Jackie’s blog

Last week I spent a great afternoon introducing some Reading University students to the Personal Branding process and afterwards, doing my usual self-reflective analysis of the session, I decided that the section on Values needed working on. Values are so important to the way we live our lives. They are buried deep inside our subconscious and have a lot to do with the way we feel about almost anything we do. So I wanted to tackle this part in a more thorough but challenging way. I got out my Anthony Robbins Unlimited Power book because he has a whole chapter on values, and value hierarchies, and I wanted to remind myself of what he said - he is such a powerful communicator that he makes you think again about loads of things. I have now come up with a couple of new ways to tackle this which I will try when I do my next session.

Anyway, all this digging into values again got me thinking about my own and I realised that ‘being fit’ is one of my values but it is very low down on my values hierarchy. This struck me as not really being right as I am getting older. I need to lift this value up a bit and give it more house room. So I have convinced my daughter to sign up with me for a couple of 10k races and, lo and behold, I have started jogging again. Why? Because I clearly hold the value of sticking to a goal once set or taking on a challenge and proving I can do it, much more highly than just keeping fit. I feel much more motivated to run now that I have a couple of races coming up. I have also started rallying round other people to come along and cheer us on or join us. Again, I have a very powerful value of not letting people down, so by roping other people in I will find it impossible to drop out of the challenge. Finally, I have paid out good money to enter and another of my strong values is to not waste money. Clearly, to get and stay fit I am going to have to find ways of using my other, more powerful values to drive me along. Interesting eh?