Do you know your Values and Needs? | Cindy Jobs

Some information to put this post in perspective:

Several years ago I started a Professional Organizing business (I later added Coaching to my business model). I absolutely love helping my clients transition their homes and minds to create the lives they were destined to live. I foresee being able to do this work long into “retirement age,” whatever that age is.
We have a cabin a couple hours from our home where we eventually plan to retire (several years down the road). When we are there my husband and I experience a different pace of life. We golf together, we talk more, we love entertaining. It is magical.
We have two grandchildren. Since my first grandchild was born, I’ve spent nearly every Monday afternoon with them. I treasure this time.
I’m a planner. A few years ago I decided that I wanted to start building my business to include clients located around our eventual retirement home. Developing the business would require that I work on weekends and spend one week a month away from our primary home, my husband, and my grandchildren.
I worked on developing that business for two years and the business never came. I had failed and I generally don’t fail once I set my mind to something. This perplexed, and immensely frustrated, me.

Fast forward a few years when I was deep into my Coach training. Part of our work was to do an in-depth Values (what we stand for) and Needs (what must be in place to make life “work”) exercise on ourselves. My results were as follows:

Needs: Family, Peace, Self-Worth

Values: Honesty, Loyalty, Affection

Anything interesting pop out to you?

My most primary need is Family. For my business to be successful in our cabin community, I would need to be away from my family at least 25% of the time. Huge disconnect! I hadn’t made that connection until I went through this exercise. I wonder now if I was self-sabotaging the potential business because I didn’t want to disconnect from my family. Who knows.

Why do I bring this up?

When I coach, I ask my clients to go through a Values and Needs exercise. Knowing our Values and Needs give us an anchor to who we are and what we need to feel “whole.” When difficult decisions need to be made, I ask clients to bounce their options up against their Values and Needs. Once they do that, the decisions become easier.

If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you identify your Values and Needs. Google offers lots of options for this exercise. (Note: I do not endorse any specific Values and Needs exercise).

My guess is that once you’ve identified your Values and Needs, you will look back on previous difficult decisions in a new light and future difficult decisions may become much easier.

Cindy Jobs, COC, ACC

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