Photo: John Siebert

What an amazing week I have had... Last week, I enjoyed my birthday, as well as having a delightful lunch at Gary Rhodes' restaurant at Christchurch harbour with my wife on my birthday. The next night, we watched Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra play Abba hits at Meyrick Park, close to us; there were fireworks to accompany our sumptuous picnic, the great company of friends and much dancing... Plus with Sunday breakfast following a stroll on the beach with friends and the sun shining constantly, it was a fabulous weekend.

I hope you made the most of my birthday special offer last week too!

Last week in Adam Up, I discussed values and showed you how to go about listing a hierarchy of your own values. This week, I am offering you up an entire toolbox for dealing with your values. Last week, I gave you the opportunity to discover your core values...

With those in mind, this week, we have a handful of tools to help you use that information for your very best personal development. If you did not manage to read last week's edition, then it is archived in my Members Area with every other edition of Adam Up every written in history -- do come and join us in the members area for access to all that stuff.

All of the tools I am offering up to you today were designed by Robert Dilts, alongside a variety of other NLP principles. These tools help to enhance people's perception and understanding of their own values, connect those values to actions, and to reframe possible clashes of values in a variety of aspects of life. It is amazing how we can get so much progressive change created by working on our values in this variety of ways, so let's get started...

Photo: Yaroslav B

First up then, we are going to have an audit of our values:

The idea here is to help explore our values that we want to establish. One of the outcomes of the Values Audit is to address the following basic questions:

• What is the value to be established?
• What is personally important to you?
• What is the connection between the value and what is personally important to you?

The values 'auditing' process uses verbal prompts and key words to help you make sure you have fully explored the sup porting system of beliefs necessary to bring values into action... Which might initially sound a bit complicated... I assure you it is simple really...

Values Audit process:

Step One:

Identify a core value that is important for you to establish or strengthen... So if you have a core value that you want to work on, or one that you think is important and you'd like to have more of in your life... Write down the value you want to strengthen in the space marked 'Value' below to complete the value statement.

Step Two:

For each of the 'prompt' words, read your value statement, add the prompt word(s), and complete the sentence with whatever 'spontaneously' comes to mind... Be instinctive and intuitive with this; do not give it too much intellectual thought. So avoid thinking, "I should say this..." or, "I ought to write that..."

Step Three:

When you are finished, read your answers all together and notice what has changed and been strengthened. Here you go...

Value: ____________ is important ...
... and desirable because I ____________ ...
(Why is it desirable and appropriate to have this as a value?)

... therefore I ____________ ...
(What is a behavioural consequence of having this value?)

... whenever I ____________ ...
(What is a key situation or condition relating to this value?)

... so that I ____________ ...
(What is the positive purpose of this value?)

... although I ____________ ...
(What alternatives or constraints are there with respect to this value?)

... if I ____________ ...
(What constraints or results relate to this value?)

... in the same way that I ____________.
(What is a similar value that you already have?)

For example, if a person wanted to strengthen his or her belief in and commitment to the value of 'fun', 'passion' or 'contentment', the process would start with the statement of that particular value: "Fun is important and desirable..." Holding this value statement constant, the individual would then go through each prompt to explore all of the supporting reasons.

In this case it would be important to begin each new sentence with the word, "I." This helps to ensure that you are engaged in the process and experience and avoid thinking about it all too much. So, the series of statements would be created in the following manner:

• Fun is important and desirable, because I ____________.
• Fun is important and desirable, therefore I ____________.
• Fun is important and desirable, whenever I ____________.
• Fun is important and desirable, so that I ____________.
• Fun is important and desirable, although I ____________.
• Fun is important and desirable, if I ____________.
• Fun is important and desirable, in the same way that I ____________.

An example of how someone would complete these sentences might be:

• Fun is important and desirable because I need my experience of life to be joyful and have much laughter in it.
• Fun is important and desirable therefore I will be enjoyable to be around and attract people into my life.
• Fun is important and desirable whenever I want to enhance my social life.
• Fun is important and desirable so that I can enjoy myself and be a good role model for others.
• Fun is important and desirable if I want to be happy and productive.
• Fun is important and desirable although I have other goals and responsibilities to be ful filled.
• Fun is important and desirable in the same way that I need certain skills and resources to reach my dreams in life.

Step Four:

Once you have finished drawing up the new statements, now delete all the prompt words -- except the prompt of "although." (It is important to retain the word "although" or that particular response will appear negative.)

The series of responses can now form a really valuable statement of reasons to commit to the core value that you have selected:

Fun is important and desirable. I need my experience of life to be joyful and have much laughter in it. I will be enjoyable to be around and attract people into my life. I want to enhance my social life. I can enjoy myself and be a good role model for others. I want to be happy and productive. Although I have other goals and responsibilities to be fulfilled. I need certain skills and resources to reach my dreams in life.

As you can see, this creates a set of ideas that can help to strengthen a person's commitment to and belief in the value of health... You could even use this to form the basis of a self-hypnosis session and be delivered to yourself in self-hypnosis to strengthen your values!

So next up, we are put our values into action:

Now we want to define the other levels of processes needed to effectively establish the chosen values. Sometimes, when people are not taking the right actions, or not taking action to integrate their values into their life, the person reverts back to what he or she does indeed truly value, which may be quite different than the desired values...

So, to authentically and congruently establish new desired values, a person must have the supporting skills and capabilities necessary to assess situations and make decisions about which actions are in line with stated values.

What would you need to be doing, to show yourself and the world that you have that value?

Answering the following questions helps to define and align your processes necessary to bring values congruently and consistently into action.

1. What is the value to be implemented (e.g., 'passion', 'professionalism', 'health', 'fun', etc.)?
2. What are the key capabilities necessary to establish and implement that value (e.g., communication, creativity, rapport, sense of humour, empathy, etc.)?
3. What selection of activities (consequent behaviours) best expresses and manifests this value (e.g., listening, storytelling, laughing with friends, eating certain foods etc.)?
4. What are the significant environments or contexts in which it is most important to express this value (e.g., team meetings, the pub, interactions with customers, at social functions etc.)?

So with those answers in place, you can plan to take action and understand when and how to express and run that new value and get it integrated into your life.

Finally then today, we plan accordingly with our values...

The collection of activities which express particular values cannot be enacted mechanically or reactively in response to changing circumstances. What I mean is, these activities need to be happening consistently throughout your life. Ideally, time needs to be allocated to the ongoing 'practice' of those activities... To actually doing those things.

Time allocation is where the real action gets taken with respect to values. In a very real way, what a person spends his or her time doing is the most direct expression of his or her values (even if the person is not consciously aware of those values).

So the final idea here this week is that you determine the amount of time to be allocated for each item in the list of activities which express your chosen values. List the mix of activities that best express the values you want to demonstrate... Then draw a circle, like a pie chart, divide the amount of time to be allocated to each activity, if the values are to be successfully established.

Simple.

These three simple and basic processes are going to help you embody the kinds of values that you want... And enhance the values you discovered were at your core last week... have fun with this stuff and we'll be on to something very different next week.

Why I Fired my Secretary

Last week was my birthday, and I didn't feel very well waking up on that morning.

I went downstairs for breakfast hoping my wife would be pleasant and say, "Happy Birthday!", and possibly have a small present for me.

As it turned out, she barely said good morning, let alone, "Happy Birthday."

I thought, "Well, that's marriage for you, but the kids... They will remember."

My kids came bounding downstairs to breakfast and didn't say a word. So when I left for the office, I felt pretty low and somewhat despondent.

As I walked into my office, my secretary Jane said, "Good Morning, Boss, and by the way, Happy Birthday!" It felt a little better that at least someone had remembered.

I worked until one o'clock, when Jane knocked on my door and said, "You know, It's such a beautiful day outside, and it is your birthday, what do you say we go out to lunch, just you and me?"

I said, "Thanks, Jane, that's the greatest thing I've heard all day. Let's go!"

We went to lunch. But we didn't go where we normally would go. She chose instead a quiet bistro with a private table. We had two martinis each, and I enjoyed the meal tremendously.

On the way back to the office, Jane said, "You know, it's such a beautiful day... We don't need to go straight back to the office, do we?"

I responded, "I guess not. What do you have in mind?" She said, "Let's drop by my apartment, it's just around the corner."

After arriving at her apartment, Jane turned to me and said, "Boss, if you don't mind, I'm going to step into the bedroom for just a moment. I'll be right back."

"OK," I nervously replied.

She went into the bedroom and, after a couple of minutes, she came out carrying a huge birthday cake...
Followed by my wife, my kids, and dozens of my friends and co-workers, all singing 'Happy Birthday'...
And I just sat there...
On the couch...
Naked.

Hahaha... Very funny... As always, a very big thank you to all those of you that in the wonderful jokes and those that post them up in the members area, I love them all... It is such a tonic to laugh at these things.

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Until next week, enjoy working with your values. I thank you for reading. Goodbye for now!

With my very best wishes,

Adam Eason
www.adam-eason.com