Are You Living In Alignment with Your Core Values?

“Know Thyself, Be Thyself, Love Thyself” 
​- Greek Oracle

As a Life and Wellness Coach, I am committed to guiding others in their journey of self-discovery so that they may live empowered, meaningful, and impactful lives. I place incredibly high value on doing this personal growth work myself and it’s where I invest a lot of my time, energy, and money. I often refer to this journey as The Great Untangling as it involves peeling back layers of a lifetime of conditioned patterns, habits, and armoring in order to uncover the true essence of self. It involves cultivating deep levels of self-acceptance and self-compassion in order to understand and freely allow this life changing process of personal evolution to occur.
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When we allow ourselves to go inward and navigate our lives from a place of true self-knowing and integrity, we are able to create the powerful life we want, one full of purpose and impact. We have the ability to achieve true success in all areas of life and to be free of self-sabotaging and self-defeating patterns and behaviors. A commitment to this self-discovery process allows us to become powerful creators of our own destiny.

We happen to life instead of life happening to us.

The first step into this deep dive of self-knowing is to determine our core values. Dr. John Demartini, a human behavior specialist and creator of The Demartini Values Determination Process explains that our core values are what we believe to be most important in life. They are the things in life inspire and energize us and are what we gravitate towards and fill our life with. They are the fundamental beliefs and standards of behavior that guide our actions and therefore the results we get in life.

Demartini explains that our individual core values are born out of our voids or areas in life where we perceived an absence of them. For instance, if you grew up experiencing turmoil and a perceived lack of safety in your childhood or home life, you may hold peacemaking in relationships and needing a sense of security as high values in your life. You will gravitate towards people and experiences that provide this for you. My top value of self-acceptance and being true to myself and helping others do the same also came from my past of never being allowed to be myself. I was raised within strict social norms and with being expected to fit into what society expected of me. I learned to push down my thoughts and feelings and to not speak up for myself as it was always “wrong” or not acceptable.

Other examples of core values are connection, dependability, growth and learning. Two people might have the same top core values but they will mean completely different things to each depending on their own individual past experiences and challenges. In this way, our hierarchy of core values are as individual to us as our fingerprint and they become our personal guidance system and the key to unlocking our unique “calling” or purpose in life.

When we are living according to our highest values, we experience increased self-worth and expanded possibilities and opportunities. We are energized to pursue challenges that truly inspire us. Our capacities are maximized, our inner genius and creativity are able to be tapped into, and we are able to authentically shine and inspire others. Determining core values is the crucial first step in our journey into self-discovery and self-empowerment and in committing to living a created and inspired life full of purpose, meaning, and joy.

-Coach Augusta