Over the last few days you have been assessing your values and how the affect your decision making, your successes and also your failures.  As part of this you have probably realized that values don’t function or operate independently.  Values function as a team, and are called a “value system”.

There are a few different types of values systems in play when making a decision and they are:

• Personal Value System – this is a value system help by and applied to one individual
• Communal or Cultural Value System – this is a value system held by and applied to a community/group/society.

Sometimes you will find that your personal value system is in play when making a decision and sometimes you will find your communal or cultural value system.  It’s important to distinguish in your personal decisions which system is affecting you at that specific point.

So today’s activity is devised to get you to recognize how these two value systems differ for you.  You have already taken the time to document your personal value system, so today take just 10 minutes to work out values make up your communal or cultural value system.

Over the last few days you should have been walking past your values at least 2 times a day and rating them from one through to ten as to how they are affecting your decisions at that exact moment.  When I have previously done this exercise I have found that while may values remain consistant, the order in which they operate change.  I found this not only to be true for me but for other people who also have done this exercise.

So I have, through my personal experience come to realize:

1. The Operating Order Of Your Values Change Hourly
2. Your Values Change Overtime

There is no doubt that:

• favourite food as a child is now different as an adult.
• favourite movie as a child is now different as an adult
• your house is no longer the exact same value as what you brought it at

With that said, there is also no doubt that your values and the way they operate today is different to how they operated as a child.  The question we have to answer is what is the most successful values system for me?

You see, you will find that during the most successful time of your life your values operated in a specific way.  If we could replicate that value system repeatedly then you could replicate your success repeatedly.

So what I want you to spend time on today is mentally revisiting the most successful times in your life.  When you revisit these times I want you to visualize how your value system was operating then.  How were your different  value affecting the decisions you made and the actions you took?

Spend just 10 minutes doing this and write down the results, don’t worry about comparing the results of today’s task against anything at the moment, just get it down.