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: But Andy’s father discouraged him from pursuing the study of physics by saying that the only way to make a decent living as a physicist was to be Stephen Hawking. In college, Andy majored in business while wishing he could study to become a high school physics teacher. In the ensuing 20 years, Andy became a successful businessman and, not surprisingly, a rather discontented fellow. Recently, I shared with him my views about aligning values and life in pursuit of happiness. I asked him to answer those three questions above. Andy realized that what he loved most about physics was the challenge of understanding the theories and making them comprehensible to others. He also recognized that he has always wanted to help young people, but, up to the present, had only done so by donating money to educational programs. Andy knew it was time for a change in his life. At the same time, he realized that he couldn’t just quit his job and become a high school physics teacher. Andy had a family to support and a somewhat lavish lifestyle that he enjoyed—the proverbial “golden handcuffs.”