Anchoring Yourself in Times of Change
Knowing what’s most important to us is a colossal help in times of personal transition: those times in our lives and careers when so much is up in the air, a lot feels out of our control, and we’re struggling to stay afloat. They can also really help in times of wider societal change — like the pandemic — when our sense of helplessness can be exacerbated. So what makes knowing our values so helpful in times of change?
Values are the foundation of much of my coaching work: I spend 90 minutes, at the start of many new coaching relationships, digging deep into what’s most important to my clients. Once they’ve unpacked and clarified their values, they can go back to them when they need to make tough decisions, handle conflict, discern the way forward, or do a personal check-in.
(I show you how to create your own Values Compass — a much-simplified version of this work — here.)
So: when we’re going through change, what’s so helpful about knowing our values?
1. Our values give us a sense of agency and purpose.
When we’re in transition, so much feels outside of our control. Focusing on our values reminds us that – while we may not be able to control our circumstances – we can choose how we respond.
We always have a choice.
Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, writes about this brilliantly in his incomparable memoir Man’s Search for Meaning (1946). In it, he writes of his experience in Auschwitz, witnessing and wrestling with indescribable horror and death. He noticed that the inmates who were most resilient were those who still managed to exercise choice in the face of such devastation. He writes:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
For Frankl, we humans are meaning-making creatures. Without meaning, we lose hope. Knowing our values helps us to make choices that align with who we are, and help us shape purpose-driven lives.
2. Our values help us retain a consistent thread of identity.
This is particularly important in times of change, which can sometimes threaten our sense of self. Starting a new job or company, being laid off or furloughed, retiring, graduating, marrying or divorcing, becoming a parent, having our kids leave home, moving across the country — these are all massive interruptions to the pattern of how we show up in the world and perceive ourselves.
However, our values are deeply personal. While they may evolve over time, as we grow and change, they don’t tend to alter unrecognisably. Getting clear about our values reminds us that there is, in fact, a commonality between the self before this transition and the self during it. We’re still ourselves, and we’ll still be ourselves in whatever comes next, perhaps deepened or expanded or matured.
3. Our values let us regain perspective.
Often our values become apparent when we step back from a situation and its emotional charge. When we take the helicopter view, we’re better able to situate the current transition within the context of the rest of our life. We remember all the other transitions that have made us who we are. We stick our head up above the trenches for a moment, and – with this new perspective – are better able to see what’s most important to us.
That’s why the first step in creating a Values Compass is to take a twenty-year perspective. When this transition is over and we’re looking back from the year 2040, what’s going to have mattered most to us? And how are we going to have lived this out?
Something to chew on: Which of these elements — your agency, your identity, or a sense of perspective — is most helpful to you right now in the transition you’re going through?