Embracing our values is something we all take a personal responsibility to achieve day in, day out. One of the most challenging aspects of this can be living all of the values in equal balance.

 

We’ll have our favourites – the ones that come naturally to us – and it can be easy to convince ourselves that living those to the max is enough. The real key to living the values in practice is being able to maintain a balance between a number of them at the same time.

For example, being caring but at the same time being honest with someone. How often do you say things that make someone feel really cared about, but you end up not being completely honest with them for fear of hurting their feelings? Or maybe you are so focussed on being adaptable, for example changing your working times to fit in with your team, that you forget to be honest about the impact that’s really having on you at home?

 

If we don’t maintain a balance between the values, we tend to compromise one for the other and ultimately that can cause a difficulty for us or the people around us.

Values challenge: Think about the values in different combinations and see if you can balance them.

 

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