Values journal
‘It’s not about how long you live; It’s about how you live” is a quote you may have heard before, and it’s one that Dr. Nic Hooper, of the ACT Centre for Wellbeing, goes into explaining. He explains that how you live is not based on accomplishments, a set list of checkboxes to get through in order to say you’ve lived a worthwhile life. No, instead, it’s based on values, a personal set of guiding principles that each person strives for to make each day count.
What are the things that make you feel most alive? For some, it’s traveling and seeing new things, or driving with the windows down feeling free. For others, it’s moments of being surrounded by family sharing stories and connecting. Any of these moments reveal your values—whether it’s adventure, humor, compassion, service, etc.
While understanding what your values are is difficult, acting in such a way that cultivates your values can be even more difficult. Maybe you’d like to foster greater patience, or openness, but you feel you don’t have time, or are hesitant to get vulnerable. Challenges arise almost instantly when you try to move towards our values, and it becomes easy (yet frustrating!) to stay in the same patterns.
What are the factors involved in the times that you feel most alive? Those are your values. Click To Tweet
Dr. Hooper explains that this difficulty of going into action for values is what helped motivate him and his colleague, Dr. Freddie Jackson Brown, to create the Values Journal.
We took a look at it here, and were impressed with the way it led the user to figure out their values, and then to set goals towards a value each week that were actually achievable. There is also space to reflect on whether the goals were accomplished, and pages in the book dedicated to overcoming some of the challenges that arise in trying to meet those goals. Since the journal serves as a weekly planner, it’s convenient to see where the goal can fit into the rest of your schedule.
No, we were not paid to do a review of the journal. We just really believe in living a fulfilling life by cultivating our values, and thought the Values Journal was a great way to work towards that!
If you’re interested in learning more about Dr. Nic Hooper, and the Values Journal, you can visit the website: https://valuedling.org/
If you’d like to purchase a copy for 2018, you can visit Etsy or Amazon:
