I Don’t Know
(and why that’s a great place to start)
VALUES LIST
If you’ve been playing along, so far you’ve;
- Created a money-no-object vision of your ideal life, living true to your values.
- You told parallel YOU your thoughts on an action plan to get there.
- You tried an exercise in divergent thinking and practiced great breathing for creative thinking.
Before you start to cunningly craft a list of values/traits and ‘ways to be’ for your personal Operations Manual, today I invite you to cast an eye over 228 of them.
Resist making decisions yet.
The list below is just a selection of Values that could be included on a list like this.
You’ll think of more, I expect.
As well as being great at Divergent thinking, children are born with the pre-set of having a beginner’s mind.
Academic scholars work hard to develop this.
With that in mind, I’d love you not to dive in too quickly.
Use breathwork (or just great breathing) to get yourself to a really optimum state of thinking well.
Fully embrace the fact that you may not have any answers yet, as you review the words.
We can all think of someone, who dives in with ‘I know’ when you are trying to help them, or explain something.
Who maybe partly listens, and then dives ahead to the answer.
Or cuts you off mid-anecdote, to tell you the same thing happened to them (only worse, bigger, or more extreme).
Not knowing something and having a beginner’s mind, means you can explore fully.
“I know” can mean you lose out on the opportunity to learn something new.
Making the lateral connections in your mind that can emerge when you don’t force things and let them unfold.
You miss the information in the rush to the answer, like pressing a buzzer on a game show before you’ve heard the whole question – just to get the point first.
That often backfires.
With questions like discovering your unique personal values, speed isn’t important – but the truth IS.
Go too quickly and you may make the mistake of choosing the ones that might be most ‘socially acceptable’.
Or that may be your parents or partner might have chosen for you.
Or you might decisions coloured by past events; as justification for what you did.
Or perhaps living up to your own hype?
Action:
So with no agenda yet – today’s task is simply to read through the list below.
Are there any you need to look up definitions for?
Do any spark an idea for another value/trait that you’ve admired in someone else?
Can you think of people you know who embody some of those?
Let your mind gently absorb the traits, so it can do its own ‘piecing things together’ work in the background.