ICRAVE Following My Values

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Values are the thing that gives you direction and courage

  • Feel a strong gut response when things are value consistent or inconsistent. 
  • It’s like a hook in your heart pulling you forward
  • It’s not what is valuable about you or what other people value you for.
  • It’s when you are engaged in that activity or role where you are offering something to the world, or bringing something to a relationship, or you are demonstrating a particular strength or virtue and feel a natural reward for it.  
    • It is like you are in alignment.

Values don’t have to be things that are virtues (like honesty).

  • Values can be enthusiasm, compassion, local community, courage
  • Sometimes you know what your values are because it is that thing that you long for. 
    • There is something missing.
  • Value doesn’t have to be the thing that comes easy

Reflect on the moments when you feel most alive, proud and connected to something bigger than yourself.

  • The role, relationship, priority, or way of being.
  • An example is the value of enthusiasm. 
    • To live in enthusiasm. 
    • To be unafraid to be enthusiastic. 
    • To share in other people’s joy. 
    • To love what you love. 
    • To sustain and light you up, and give others permission to celebrate things that may not be important but just make you happy.

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Re-source: Reengage

Most people try to choose to try to control their inner experience rather than choose the action that’s most consistent with their values and their goals. 

  • This is true whether we are trying to control addiction, whether we are choosing to overcome anxiety, or whether we are choosing to stay alive with the voices in our head that are severely depressed and taunting us.
  • You can have an inner experience that is telling you, you must do one thing or you can’t do this other thing. 
    • Overwhelming anxiety says you can’t do it.

Often the one skill you need is to say, “I can’t always control my inner experiences, but I can make a choice right now that I know my future self will be grateful for, that reflects my core values, and I’m going to learn how to tolerate this inner experience.

  • That is true for stress and pain.

You can make room for everything that is going on inside of you and still engage with life.

  • You can learn it through therapy, meditation, and exercise
  • Exercise is learning a new way to deal with physical discomfort. 
    • You are going to be uncomfortable, be tired, and have a voice in your head that says you have to stop, and also feedback from your muscles that say you have to stop.
  • You need to learn how to negotiate and figure out what matters most to you, and push through that.
  • Basically, abandon trying to figure it out.

craving and resource from ““Impact Theory” by Tom Bilyeu with Kelly McGonigal