Artemis EvangelidiAn elevated sense of self-awareness is one of the hallmarks of Living & Leading Consciously. When we can see beyond ourselves, recognise that our thoughts do not define us and become aware that we are in fact, aware, we are able to move beyond judgement, ego and fear.
This acts as a necessary precursor to living a life of integrity – bringing integrity into all that we do and all that we are. However, having integrity pre-supposes that we are crystal clear on one key element – our values. If we do not know what our values are, how can we possibly live a life aligned with them?
Values get thrown around a lot – in business, politics, and movements – yet most people have never had the chance to understand what values actually are and what their own values may be.
When I talk about values in my workshops or during training sessions, I lead my clients through various exercises to enable them to reach their core values and recognise what actions they have taken across their lifespan that have either been aligned or in conflict with them. This opens the door to incredible conversations and ‘a-ha’ moments where the penny finally drops as to why certain conflicts (internal and external) have transpired in the past.
I then ask each client one simple question, just as I am now asking you: ‘Where do you think your values come from?’ If you can answer this question, that is wonderful – not many people can! However, we can explore this question together and I am certain the concepts raised will provide you with some great insight around what our values really mean.
I believe that our values are inherently linked to our soul consciousness. We enter this world with an idea of what we are coming to experience and how we have chosen to be of service. We have a growing list of talents, passions and gifts that have accumulated over the space/time of our various existences. We add to them each time we come, ready to alleviate, in any which way we can, human suffering. Firstly, our own and then that of others.
Values are the expression of our purpose – the quantification of what matters most to us and what we have come here to do. For instance, if one of your core values is ‘family’, then it will come as no surprise that ending up in a career where you work excessive hours and are kept away from your family will eventually become unbearable. When we start to think about values in this sense, they take on a different kind of importance. They become the foundational pieces to our puzzle, and we can really begin to get a sense of their impact on our world.
Going within, connecting with our core and settling into our presence always provides great insight, but doing so with the intent of to really connecting with our values, is powerful. It provides us with the clarity we need to see the spaces between our action and inaction, our joy and our conflict, our boundaries and our blurred lines. We can see where our decisions have brought us great distress in the past and where we were not aligned with our values or the great freedom, when they were.
I invite you to spend some time in the new year thinking about your values. What has your own soul consciousness brought with it into this experience, and how can you ensure that everything you do is always aligned with what it holds dearest? That is what it means to live a life of integrity – clear, focused and at ease with our truth – our values – for the benefit of all.
Dom Liv Kimal
Bec McQuilty
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