How much do you value your health? Working with our values could help us achieve our health and wellness goals.
What are values?
Values are basic and fundamental beliefs that guide or motivate our attitudes and actions.
They help us understand what is important to us.
The sort of person we want to be.
How we treat others and perhaps more importantly how we treat ourselves!
Our values are our internal guidelines or rules about how we conduct ourselves.
My health values
I believe size doesn’t define whether you are healthy or not.
We are all ticking time bombs with (in the grand scheme of things) little time on this planet.
Of course, if you are in a larger body this can put more stress on the heart and other systems in the body BUT this is also true of someone living in a smaller body who smokes or lives an unhealthy lifestyle.
I don’t believe we have the right to judge others’ choices.
We spend so much time looking outside ourselves for:
- Love/affection
- Respect
- Acceptance
- Approval
When we need to learn to love ourselves, where we are right now, not where we have been or where we are going, NOW!
When I was childminding I used to get asked by the children ALL THE TIME what I thought about what they were creating or were doing and it would have been so easy to rattle off empty platitudes such as, oh yes, that’s great, that’s wonderful or ooo well done! (which obviously I did, we all like to receive praise) but I also spent some time asking them what they thought of their work or what they were doing.
I wanted them to realise that as long as they were proud, satisfied, pleased, etc with whatever it was then it really didn’t matter what I thought.
This allowed them to build their self-esteem which builds resilience and self-respect, they are then looking for internal validation which will always be there for them.
A good lesson to learn is that you can’t please everyone and why should you try, we are all individuals with different values.
So my core values when it comes to health are:
- Compassion (self-compassion)
- Resilience
- Respect (self-respect)
Each of these values helps you accept where you are on your wellness journey, this doesn’t mean to say that you can’t improve your current level of health but by applying these values you are more likely to reach your goal and feel better about yourself along the way.
Are you aligned with your values?
Are you feeling out of balance? Maybe you don’t feel like yourself, you can’t quite put your finger on it but you just don’t feel right.
Are you respecting your values?
Is what you are doing on a daily basis contributing to your ideal health?
Living in alignment with your values will help relieve stress and tension. This will reduce cortisol and adrenaline levels in your body which interfere with the normal function of other hormones such as Estrogen, Leptin, and Ghrelin which contribute to normal metabolism.
What do you honestly believe deep down about health or are you just regurgitating everything that’s been drummed into you by the $250 billion diet industry?
Once you have identified your values how will you live by them?
What choices will you make around your health and wellness, self-care, boundaries?
Identifying your values
You can find a list of values HERE to get you started. Read through and pick those which are important to you.
You should ideally have between 3 and 5.
If you have more than this, examine your list and you will find some will be similar and you can trim your list to 5.
Identify what you are currently doing that conflicts with your values.
Let’s say Health is one of your values but you find yourself using food or substances for self-comfort over self-care then this is going against your values and will leave you feeling crappy.
My tips for applying your values
Think about your values holistically.
- All areas of your life are affected by your values. So if health is one of your values look at the health of your relationships, your career, personal development as your physical and mental health will impact these areas too.
- You must put your own oxygen mask on first before you can take care of others. It is not selfish to spend time and money on doing this.
- We are all individuals. Just because one way of eating or moving works for one person doesn’t mean it will work for you. Spend some time looking at your lifestyle and how you can make changes to your habits and routines that align with your values and will benefit all areas of your life without adding additional stress.
For instance, let’s say one of your values is Family;
Spending time with your partner and children, building relationships of respect and trust, and keeping their growing bodies healthy.
Maybe at the moment you are eating at separate times, or in front of the TV every night of the week, you have got into a rut as a family of eating more convenience, packaged food rather than fresh, home-cooked, and more nutrient-dense meals.
How can you rearrange just one day of the week (start small) where you can all sit down together and eat a home-cooked meal that maybe you can all contribute to (prepare, cook, set the table, clean up) and talk about your day or the coming week?
By doing this you are living more in line with your values, you can then build on this and introduce more meal planning into your weeks. What does your family do for lunch? Can you make healthier homemade lunches that will improve health and save money? Can you get into a routine of preparing these in the evening so it doesn’t impact your busy morning?
What next?
Build a vision in your mind of what you want your life to look like and reverse engineer it to create a plan with small steps you can take to reach this goal.
If you would like to chat with me about your personal values and how you can create habits and routines for you and your family that align with your personal values and goals follow this link to book a cuppa and a chat.
If you would like to introduce more healthy habits to your lifestyle why not try my 7 Day Healthy Habits Challenge, this is now available to take part in at your convenience via this link, why not get friends and family to sign up and support each other.