Facilitated by Derek LaCroix QC and Robert Bircher
Knowing Your Own Values
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• The most optimal use of your time is to spend it, in congruence with your values
• Your values form the foundation of your life and determine the direction your life takes
• Having a great life means making good decisions about career, relationships and activities, making good decisions requires that you know your values and keep them in the foreground of your thoughts
• Knowing your own values is much more difficult than you would expect
• The problem is that it is not easy to separate your personal values from a) your parents values and b) the dominant values of the culture

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• Because of the difficulty separating out your own values from family or cultural values, many people get caught in a life they don’t like because the are living somebody else's values
• This becomes a painful waste of time and you can get into a situation where you think “I am creating a life that is not the way I want to go”
• You may also experience yourself asking the question "Is this me or is this the way I am supposed to be?”
• Or it may be a sense of “I have everything that is supposed to make me happy but I am not happy”

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• For the purposes of this workshop our definition of values is “core psychological driving needs or priorities in life”
• All behavior is driven by values
• Values tend to be fairly basic and simple and can usually be expressed in one or two words-if it is more than that it is usually a story or a description of a behavior

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• It is so difficult to deconstruct or separate your own values from your family of origin’s values because you have had them repeated to you over and over since birth
• Most families value achievement, wealth, education, religion, status independence, appearance etc.
• Each generation gradually changes as those who are willing to live different values step out.
• In some cases the new values are just reprioritizing existing values
• Exercise “ Think of 3 of your family values you agree with and 3 that you don’t”
• Discuss with your group

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• Future historians will probably say “this culture pursued wealth and material goods in the mistaken belief these values would bring them happiness”
• One of the most powerful ways in which these values are impressed upon us is that they define our success
• Popular culture, heavily reinforced by the media defines success as the pursuit of winning , money, status , physical attractiveness and consumption of material goods-the more of these you have the more successful you will be
• By this definition most people are not successful

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• Being poor, powerless, unattractive, and unpopular means you are a loser by these definitions
• With this restrictive definition there is little opportunity for success and a great chance for failure
• Blindly accepting society’s definition of success and failure means you are forced down a path that is impossible to attain and not truly your own
• What this often results for lawyers is a sense that you are a success in the eyes of the world, but not by

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• One important reason to understand your values is how it fits in with a definition of success
• If you have no definition of success how could you possibly tell whether you are successful or not after any experience?
• The default definition is usually what society wants or valueswinning, status, power, appearance and conspicuous consumptionwhich isn't very fulfilling for most people
• A “when I get or achieve” definition doesn’t work either-When
I get into law school I will be happy,
When I get called to the bar I will be

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• Success in life: Being in the process of creating that which is most important to you
• This definition is about a process not an end point
• This definition will be unique to you and may or may not be approved by society at large
• To adopt this definition you must know what is most important to you-your values!

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• Most people are not very clear about their own values even though they are usually obvious when we look at their behavior
• Being clear about what our values are allows us to make good choices about important matters such as work and choice of partners etc.
• We typically have many values but it is most useful to be conscious of our top
5-7 values-We need to know them in some useful order of priority

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• Your own values tend to be formed fairly young and usually don’t change much over the course of our lives-what does change is the way these values are met or sometimes the priority can shift slightly as we age
• For example a person that values prestige and attention will likely have the flashiest bike in grade three, the hottest BMW after becoming a partner in a prestigious firm, and the coolest scooter in the old folks home-nothing has changed except the form in which the value manifests itself

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 You will usually get your core values met positively or negatively and whether or not you are conscious of them or not-you are automatically programmed to seek them out
 If you need stimulation, excitement and variety in your life you will create them-these can be created constructively(being a prosecutor) or destructively(robbing banks)
 Many people who have made poor choices in life are simply getting their values met in an

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• Values can manifest in what appear, on the surface level, to be quite different behaviors
• I value a sense of freedom and so bought a large boat and enjoyed the openness of the ocean on weekends-after a number of years the work of cleaning the bottom, endless repairs and cost and boredom with boating I sold the boat to regain my sense of freedom!!

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• Should values are those values I think I should have based on what the culture or my family want
• My own values are what I actually have and can be determined by looking at my life and what I have done with my time
• They are usually mixed up and difficult to separate
• Some deconstruction and process is required to separate these out
• Several tests are required and it is useful to do this in a group since it is very easy to get personal values

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• Simply asking people about their values usually doesn’t work since you will always get “should” values mixed in with authentic values
• An easy way to tell is how that person actually behaves in life if they say “I value my health” but they are overweight, smoke and out of shape this is a “should or ideal self” value not a real one for them-or it simply isn’t one of sufficient importance for them to act on

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• Most people have lots of values and various tests can raise your awareness of your own values
• One way is to simply rate the importance on a list of values, in other words scaling from 1-
10-the problem with this method is that “ideal self” or “should have" values can creep in
• Another way is to look at your life and try and deduce values from your behaviors-this tends to be more accurate but involves some detective work since it is not often easy to deduce why you did what you did -i.e. what values were in play when you went to law school?-accomplishment, intellectual challenge, curiosity, sense of achieving something difficult, prestige, power, wanting to help others etc.
• You can also fool yourself by only looking at the superficial value-for example only coin collectors actually value money-what value does your money help you get?

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• Values are not physical needs like food and water
• Values Indicator Test
• Values Clarification Test
• Epoch test
• Work with your group to get your top 5 values-they will be slightly different in each test
• Use one word to mean several things or concepts, sometimes a 3 word max phrase will work “Teaching and Learning”
• You need to settle on your top 5 and satisfy your group that these are yours not the cultures or mom and dads values-the group is your jury

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• Living your life congruent with your values results in happiness-actually it is a byproduct of this congruence!!
• My top 5 values are beauty, compassion, teaching and learning, inner peace and personal and spiritual growth-almost everything I do involves these values-my job at LAP is very consistent with these values as well as my friendships and social activities-this results in a stress free happy life
• Once you are aware of your top values you can use this information for decision making

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• Once you are aware of your values the question is: Are you living your life in accordance with those values?
If you value friendships and physical activity how much of your time do you actually do those things? Are you pursuing money and prestige when these things really don’t mean that much to you?
• Almost all lawyers want to be helpers-
Do you value helping poor people get justice but actually work in a firm that helps rich people get richer? You can create ethical incongruence and it will manifest as unhappiness

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• The most common problem is living your life according to someone else's values (i.e. parents or family) Another common problem is not being clear about the importance of core values to you-you will always have a sense of un-fulfillment or that something is
“missing in your life”
• If you are out of touch with your values what is missing from your life is you!!

Your Time For Your Life
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Your Time For Your Life
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