Establish Behavioral Discipline Toolkit

Answer

Getting clear about our values and creating a value-driven weekly schedule and overall lifestyle! If you google core values list, several links come up that can provide you with examples to different core values listings. James Clear has a 50-common personal values list that I love! He is the author of the famous book Atomic Habits. Here is the list of values that he acknowledges: authenticity, achievement, adventure, authority, autonomy, balance, beauty, boldness, compassion, challenge, citizenship, community, competency, contribution, creativity, curiosity, determination, fairness, faith, friendship, fun, growth, happiness, honesty, humor, influence, inner harmony, justice, kindness, knowledge, leadership, learning, love, loyalty, meaningful work, openness, optimism, peace, pleasure, poise, popularity, recognition, religion, reputation, respect, responsibility, security, self-respect, service, spirituality, stability, success, status, trustworthiness, wealth and wisdom (Clear, 2022).

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Identifying our core values is an important first step to creating a value-driven lifestyle and hopefully cultivating an extra layer of desire towards what you want to accomplish from week to week! Key word here: desire. Desire before motivation. Why? Because desire is that feeling of wanting it. You don't have to wait to want it because you already do. We can get caught in the waiting period of needing to feel motivated enough to do certain things but desire is already within us. To go a little further, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy challenges this concept of motivation with a therapeutic technique called behavioral activation. Behavioral activation is all about increasing your day to day activities with tasks and behaviors that are both positive and rewarding. So when you take the time to not only identify behaviors that are rewarding but those that also align with your values, you intentionally commit to a life that is again, value-driven and one that you desire to live!

The thing that I love about the behavioral discipline kit is that you can see the interconnectedness between your listed values and weekly schedule to ensure that both align and serve your needs. I used the word discipline in the kit title because it is important to acknowledge that as you work to change behaviors that are unhealthy and destructive, you need to remain disciplined to achieve the results and rewards you desire. You can track progress from week to week and that when we align our actions and lifestyle with our personal values, we allow ourselves the opportunity to think, feel, and behave better.

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Resources:

Clear, James (2022). Core Values List. Retrieved from: https://jamesclear.com/core-values