Values -vs- Investment

What is important to you?

What aspects, or domains of your life do you value most highly?

When I look at that truth of how I allocate my time, energy and resources, I'd say my marriage, my kids, my health and my career top the list.

I have to be careful to not spend significant amounts of time or energy on projects or relationships that aren't really all the important to me. When I'm giving high quality effort toward low quality relationships or projects, without fail, I find myself tired, frustrated and dissatisfied with myself and life in general.

It is helpful from time to time to take inventory of one's investments. This is one of the things I help my clients learn how to do for themselves. We put pen to paper and define the client's values. Then we examine, clearly and objectively how much time, energy and resources the client is investing in each value.

For example, I ask clients, "On a scale of 0 - 5, with 0 being not at all and 5 being absolutely critical, how important is career growth to you?" If the client gives this value a rating of 4 or 5, then the assumption is that they should be spending a good deal of their resources toward pursuing the advancement of their professional skills. When we examine the level of investment placed in this value and discover they're only giving it a 2 or 3, from there, we use this information to develop a plan to either readjust the importance of the value or increase the resources being allocated to fulfilling this value.

When a client is able to clearly see how their investments stack up against their values, they're able to take that insight and make tweaks to their lives to achieve more balance and satisfaction.