn’t try to run a marathon next week so don’t create unachievable steps that will just set you back and make you feel discouraged.

When we feel invested in our goals because we want to achieve them rather than feeling like we should achieve them, we are better able to implement strategies that work.

Contact us for more information on future workshops or 1:1 sessions to help you more fully live your values.

Barbara White