Title: Personal Growth: How to Align Your Values and Your Life | Psychology Today
Headings: Personal Growth: How to Align Your Values and Your Life
Jim Taylor Ph.D.
Personal Growth: How to Align Your Values and Your Life
Are your life and your values in synch?

Content: Assuming that you choose activities in your life freely, such as cultural, spiritual, or athletic activities, specifying these activities is a first step in identifying the values that create congruence between your values and your life. Second, what activities do you have a great passion for and that bring you true joy in your participation? There is no better clue to what you deeply value than activities such as these. Third, what activities, experiences, and people cause you to feel deeply engaged and connected with? This absorption can only occur when your values and life are one. Having answered these questions, you can now dig beneath the surface of those activities, experiences, and people, and identify the values that underlie them. One client, Wendy, a financial analyst, had enjoyed the visual arts since childhood, but her parents had discouraged her from pursuing them because “they wouldn’t pay the bills.” When I asked Wendy to answer the above questions, she realized that her love of the arts was the only thing in her life that she felt a deep connection with. Through careful consideration of her values, Wendy discovered that the inspiration of creation and the physical expression of her creativity were fundamental values that she was never able to express in her career. With this insight—this epiphany!,