Your True Priorities

“Unless you live con­sis­tent with your deep­est val­ues, you’ll achieve but still lack the ulti­mate ful­fill­ment you truly deserve.“
– Anthony Robbins

“The secret to suc­cess and hap­pi­ness is to trans­late your val­ues into every­day life.“
– Hyrum Smith

Every­body has a set of deep core val­ues that gov­erns a person’s actions and a per­son can never ignore his core val­ues. When con­fronted with emer­gen­cies, pres­sure, impor­tant deci­sions, or chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions, the actions he invari­ably takes will directly stem from his per­sonal set of values.

Wayne Dyer said, “If you cut an orange and squeeze it, all you will get is orange juice, not apple juice.” When a per­son is under pres­sure, what will come out will be with­out excep­tion con­sis­tent with his deep­est val­ues; and this, no mat­ter what a per­son wants or how that per­son acts under nor­mal circumstances.

There­fore, work­ing on goals that do not answer to your val­ues or their spe­cific order is like “going against the grain.” It’s like try­ing to maneu­ver your car when your wheels are out of align­ment or point­ing you in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. In the end, you will lose con­trol of your car and become prone to acci­dents along the way.

In the same sense, if you’re aligned with your val­ues, you will have greater con­trol over your life. As the Law of Con­trol says, “Peo­ple are hap­pi­est to the degree to which they are (or feel they are) in con­trol of their lives.”

Ed Bernd, co-​​author of The Silva Method, once wrote: “When you know where you’re going, you can take short­cuts. Or at the very least, you can stay on the right path and not be dis­tracted by unpro­duc­tive activ­i­ties.” This is what the sys­tem I will teach you will do. It is called the GOAL method, which is an acronym that stands for Guides, Objec­tives, Actions, and Livelines.

The first step in the GOAL sys­tem is to set your val­ues and develop goals from them. (That’s why I pre­fer to call them your pri­or­i­ties. They are your “guides” rather than your “goals.” They guide you along your jour­ney rather than become tar­gets to reach.)

If you already have goals, then it would be to align your goals with your pri­or­i­ties. If your goals are not aligned with your pri­or­i­tized val­ues (or, worst yet, if they are improp­erly aligned), you will end up reach­ing a des­ti­na­tion you might have never wanted or none at all.

As well, stress, pro­cras­ti­na­tion, hard work, poor rela­tion­ships, and unhap­pi­ness often results from the lack of proper align­ment. Always remem­ber that your val­ues are more impor­tant than your goals because they are help­ing you to under­stand the value behind your goals.

To under­stand the impor­tance of align­ment, let’s illus­trate with the exam­ple Brian Tracy uses in his sem­i­nars. Let’s say you meet per­sons “A” and “B.” They both have the same three core val­ues, which are fam­ily, health, and career.

How­ever, per­son “A’s” val­ues are in the fol­low­ing order of pri­or­ity: Career first, fam­ily sec­ond, and health last. Per­son “B’s” pri­or­i­ties, how­ever, are: Fam­ily first, health sec­ond, and then career. Now tell me, even if both have the same three val­ues, would you notice a dif­fer­ence between the two? The answer is invari­ably yes.

While one places career above all else, the other val­ues his fam­ily first and he would sac­ri­fice his career for his fam­ily if the need ever rose. While the other’s career is more impor­tant to him, even if fam­ily val­ues are impor­tant, urgen­cies at work will take prece­dence. One’s higher value-​​oriented activ­i­ties inher­ently dom­i­nate over all oth­ers. If goals do not cor­re­spond to one’s upper­most val­ues, it can threaten the entire process.

Mis­align­ment can be dan­ger­ous. Very dan­ger­ous. For exam­ple, per­son “A” has goals in the fol­low­ing spe­cific order: 1) To spend more time with spouse, 2) get pro­moted, and 3) to improve car­dio­vas­cu­lar con­di­tion. His num­ber one goal, accord­ing to the pre­ced­ing order, is a fam­ily goal when his num­ber one pri­or­ity, if you recall, is career. By plac­ing career as a sec­ondary pri­or­ity, this will cause chal­lenges along the way and he will feel that something’s wrong, which may indi­rectly cause dis­tress on his fam­ily and thus defeat the purpose.

Another sce­nario is that he will prob­a­bly have a ten­dency to pro­cras­ti­nate in the process and not feel as moti­vated as he should be. He will be unhappy, frus­trated, neglect his fam­ily or devi­ate from any of his fam­ily goals when con­fronted with urgen­cies in his career. His wheels are point­ing his car in a totally dif­fer­ent direc­tion and he is try­ing to maneu­ver against it. He must unnec­es­sar­ily work harder to reach his goal. He might even aban­don his fam­ily goals alto­gether with­out ever know­ing why. Frus­tra­tion, unhap­pi­ness, and guilt often ensue.

So, to man­age your life effec­tively, you must start by set­ting your val­ues, pri­or­i­tize them, and then set your goals. This will prompt you to cre­ate goals that have more mean­ing, some­times goals you may have never real­ized you wanted to achieve. Often­times, it will also cre­ate an entirely new vision for your life.

How­ever, it may not be as easy as you think. Set­ting and pri­or­i­tiz­ing your val­ues may take a while. It may take some time to think them over and it may require seri­ous reflec­tion. And, as you go along the road of life, you may have reshaped your think­ing and need to reset your val­ues alto­gether. Don’t fret if this hap­pens to you. It’s all part of the process of grow­ing that I men­tioned earlier.

As well, this new vision cre­ated by your per­sonal val­ues may cause you to elim­i­nate some of your goals or mis­con­cep­tions. In real­ity, these goals were never meant to be accom­plished in the first place. Either you would have never reached them in the first place or they would have devi­ated you from the accom­plish­ment of other, more impor­tant goals.

About the Author

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