New Year's Values
Hello All and Happy New Year!
I’ve left this post a little later than most of the New Years messages as I think many of us spend the first few days of January just trying to get back to some sense of normality after Christmas.
Looking Back at 2023
Over the last few days I’ve really enjoyed looking back at the year just gone and reminding myself of some of the highlights. One of my favourite ways to do this is to scroll through photos and videos I’ve taken, starting at January and making my way through the year.
A personal favourite in 2023 was finally seeing two stags fight in Killarney National Park. I’ve been to the park for the rut about three or four years in a row but never managed to see two stags actually go head to head until this year.
I put a small video together below of what footage I was able to get. Neither of them seemed to get hurt but one does walk away with a bruised ego.
New Year’s Values
This time of year we’re often inspired (or guilted) into choosing resolutions for the coming year, mostly in the form of goals - run a 10k, lose 2kg, find a new job, read x number of books etc. Those can be really motivating but for many these resolutions fall by the wayside within a few weeks and eventually make us feel worse - we see ourselves not reaching our goals, motivation drops and then we’re back to our old routine and actually feeling worse about ourselves because we’ve “failed”.
Part of the issue here is that late December/early January is not a good time to be setting goals. Most of us will have spent the last few weeks of the year eating, drinking and being merry and in general being out of our normal routine. Then January comes and all of a sudden we try and not just get back to our regular routine, which can be difficult enough, but to create an even more ambitious one. If you’re the kind of person who can do this, great. But for many people it just doesn’t work.
If you do feel like making a change this year then why not try something different? By all means set goals and ambitious ones at that. But how about values?
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) values are the qualities we want to bring to our actions, or the way we want to behave. For example we may have the goal of getting a promotion in work. Values we can adopt in helping us reach our goal might be being hard-working, organised, diligent etc. These values then inform the way we behave and do our work day-to-day. We may not reach the goal of promotion but at least we will have stuck to our own values, which can feel rewarding in itself, and we will have given ourselves the best possible chance of achieving our goal.
Values also help us to focus more on the present - goals are almost always off in the future whereas values are things we can work with every day while on the way to our goals.
To get started with finding your values you might choose one area of your life and ask yourself the following questions:
How do I want to treat the people around me?
How do I want others to treat me?
Think about someone you admire in this area of your life. What qualities do they have that you admire?
There can be a lot of work in finding our values - probably much more so than in goal-setting - but when we do this kind of work we give ourselves a clear direction to move in, motivate ourselves on a daily basis, and have a better chance at choosing goals that are meaningful to us.
So this January how about giving yourself the time and space to get back into your regular routine then start checking in with your values and letting those decide what goals you want to pursue this year.
"Values are your heart's deepest desires for how you want to behave; the qualities you want to bring to your ongoing behaviour. They are not about what you want to get, have, achieve or complete. They describe how you want to behave right now, and on an ongoing basis; how you want to treat anyone or anything you interact with (including yourself); the qualities you want to embody in your own actions (and often want to encourage in others)" Russ Harris
Breathing Space
Below is a short guided meditation for you when you feel you need a pause or some space. It only takes a few minutes and can de done anywhere.
The structure is simple
Check in with what’s going on in your mind and body in a general way
Focus on the physical sensation of your breath without trying to change it
Expand your awareness to take in your whole body again.
To finish ask yourself a question such as “What do I need right now?” or “What would be most helpful for me to do now?”
Try practicing this a few times a day with the recording then doing it on your own making it a little longer or shorter as you see fit.
N.B. If the breath is uncomfortable to focus on then choose something like the sensation of your feet on the floor, the weight of the body pressing down on your chair or even the sounds around you.