December 21st, 2004 by Steve Pavlina 
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I just posted Part I of a new two-part article: Living Your Values.
This article guides you through a step-by-step process to discover your personal values hierachy. Part II (still in progress) will explain how to use your personal value system to make conscious decisions and achieve your most important goals.
Feedback is always appreciated.
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December 22nd, 2004 at 8:03 am
Hello,
I went through process you describe in your article. I identified two goals and come up with list of values to follow. Now I am frightened. It looks nice on paper, but I am afraid I will fail to live with my values. I don’t understand this… It seems to me, that if I will follow my new values, I can succeed . However, now I am not sure that I really want to do this. It looks so hard, and so very different than I used to live.
December 22nd, 2004 at 8:26 am
Up until now I was struggling with listing my values. When I finally did get some values listed and tried to prioritize them, I actually did go through the process of thinking, “Well, what do I want to accomplish first? The appropriate values should then get listed first.” I just didn’t formalize that process, so it was sporadic and unorganized.
@peter: “Everything is hard before it is easy.” - Goethe
The fact that things look difficult is a good thing. If they were all easy, you’d already be there, which means your goals would be impotent and useless. So congratulate yourself on at least getting to the point where you can see success. Most people never get that far.
If you can see that you can succeed, what is stopping you from doing so? You say that that it is so very different from how you are used to living. Are you actually happy with how you’ve been living? Why come up with the goals and values in the first place? Can you not improve something about your life?
I’m still in the process of becoming clear about what I want. Clarity and Focus are currently at the top of my value list for this reason.
December 22nd, 2004 at 9:13 am
Typo: under “changing your values”, third sentence.
“I’m not going to repeat the process in as MUST detail….”
I’m a little confused though. You started off by listing the values, then listing goals. Then at the end, you say that’s backwards and you should do the goals first and then devise the values from the goals. Is the goal-first approach just to change your values, not set them in the first place?
December 22nd, 2004 at 10:43 am
Everytime I come here to read your stuff, I am really happy I bookmarked your site. I learned how to identify values and goals 20 years ago — it caused a breakthrough in my life beyond anything I could have imagined. However you are right, the system — setting values first and matching goals to them, has oftentimes made me feel stuck.
I have begun the exercise again (I always spend Christmas Day in planning), but this time will look at it from your perspective.
Thank you
December 22nd, 2004 at 2:50 pm
I read “What Matters Most” by Hyrum Smith from FranklinCovey and it teaches how to live according to your values to motivate yourself, get results and be happy, but I felt that something was missing. What I did was just simply write down, in terms of values, how I felt about things and although this was interesting, it didn’t really help me in this period of change I’m in.
The book explains that everyone has a “belief window”, a set of beliefs about yourself, the world and everything that can empower or limit you and how you can identify and remove the limiting beliefs and add new empowering ones as necessary. And by doing so you will “live according to your values” as the subtitle suggests, but of course, this simple step of setting values according to your goals is the logical thing to do if you want to effectuate change.
I will try this at once. Thanks, Steve.
December 22nd, 2004 at 3:05 pm
Dear Steve,
You are just another one of the myriad self-proclaimed inspirational speakers who think they have something new or profound to say when in fact all you are doing is regurgitating the same stale nonsense that has been done before.
The only thing more pathetic than you doing this are the mindless sheep that will blindly follow it.
You are the typical spiritually materialistic individual. You’re a disgrace and an embarassment.
December 22nd, 2004 at 5:18 pm
As I was reading, my gut reaction was, “Wait! Values don’t change that much or that often!” Maybe that was just a pre-conceived notion, but I found myself having an internal debate over semantics. What is the difference between changing our values and changing our priorities? Is there a difference at all?
If someone asked me to articulate it, I might be inclined to say that I value love more than wealth, but since I can only do a few things at once, for the next six months I’m going to focus on wealth. Would that mean that my values had changed? Or that my values stayed the same, but my priorities changed? It seems more like a resource allocation problem than an identity problem, so describing it in terms of shifting values didn’t resonate well with me. Maybe I’ll change my mind after further reflection.
Thanks for the thought-provoking article!
December 22nd, 2004 at 10:32 pm
To Koolaide_Man:
Probably some people need such “self-proclaimed inspirational speakers”. Steve has some addicts reading his writings carefully and enjoying it. Everybody has the right to do it or not. Maybe Steve writings are not innovative but they also are not harmful. You don’t have to spend money to read them.
December 23rd, 2004 at 7:23 am
I have to say that when I first was introduced to the writings of Steve Pavlina, I was coasting along in life. I had heard of Tony Robbins and the like before, but I didn’t know how helpful they actually were. I just assumed they had followers like Oprah did, and I didn’t care to be part of it.
Then I read some of Steve’s articles. It is hard to say that he turned my life around, since not everything happened all at once, not everything clicked then and there. Still, reading his articles and discussing his successes helped me realize that I can be successful too. This realization, my realization, is what really turned me around.
Is it mindless of me to think that following in the footsteps of someone who is successful? I don’t think so. If I believe that something Steve did successfully in the past won’t apply in this time or that situation, I can make those decisions.
Recently I’ve been reading a lot more than I am used to and in genres I never thought I would be reading. Brian Tracy, Jay Abraham, time management books, etc. As I go over what Steve writes and has written, I find that, yes, a lot of what he says is based on what a lot of other people have said. But so what? “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” What Steve has done for me personally is allow me to know that I can stand on the same giants he is standing on, and I did so starting by sitting on his own shoulders. There is nothing that hasn’t already been done that I cannot do.
I used to think that to get by I just have to be as good as most people. Now I realize that I don’t want to just get by. I want to be excellent. I want to be the best. Why aim for less than 1st place?
Again, as I read the authors that Steve has mentioned, I see what his influences are. This doesn’t upset me. It just makes me realize even more that Steve isn’t a special supernatural person. He is not 100 times smarter than anyone. Anyone can do what he’s done, and more. And I intend to do so as well. I come here day after day not because I think Steve is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but because his words do two things. First, they motivate me to do things I never thought possible. Second, they introduce me to concepts that I can then do research on myself.
December 23rd, 2004 at 9:18 am
Hello Steve. On some articles, you say that setting clear goals lead to success. You give Zig Ziglar and a study at Yale University as reference.
But if you read http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/cdu.html , you can see this study is a myth and has never existed.
December 23rd, 2004 at 11:37 am
John: That’s an awesome revelation. It’s a huge study that has been cited by many people. It is also interesting to note that Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and Tony Robbins read each other’s stuff to the point that they don’t realize who was the first to say something. B-)
That all being said, the only thing that this does is say that that study can’t be cited as fact anymore. Setting clear goals is definitely better than setting foggy goals or not setting goals at all. Even without a huge study to point out the drastic difference between setting goals and not setting goals, I think we can agree that lots of people have actually been able to focus their lives better by doing so than not.
December 23rd, 2004 at 1:58 pm
OMG!! The Yale study wasn’t true!?! Those liars! That must mean everything else those self-help guys ever said was untrue also! I am NEVER setting another goal as long as I live! And I am most certainly not going to try and live to my potential, no matter what Mr. Steve “Liar, liar, pants on fire” Pavlina says.
December 24th, 2004 at 1:39 am
Yes BBGames i’m agree with you. Setting goals is important to focalize on them and not on daily problems.
It’s also important in time management.
But it’s important to know that the Yale study was wrong.
December 24th, 2004 at 9:41 am
I had heard years ago that the oft-quoted Yale University Study may be false or perhaps happened at some other university entirely; I’ve heard the story quoted as a Harvard study as well. In an article I wrote that mentioned it, I wrote it as “Zig Ziglar reports that…” instead of stating it as fact because I was uncertain about the story’s origins. Personally I cannot verify either way if it’s true or false, and having read some of the sites that claim it’s false, I can’t say that those seem any more or less credible than those who claim it’s true. Perhaps I will edit the original article to delete the reference entirely. Is anyone aware of whether or not Zig Ziglar (who I believe is the first person to use that story) ever came out and admitted that it was false or defended it as true?
December 25th, 2004 at 12:37 am
Goals are a must. Without Goals life becomes aimless. No goals means no Focus.
Jayen
(A man without solid goals)
December 26th, 2004 at 3:34 pm
Steve, it’s your right to cancel the software marketing book.
However, there are MANY good motivational / self development speakers and authors and books, and VERY FEW decent books on software marketing.
Few business people give away their business knowledge. You seem to be one of the few business people who do.
So please reconsider finishing the book. There are lots of good books on self development but very few good books on software marketing.
Thank you.
December 29th, 2004 at 11:47 am
i think goals are just part of our brain’s system software. the basic process is just the unconscious ‘get another of those tasty food thingies’-program. the question of goals is a question of awareness me thinks.
January 12th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
Playing with values
Well thanks to Curt Rosengren and Steve Pavlina, I’m going to take Curt’s suggestion of play with Steve’s reminder of values and goals to create a play date for finding and assessing my values. I have goals set, but no values to help them out. I…