Identify The Saboteurs in Your Life

You may be living and working in conflict with core values that are continually sabotaging your success. 

Did you know that just like a computer we have core values that have been uploaded into our minds and these values will determine your choices, preferences & styles –– in priority order.  An individual's core values form personal value systems that lead to judgments and decisions, causing actions and results.  

These core values are programmed into your belief systems from your parents, your teachers, your siblings, your environment, the media, and people of influence in your life. We “learn” what is acceptable behaviour and what is not and therefore “these influencers” control the way we think unless we make a conscious decision to delete this program from our hard drive! These programmed beliefs can be referred to as your Reticular Activating System or RAS. This RAS will determine the way you respond in any given situation. Your attitudes and habits come from the RAS, and even when you don’t want to do something it “just comes out” and we say “oh that is just me!” This is the programming, the beliefs that are formed. Your beliefs about God and religion, about good and bad, about money, about love, about respect, about politics, about taxes, about discipline, about authority, about integrity and loyalty, about marriage, about hard work, about being a loner or a party animal, about working for money or making money work for you, about being needed and I am not good enough, etc.  

Core values are:   

·   what guide you,  

·   what causes you to be in conflict or in harmony with others,  

·   what energizes you or drains you,  

·   what satisfies you in relationship to others and to your work,  

·   what values you base a majority of your decisions on  

·   where your strengths and weaknesses are,  

·   how you prefer to work,  

·   why you make the same mistaken choices repeatedly,  

·   how you are likely to manage conflict,  

·   your ability to communicate - especially your deepest anxieties & fears,  

·   your strengths as a leader or a team player.

Understand your core values and you can understand yourself better. You can understand the contributions you prefer to make and the strategies you prefer to use. Your core values will determine your self confidence and your self esteem. You can set all the goals you want but if they are in opposition to these core values, you will constantly be unhappy and frustrated.

I was coaching one of my clients and we were discussing these values and he said to me that as a child in his home “selling” was the lowest on the totem pole of occupations and especially door to door sales people were to be “shunned”.  Another of the values in his home was to be on the school debate team.  You had kind of “arrived” if you were good enough to be selected and then to “win” a debate was honoured. He then came to understand that these two “values” were in direct opposition to each other.  In his mind being a “sales person” was convincing someone against their will to purchase something that they didn’t need, didn’t want, couldn’t really afford, but finally purchased because “you win” I have no more argument to resist the purchase. This is what you did on the debate team – nailed them to the wall with no argument left.  

He always found it a conflict… he wanted to win on the debate team, but then felt bad when he did. (His value of a sales person would click in). Identifying these two values allowed him to make new choices, eliminate what beliefs no longer served him and make choices about what did. He now is able to be successful in a “selling career”.

Let’s say that you set a goal to be financially independent because you are so tired of barely making it by each month. If that goal is in conflict with your programmed core value of “rich people always rip someone off to get there” or “you have to have a university education to make it in life” or “you have to work long hours to be really successful and then you sacrifice your family” you will always sabotage your success because the goal isn’t congruent with what your core beliefs are. In your subconscious mind it would be wrong for you to achieve, because you value getting by over ripping people off or you don’t see a way to get a university education at your stage in life or you aren’t prepared to ‘sacrifice the kids’. The best way to identify these hidden core values is to ask yourself when the conflict opposing thought comes up: “Where did that thought come from? Whose voice is that in my head? Who taught me that belief?” Don’t deny the voice, which would be against another core value… to always tell the truth. So stop and talk to the voice and tell it that you have now made a new core value decision. That is the value you used to have, but you now have additional information and that old belief no longer serves you. Tell yourself this is the new core value that you are installing. Just like on the computer, delete the old program to install the new. If you try to run both of them at the same time the two programs will be in conflict and neither will work for you…. You will always want more, but always have all the reasons why you can’t have more.

The Coach