HAVE YOU EVER WRITTEN DOWN YOUR VALUES? IT COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE. IT CHANGED MINE

Setting goals and following your dreams becomes a lot easier once you have identified your true values and cemented your beliefs. By doing this you will be better placed to find your purpose. Using these three proactive measures, you can create a mindset that will lead to a fulfilling life of fun and happiness.

Values are the universal concepts that unite people. They include concepts like fairness, justice, freedom and equality. Tony Robbins says they ‘are like a compass that directs your life’. They motivate us, demotivate us and justify our behaviour.

I was starting to realise that to change my story I first needed to work out what my current story is and use this as the basis for creating the new one – the new me!

The alternative approach, which I was pretty much following, is not giving much thought to what my values, beliefs and purpose are, and leaving many things to chance. Just a few unhelpful values and a few hand-me-down beliefs can set up a world full of anxiety, stress, pain and unhappiness.

When I started the process of reviewing, deleting and inserting new values, I realised I was living in my own self-made cycle of get up, go to work, watch TV, drink wine, go to bed, get up and do it again.

Don’t get me wrong – I have always enjoyed my life. I love running my own business and I have a wide range of hobbies and a beautiful family. But something was wrong. I was drinking too much to really appreciate what I had.

I’d never sat down before with pen and paper or keyboard and screen and thought about listing my values. But it is probably one of the best things I have ever done. It’s the start of the process of working out what it is you stand for, what you’d like to stand for and what you don’t want to stand for.