Here’s the first in my series on tips and tricks to help childless women live a happy life.  This week I’m going to discuss values. 

Basically the more your values are being met, the happier you will be.

Also, if you’re like me, you’ve probably wasted a lot of time thinking about what’s negative or wrong in your life, so I’m going to show you that, by getting clear instead on what’s important to you, your focus instead will be more positive, which I’m sure you will agree is one of the first steps to living a happier life.

What are values?

Values are what are important to you in any context; they determine your motivation and behaviour and affect your choice of friends, hobbies, interests and how you spend your time.  Equally if something doesn’t fit with your values you won’t do it.

You may notice your values more when they’ve been violated, and the feeling you get when you’ve let someone down (or someone has let you down), is also because your values haven’t been met. So for me one of my values is being on time so I often arrive places early, and get annoyed when others are really late.

Values change over time and also with changes in life circumstances so for example living close to good schools might have been important to you when you wanted children, now it’s probably not so important.  

You have values for everything, from big things like your house, career and partner right down to smaller things such as books you read, restaurants you visit and shoes you buy and everything in between such as holidays and the car you drive.

I’m sure you will have companies’ values listed on their websites in in their literature so you can apply the same thinking to you and different aspects of your life.

I understand the theory, how do I find them?

Values are usually (and not always) single words such as: honesty, success, security, support, openness, fun, courage, creativity, kindness, reliability, sensitivity or trust.  If you’re not yet quite sure, do the exercise and I’m sure it will become obvious.

Now let’s play

Pick an area of your life; it could be absolutely anything,

And ask yourself, “What’s important to me about….,” “What do I want from ….” or “What do I look for in ….?”

Write down the first words that come into your head, and keep asking until you have 6 to 8 things; often those which you list towards the end will be the most important.

So for example for holidays the list could be: adventure, fun, fulfilment, value for money, meet new people, safety.

So now you have the list re-write them in the order of importance to you.

So I know what’s important to me, now what?

I encourage you to:

• find out your values for all the major areas of your life (you’ll probably find it easier to work with someone to do this),
• then consider how close they are to being met,
• and think about what you could do to meet them completely. For example recognition might be important to you in your career and it isn’t being met fully, so you could ask your manager for more positive feedback.   

Once you’ve done this exercise for the major areas of your life you will find that the focus of your thoughts have shifted from what you don’t want to what you want and you will be actively considering ways that you can meet them even more than you do now.

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This is just a taster of what you can do with values, working with an experienced coach will give you more insights and make even more difference to your life.

I work with childless women who are struggling with negative feelings and grief and who find it difficult to deal with others.  They want to get rid of these feelings and to create a life they love. 

I know how you feel because I’ve been through the rollercoaster of infertility treatment and come out the other side without children.  I now lead a positive life and am passionate about helping other women to do the same. I am an Accredited Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and member of the Association for NLP (ANLP) and Association for Coaching.

So I am perfectly qualified to work with you to banish negative feelings and thoughts, to grieve and heal and when you’re ready, to move on to creating goals, enabling you to achieve your dreams.

I use NLP techniques to identify what beliefs and behaviours work for you and together we will permanently change those which hold you back from being your best.

I will also provide you with regular dedicated time and space to focus on you in a safe and confidential environment and you can share the goals and dreams you’ve never shared with anyone else.

I’d love to work with you, so I invite you to book a complimentary session via my online diary and spend 20 to 30 minutes to get clarity on how we can work together to create a life you love. Alternatively email me at info@LesleyPyne.co.uk or look at www.LesleyPyne.co.uk for more details of how I can help you.