Mindset Over Money» values

The Story Of Two Wolves

Shaun Stenning — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:50:07 +0000

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!

Values Don’t Function Independently

Shaun Stenning — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:38:09 +0000

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.

Assessing The Values That Contributed To Failure

Shaun Stenning — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:48:27 +0000

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.

Values Change Overtime

Shaun Stenning — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:00:26 +0000

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.

We Don’t Pick Our Values – They Pick Us

Shaun Stenning — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:17:31 +0000

Today’s post comes from a very good friend of mine by the name of Dean Letfus from Massive Action

Over many years of observing and working with many people I have noticed that we don’t pick our values, they kind of pick us!
Professional psychological research tells us that our value systems are 100% developed before we are 7 years old. And 80% of this is established before we are 2!!
So changing a value system is a big deal. If we don’t like what we value we have to undo a lifetime of programmed thinking and behaviour.
In my work with investors I powerful value systems operating and often undermining our efforts. You see one of your stated values might be financial independence for example. However if your parents established core values in your life such as:

“Get a good education and get a good job”
“Money doesn’t grow on trees”
“We can’t afford that in our family”
“Rich people are snobs”
“Making money is related to time and effort”
“Having anything nice is showing off”

Then our stated value of financial independence is likely to remain a dream. Our behavior will be driven by these underlying core values, which in the case of the statements above is basically that poverty is good and being rich is associated with a string of negatives.

An extreme example would be gangs. I’ve worked and even lived with them and gang members operate on values of honour, “family”, pride and mutual protection. Most of us would be happy to have those values in our lives. Yet their interpretation of those values allows them to rape, kill, steal, intimidate and abuse others. They behave how they were programmed as children, in spite of their stated value systems.

So the initial key to understanding, (or changing) your values is to start to observe your behaviour. You are what you do, not what you think.

This will take some effort, but it’s worth it.

“I notice I am last to arrive at work and last to leave”
“I spend 15 minutes getting ready for lunch and 15 minutes recovering after lunch before I do any work”
“I adore my daughter but I bite her head off every time she walks into the room”
“Why do I always eat the last biscuit/chocolate/whatever and never offer it to my spouse”
“Why am I depressed for 2 days because I lost a stupid game?”

Don’t be too terrified

A Quick Story About Values

Shaun Stenning — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:58:09 +0000

Today’s mindset over money blog post is going to be a bit different, in fact it’s not even the post that I had planned. You see as I was writing yesterday’s post about values I had something occur where I needed to assess my own value system.

I don’t know whether I have told you yet but I am married to the most wonderful lady, her name is Stephanie. In fact she is the major reason that I educate people and share my thoughts like this, that’s a story for another time. Yesterday Stephanie received a call to tell her that a member of her family was in hospital and not expected to live through the night. Now this was not unexpected as they had been slowly deteriating, but it was still a shock.

We were at least an 8 hour drive away from being able to visit Steph’s family member and Steph and I looked at each other. Without a moments hesitation we started packing the car, we dropped all of our plans for the day and just packed up and left. Now when something like this happens some people will way up the pros and cons, some people will go after just doing the bare minimum needed, but for us we dropped everything instantly and jumped in the car.

So it became amazingly obvious to me yesterday that Steph and I have the same value highest in our value system, family.

This story does not have a happy ending as despite our efforts to drop everything and take action straight away we were 20 minutes too late to be with Steph’s family member. Today I want you to take 2 things away from this post:

Values – When writing down and assessing your values ensure you are being true to yourself. Only once you are true to yourself and your values will you be able to find your internal motivation.
Life – Life is not like a movie, there is not always the fantasy ending, but no matter how something ends there is always good to be seen. The true challenge of life is to see the good despite being surrounded by the bad.

Internal & External Motivation Part 2

Shaun Stenning — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:56:04 +0000

I have had a few emails from people over the last 24 hrs saying they are having difficulty identifying all of their values. The major problem upon investigation was that they were struggling to find the right words to identify their values with. To make it easier for you to complete yesterday’s task I have included a list of values below:

Abundance
Acceptance
Accessibility
Accomplishment
Accuracy
Achievement
Acknowledgement
Activeness
Adaptability
Adoration
Adroitness
Adventure
Affection
Affluence
Aggressiveness
Agility
Alertness
Altruism
Ambition
Amusement
Anticipation
Appreciation
Approachability
Articulacy
Assertiveness
Assurance
Attentiveness
Attractiveness
Audacity
Availability
Awareness
Awe
Balance
Beauty
Being the best
Belonging
Benevolence
Bliss
Boldness
Bravery
Brilliance
Buoyancy
Calmness
Camaraderie
Candor
Capability
Care
Carefulness
Celebrity
Certainty
Challenge
Charity
Charm
Chastity
Cheerfulness
Clarity
Cleanliness
Clear-mindedness
Cleverness
Closeness
Comfort
Commitment
Compassion
Completion
Composure
Concentration
Confidence
Conformity
Congruency
Connection
Consciousness
Consistency
Contentment
Continuity
Contribution
Control
Conviction
Conviviality
Coolness
Cooperation
Cordiality
Correctness
Courage
Courtesy
Craftiness
Creativity
Credibility
Cunning
Curiosity
Daring
Decisiveness
Decorum
Deference
Delight
Dependability
Depth
Desire
Determination
Devotion
Devoutness
Dexterity
Dignity
Diligence
Direction
Directness
Discipline
Discovery
Discretion
Diversity
Dominance
Dreaming
Drive
Duty
Dynamism
Eagerness
Economy
Ecstasy
Education
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Elation
Elegance
Empathy
Encouragement
Endurance
Energy
Enjoyment
Entertainment
Enthusiasm
Excellence
Excitement
Exhilaration
Expectancy
Expediency
Experience
Expertise
Exploration
Expressiveness
Extravagance
Extroversion
Exuberance
Fairness
Faith
Fame
Family
Fascination
Fashion
Fearlessness
Ferocity
Fidelity
Fierceness
Financial independence
Firmness
Fitness
Flexibility
Flow
Fluency
Focus
Fortitude
Frankness
Freedom
Friendliness
Frugality
Fun
Gallantry
Generosity
Gentility
Giving
Grace
Gratitude
Gregariousness
Growth
Guidance
Happiness
Harmony
Health
Heart
Helpfulness
Heroism
Holiness
Honesty
Honor
Hopefulness
Hospitality
Humility
Humor
Hygiene
Imagination
Impact
Impartiality
Independence
Industry
Ingenuity
Inquisitiveness
Insightfulness
Inspiration
Integrity
Intelligence
Intensity
Intimacy
Intrepidness
Introversion
Intuition
Intuitiveness
Inventiveness
Investing
Joy
Judiciousness
Justice
Keenness
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Liberation
Liberty
Liveliness
Logic
Longevity
Love
Loyalty
Majesty
Making a difference
Mastery
Maturity
Meekness
Mellowness
Meticulousness
Mindfulness
Modesty
Motivation
Mysteriousness
Neatness
Nerve
Obedience
Open-mindedness
Openness
Optimism
Order
Organization
Originality
Outlandishness
Outrageousness
Passion
Peace
Perceptiveness
Perfection
Perkiness
Perseverance
Persistence
Persuasiveness
Philanthropy
Piety
Playfulness
Pleasantness
Pleasure
Poise
Polish
Popularity
Potency
Power
Practicality
Pragmatism
Precision
Preparedness
Presence
Privacy
Proactivity
Professionalism
Prosperity
Prudence
Punctuality
Purity
Realism
Reason
Reasonableness
Recognition
Recreation
Refinement
Reflection
Relaxation
Reliability
Religiousness
Resilience
Resolution
Resolve
Resourcefulness
Respect
Rest
Restraint
Reverence
Richness
Rigor
Sacredness
Sacrifice
Sagacity
Saintliness
Sanguinity
Satisfaction
Security
Self-control
Selflessness
Self-reliance
Sensitivity
Sensuality
Serenity
Service
Sexuality
Sharing
Shrewdness
Significance
Silence
Silliness
Simplicity
Sincerity
Skillfulness
Solidarity
Solitude
Soundness
Speed
Spirit
Spirituality
Spontaneity
Spunk
Stability
Stealth
Stillness
Strength
Structure
Success
Support
Supremacy
Surprise
Sympathy
Synergy
Teamwork
Temperance
Thankfulness
Thoroughness
Thoughtfulness
Thrift
Tidiness
Timeliness
Traditionalism
Tranquility
Transcendence
Trust
Trustworthiness
Truth
Understanding
Unflappability
Uniqueness
Unity
Usefulness
Utility
Valor
Variety
Victory
Vigor
Virtue
Vision
Vitality
Vivacity
Warmth
Watchfulness
Wealth
Willfulness
Willingness
Winning
Wisdom
Wittiness
Wonder
Youthfulness
Zeal

Discovering Your Internal Motivators Step 2:

Take the piece of paper you have written your values on and put it somewhere prominent in your house. Each time you catch a glimpse of your values list take just 5 minutes to read them and list next to them the numbers 1 – 10 as how those values are affecting your decisions at that exact moment.

You will need to do this every day for 15 days so we can get a cross section of your life and how your values affect you in different situations and moods