January 14th, 2010 | 
Author: If you have taken action with the first four articles on how to use NLP to identify your values and goals you will now have a list of your Top 7 values, arranged in order of importance to you.
You now have your provisional Values Hierarchy.
Next step is to check this hierarchy to ensure it takes you in a right direction for you – and without creating inner conflict. And that’s the subject of this article and the next one.
Jack’s Values’ Hierarchy
Let’s take an example and imagine that Jack has used this NLP process to identify his Top 7 Values and has also arranged these in a hierarchy as follows:
- I want to experience fun
- I want to avoid pressure & stress
- I want to be more successful at work
- I want more excitement in my life
- I want to feel healthy and fit
- I want to have a nice house and car
- I want a mutually rewarding personal relationship
Right now Jack perceives this as his recipe for a happy and fulfilling future. This is the direction he wants his life to go in for the next few years:
- He wants to have lots of fun. That’s the top priority. Which sounds good, so far.
- Next in importance is to aim to avoid feeling stressed or pressured. Quite a reasonable and admirable aim…
- Then he wants to be successful in his work. Good idea.
- After that he rates ‘excitement’ as something to aspire to.
- His fifth most important aspiration is to feel healthy and fit. Which, in day-to-day reality, means that only after he has invested energy and attention and time in fulfilling the first 4 will he devote time and energy to being healthy and fit.
- And having a mutually rewarding relationship only manages to squeeze into the No. 7 spot!
We each have a Values’ Hierarchy
A Values Hierarchy is not an NLP invention. In fact it’s not even an invention. We each develop a values hierarchy without knowing we are doing so.
Look back over the last year or two.
Notice how you have prioritised seeking to attain or avoid some feelings more than others. You will have devoted more time and energy to some rather than to others. These will be your key values – even if you didn’t consciously think them through.
You have a Values Hierarchy even if it may be one you sort of inherited or picked up somewhere along the line… it’s an unconsciously developed Hierarchy.
Hierarchies and bus driving
Living your life with an unconscious or out-of-awareness Values Hierarchy is a bit like being on a bus and hoping it’ll take you somewhere nice.
Sadly many people spend years, some even their entire lives, as passive bus-passengers in just this way. Why sadly? Because they have no idea where they are going. They don’t have a plan – they just have hope – and the weekly Lottery ticket which will make everything OK if they win the jackpot!
By using NLP to create a designed Values Hierarchy (and following this up with action plans) you put yourself in the driving seat of your life rather than being a passive back-seat passenger.
Action point
Take a good look at your newly designed Values Hierarchy. Consider that you are going to spend the next year or so investing attention and effort in fulfilling these values – and in this order of importance.
Think, too, about the activities you will be prioritising and those which will receive less attention. And with this in mind consider if the next year will indeed be a rewarding and fulfilling one – and what your daily life will be like in twelve months time.
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I can’t remember which course it was, but when we did this (or something similar) one thing that really hit home for me was (later) hints from Reg about how Health and Fitness comes into your heirarchy. At the time I’m not sure it was on mine. If it was, it was low down.
I’ve thought about this lots since and to me it is strongly tied with the “driving your own bus” thing. Ultimately you need to take responsibility for yourself. No one else will do. That is not being selfish, it’s being responsible for yourself. Pretty much the *first* step of this is your own personal (mental and physical) health and fitness. If these are compromised in any way, it is going to compromise your ability to achieve the rest of your values. I guess this is an alternative way of looking at Maslows heirarchy of needs.
It seems very easy to think of other values and beliefs that can be placed higher than your own needs. But really, is that going to work out?
Sadly, I’ve not been great at following my own advice!
I think it might have been on the Master Practitioner, Jamie. Because it’s only in more recent Practitioner Programmes that we have gone into Values this deeply.
The ‘health and fitness’ focus in Values’ work came about as a result of years of working as a counsellor and encountering people who had left it a bit too late to begin maintaining their health and fitness – and were only able to do remedial work.
It’s so easy in our 20’s and 30’s to think that health will take care of itself – without our having to invest in it. Poor health is something that only happens to ‘old’ people and to ‘other’ people…
It isn’t…