posted14/10/09
The Story of Two Wolves
I want to bring the section on values to a close today with a story that I found, which speaks to many of the reasons as to why we sometimes succeed and sometimes fail in life.
Over the last few days I have asked you to think about your values, and how they have affected you when making decisions in your life. In doing this I have challenged you to think about what values have attributed to your success and what values have attributed to your failures.
I personally believe that while our values do evolve and change over time, that when under pressure to make decisions sometimes we choose the “evil woof” from this story:
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Take the time to go away today and think about which of these “wolves” you are feeding!
posted06/10/09
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.
posted05/10/09
A personal development blog that uses the word failure, that is almost a cardinal sin. In fact I am sure I will get emails from people telling me that by talking and thinking about failure I am attracting failure. My answer to that is “that’s a load of crap”!
Do you think that Anthony Robbins has never had a negative thought or made a negative comment in his life?
Do you really think the path to success is to think only positively?
I personally believe that a blend of positive and negative thinking is inevitable for everyone, all you need to do is ensure that you have more positive thoughts than negative.
So with that said today, we are going to expand on the exercise you did as part of the Values Change Overtime post. Today I want you to take 10 minutes to sit down and reflect on some of your previous failures. I want you to visualise that time in your life and reflect on the values you had and how they affected your decision making at that time.
Upon completing this exercise you will have written down a value system that achieves failure and a value system that achieves success for you. This system will be different for everyone so it’s important that you do this individually.
posted02/10/09
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:
- The Operating Order Of Your Values Change Hourly
- 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.
