Welcome to the second lesson, the module one, identifying your values. So in case you haven't picked up on this yet, this isn't your average productivity or time management program. Sure, we're going to be talking a lot about productivity and time management. Those tactics are absolutely important in the life of working parent. But more than anything, this is a program designed to help you reorient your life so that you're focusing on the most important things first, if you're frazzled in your life, I can almost guarantee that the issue isn't actually about having enough time. If it is, you're in trouble because you can't get more time you get 24 hours just like everyone else.

If you're frazzled, it's because you're letting your obligations overshadow your values. So this lesson is going to help you get back to basics, identifying your values. We have three main goals for this lesson. The first goal is to create a list of principles that will guide you as you make decisions about your life. You'll also probably find throughout this process that you've been making decisions based on values that aren't really even yours, or maybe they were yours, but they're not really anymore. So in this lesson, you're going to begin to challenge old beliefs or values that no longer serve you and are actually holding you back.

Throughout this process, you're also going to gain a deeper understanding of what brings you meaning and structure in your life, that information is going to be key to helping you make better decisions about your time in the future. The first thing we need to discuss here is the difference between values and priorities. A lot of people use these terms interchangeably, but to me, they're really different. They're both important, but in very different ways. values are a person's principles or standards of behavior, one's judgment about what's important in life. On the other hand, priorities are something that is more important than other things.

And that needs to be done or dealt with first. So we're going to break that down. We're going to go into priorities more in the third lesson in this module. So we're really going to focus on values here first, but I just wanted to give you kind of that juxtaposition so that you kind of have an understanding of the difference between them for now. values are the bigger picture. These are the core principles that drive your behavior.

They can be applied to all of your actions every day. values are also the overall qualities that you strive to achieve day to day. When you're at your best you're living in alignment with your most important values. Your values are basically your guiding light. When you filter your life through your values, it's easy to tell whether you're on track or if you're focusing on the wrong things. So in this lesson, you're going to be creating a personal values profile.

Your personal values profile is going to help you drill down to those principles, characteristics and qualities that are truly important to you. And the personal values profile exercise, you're going to identify a number of different role models that look that you look up to for a specific reason. They may have a super tight knit family and they're always putting their family first or maybe you admire how they overcame a terrible tragedy in their life, or perhaps you look up to a particular business mentor or a family friend. Because they just seem like a good person, you're going to list these people and then you're going to analyze what it is exactly about them that you admire so much. And then looking at the people that you admire, you're going to get a hint as to what your own personal values are. The best thing that you can do in this exercise is to consider what your deepest values are.

Really try to deep dive deep into what you really feel and how you what you feel is important. Our values guide us but it's not something that a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about. So take this opportunity to look inward. So related to that, try to let go of what everyone around you thinks and dive deep into what you feel. For example, I used to have a really strong value, taking care of everyone around me at all times. This was a value I was raised to have.

So I just kind of took it on into adulthood too. It wasn't something I questioned, I just adopted it and guided my behavior by it for years, usually my own expense as well. So it wasn't until I went through this process But I realized that living according to a lot of other people's values, rather than my own is just causing me trouble. So just to give you kind of that warning, go ahead and make sure that you're identifying your own values, make sure that they're coming from your own heart. And they're not just adopted from others. The more you can do that, the more you're going to get out of this exercise all all together.

So let's talk also about some of the potential pitfalls that you might come across in this exercise. So first, you don't have to worry too much about who your role models are. If you look up to them for some specific reason, that's enough. They don't have to be universally loved. They also don't have to be entirely perfect. You may admire Donald Trump's Donald Trump because he's a financial success in business, but you might also disagree with a lot of other things he does, that's totally okay.

If you admire them for any particular reason, go ahead and include them on your list. The second pitfall that I wanted to talk about is waiting to do this exercise until you Find the perfect title. So that might never happen. Just look at the qualities of different people you admire and just kind of pick one or two qualities from each person, you know, you don't have to have one perfect overall human being to look up to just pick and choose the qualities that you like from various people in your life, and then also that you may not even know. So the book I wanted to recommend for this lesson is the road to character by David Brooks. So David Brooks is a political analyst.

And a few years ago, he started thinking about the difference between these resume virtues versus eulogy virtues. So what are those resume virtues are basically the accomplishments and you know, your your financial success, your career success, your ambitions. All of that is a resume virtue. And he was mentioning that a lot of people especially in you know, modern America these days, everybody focuses more on resume virtues, and they kind of forget about eulogy virtues and eulogy virtues as basically what people are going to say about you at your funeral. And you know, a lot of people just kind of live their life, they go to day to day, and they're focusing kind of on, you know, the one step in front of them. And they don't really take that broader picture.

They don't look at what people might say about them at the end of their life. And so he wrote a book, and he kind of went on a quest to research the characteristics that define these eulogy virtues. So I thought I'd recommend this book because since we're talking about values here, I just thought I'd give you a couple of different options. And a lot of the characteristics that he talks about are things that I adopted after I read the book. But you, I mean, you can look everywhere, but I just kind of wanted to offer this up as sort of a book that's related to the topic we're talking about here. So that's it for this lesson.

Your next step is to complete your personal values profile. So go ahead and download that exercise and work on that for a little while. Remember to reach out to the Facebook community again, if you have any questions or if you need help in any way and I will see you in the next lesson.