Life Directed by Values

I went to my local motorbike workshop to complain that when I took my hands off the handlebar of my motorbike it starts to wobble. After questioning me about when this happened, Juan my mechanic replied “well don’t take your hands off the handlebar”. At the time his comments were about as welcome as a bacon sandwich at a Jewish wedding, and I went away feeling embarrassed and angry by his comments.

 As the red mist cleared (those of you who have anger management problems like me will know what I mean) It dawned on me that he is probably right. When I have my hands firmly placed on the handlebars, there is no wobble. Why would I want to dedicate time and energy and not least of all money, to something that is not of value in my life? I decided that riding my motorbike without my hand on the handlebar is just not really important to me. In fact in the scale of values that guide my life, riding my motorbike with no hands comes pretty low down on the list. So I don’t need to do anything, apart from not take my hands off the handlebars.

This is similar to doing exposure in therapy to overcome phobias and fears, either social or physical fears. If there is no real need to overcome a fear or a motivation to do so, then we must ask if it is entirely necessary to go through the effort of exposure. Exposure to anxiety and fear is pretty unpleasant and if it is not accompanied by a high motivation it can be destined to failure.

                                                                                                                

This is where goals come in very useful. I have a friend who recently asked about fear of flying and if I knew of any English speaking hypnotherapists who could help him with his fear. As a behaviourist I always encourage people to feel the fear and continue with what you need to do. In this case fear and anxiety is perfectly rational and I feel there would be something wrong with you if you were at 30,000 feet and didn’t feel the slightest bit anxious, well that or you’d be dead. So I personally would encourage against trying to change or avoid fear or anxiety, at the end of the day that’s what alcohol is there for.

 What value driven action is he depriving himself of? It turns out that the next journey is to France to participate in a music publishing festival in Cannes. It is a job that he enjoys; the business trip will be a great experience. Basically this journey forms part of his values in the work aspect of his life. That is it is coherent with how he sees himself, how he wishes others to see him and also coherent with what he wants to stand for as a person.

With our values guiding our behaviour, we can decide whether we wish to put up with some emotional discomfort if it will enable us to live a full and meaningful life that is coherent with our values. We can choose to make room for emotional discomfort knowing that we are doing what is important to us. Or we can continue to avoid unpleasant experiences such as anxiety and fear and stay in our comfort zone, but also run the risk of leading an unfulfilled life. In the words of Susan Jeffers, we can feel the fear and do it anyway. Why? Because it’s important to us.

Goals vs Values

The idea that you could unleash your untapped potential is what sells self help books. I was having a nose around Amazon where I was looking for my next compulsive buy when I stumbled across the self help section. The first one that caught my eye was “10 minute successful self help secrets”. Bloody hell! Now that is fast. Another one that needs a bit more patience and if you’re ready to really put in some work you could try out “The 4 hour body: an uncommon guide to rapid fat loss, incredible sex and becoming superhuman”. So between lunch and tea I could apparently go through a metamorphosis that would put Kafka to shame.

It’s no wonder that titles such as “instant confidence”, “The secret” who is by the same author as ”The Power” can ensnare us. We really want to believe that we have some source of untapped power and energy that can help us achieve all our goals. You can be a go getter, you can achieve your goals, you can get stuff. You’ve already got stuff? Well get more stuff and be happier. All this and more is possible in selfhelpland. 

The problem is it has been shown that we are very poor at knowing what it is that we really want and extremely poor at judging how much something will be of value to us. It would appear that life has the annoying habit of moving the goal posts. Just when we thought that this is the car that we always wanted, or the house that will make us happy, it turns out that when we get it, it turns out to be a bit disappointing and not at all how we imagined it would be sitting behind the wheel of our new GTi xr3 mrk 20 car.

This is because we are dealing with goals; we seem to systematically be wrong in our judgement about what will improve our life and finally make us happy. Self help books of course cash in on this by promising us untold riches if we use the power of our positive thoughts. There does appear to be support that small stretch goals can push somebody to achieve a little better for a short period. But somebody who is unlikely to achieve spectacular results could just end up feeling frustrated when faced with a gap between unrealistic goals they set themselves and their present situation. 

In general people will only achieve their goals 10 % of the times that they try and continued failing can leave you burned out and frizzled. Of course if you’ve got a big mountain of money and the means to achieve then things are a lot easier. United States and Europe are the two places in the world where social mobility is least likely, if you’re born poor you stay poor and if you’re born rich you stay rich. So it turns out that reaching for the stars is only helpful if the stars are already within your grasp.

What appear to be much more helpful are values. Instead of living to continually achieve goals that are superficial shallow and leave you with an empty feeling and a need for more, we can live a life that is value guided. If my goal is to buy a house, there usually a value behind it for example the value of wanting to be a good provider, or protect my family. I can do this from day 1. I can use my values to guide me anywhere, even in prison where a value may be to become a role model for my children, or decide to become a good husband. I teach prisoners about values and how they are more about attitude than about achieving. Values are qualitatively different from goals in that a goal is achievable and once we have it we are looking for the next. A value on the other hand is a lifetime work and during the journey we may complete many goals, but that really is irrelevant, what is really important is to lead a life that is coherent with what we value as important.