Understanding Values

Creating Wealth
The Definition of Wealth
The Wealth Matrix
Making Choices
Taking Action
Understanding Beliefs
Understanding Values
Understanding Your Mind
Understanding Yourself
Managing Communication
Managing Time
Managing your Health
Managing your Relationships
Managing your Money

Having values will tremendously help you in creating wealth in your life. They will assist you in determining what is important to you, and why. Once you know what is important to you, you make better choices, take more focussed and specific actions. Actions create results, and results create wealth.

To start with an explanation of values, one could look at a “value” as something that is valuable, precious or important to you. Everyone has things that are important to them. The question is: “Do you know what is important to you?”

If your car is important to you, you would wash it, keep it clean and keep it safe. You will spend quite an amount of time on it, and accordingly, you will spend money on it too. Similarly, if your children are important to you, you would always keep an eye on them, assure that they are safe and will spend as much time with them as you can. You would also not hesitate to buy them anything that you can possibly afford.

The secret to values is that you spend your time and your money on the “things” (or people) that are important to you. So, if you would like to have more money, you would need to see what you spend your money on. What you spend your money on is more than likely something that you value.

In order to create wealth in your life, with specific focus on values, you need to do three things:

1. Create a list:

• Create a list of all the things that are important to you. Each person in this world will have a different list of things that are important to them. Make yours personal.
• Examples are: Travel, Education, Children, Time, Health, great relationships, pets, vehicles, nature, relationship with the Creator, having enough money etc.

2. Prioritise the list:

• Of the things that are important to you, what is more important?
• In the example of the car and children above. Which will come first? The car or the children.
• If you know which is more important, you will spend more time and money on the “value” that is most important to you.

3. Review the list periodically:

• It is easy to forget what is important to you. From time to time, at least once a year, review your list of the things that are important to you.
• As you make progress in your life you will discover that different things are important to you. When you are young, spending time with friends is usually important to you. When you get older, you discover that having time for yourself has become more important to you.
• Review your list of values and then go back to step 1. If your list of values are still the same, go to step 2 and re-organise them from most important to least important.

Why are having values important to you? They assist you to:

1. see what is important to you in your life.
2. prioritise what is most important to you.
3. see what you spend your time on.
4. help identify where your money goes.

Are there other types of values too?

Yes. The values above are personal values. They are “things” or “people” that are important to you. There are other types of values to such as behavioural or character values. Examples of these are: “Integrity, determination, truthfulness, punctuality, etc.” These types of values determine how you behave and will be covered in an article below.

Having a solid list of values and understanding the importance of each of them is a requirement for creating wealth in your life. That list of values will assist you tremendously in seeing where your money and your time goes. Once you know where your time and money goes you can make the necessary adjustments in your life to choose where you would rather have your time and money go. Once you know… you can grow, personally and professionally… but you have to have that list!

If this article was helpful to you, I ask that you please leave comments below as it can help someone else see that it has made a difference to you, and thus can make it for them too.

Additional Reading About Values:

• Why having values makes difficult choices easy.
• How character values affect your ability to create wealth. (Coming Soon)
• The Wealth Matrix and Values – How improving one element can change your life. (Coming Soon)

Next Steps:

• Understanding your Mind and how it works