What If Your Values Are the Problem?

The conventional wisdom of mainstream coaching would have you believe that we should help our coaching clients identify their values so they can live by them.

That doing so will help them make good decisions and live a meaningful life.

But what this conventional wisdom completely misses is that values always create problems.

Because every value creates a constraint.

For example, if someone strongly values security, it could cause them to avoid opportunities that involve risk.

If someone values harmony, it could cause them to avoid necessary conflict.

If someone values freedom, it could cause them to avoid having a committed relationship.

The value itself isn't "bad".

But it is a limitation.

It will quietly shape behaviour in ways that limit what's possible.

The problems values cause are perhaps most easily seen when we look at relationship dynamics.

If two people are in a relationship but one person values 'independence' and the other person values 'connection', what problems do you think that might cause in their relationship?

Can you see that the person who values 'independence' might be avoidant as a result and that the person who values 'connection' might be needy?

And that each person's pattern of behaviour triggers the other person's pattern of behaviour?

Freeing ourselves from our values is an advanced Mind Shifting application that I teach in the Mind Shifting Practitioner Training.

I teach you how to identify the value that is causing a particular pattern, and how to clear that value so the pattern shifts.

This is powerful work for those willing to go beyond the limitations of their previously unexamined values.