Every day you make decisions. Those decisions create your life. But is it the life you want?
One way I keep myself on track is by always checking in with my Value Setpoint.
What is a Value Setpoint? It’s the current thing that feels most important to you at this time, used to organize your life and decisions to create satisfying results in that area. I invented the term for myself, to help me understand the unique way I’ve lived my life—which has been a series of experiments—and how I’ve managed to accomplish things that didn’t appear logically possible.
Like when I became a senior editor at a biz mag soon after graduating from university, or landed a college teaching job without a master’s degree, or sold 80 books at my book launch, with no marketing. Or ran a successful charity that built schools in Asia, with no previous experience. And so much more.
While the Vision Statement tool plays a key role, aligning you with your highest vision for your life (on a subconscious level), it has many components. You can’t do them all at once.
Your Value Setpoint guides you to work toward the part of your Vision that is most important for you right now.
A few examples of Value Setpoints:
- Creative output (writing: a book, blogs, music, making a course, painting, etc.)
- Personal growth (meditation retreats, workshops, conferences, books, podcasts; can also be committing to learn something new like dancing or public speaking full-on)
- Quality connection (staying home with young children, taking care of a sick parent, spending extra time with a new partner or rebuilding a relationship that’s faltering)
- Health, physical and/or mental (a new intensive practice or set of practices, working with a trainer, going to therapy or learning self modulating practices like meditation/CBT/breathwork)
Important:
This is not a decision we make with our mind (I need to publish a book to move my career forward), it’s one we make with our feelings—our intuition (I really feel like exploring my own experiences and ideas in written form). The mind does not have the blueprint for our highest potential. Only our inner guidance can provide that.
So ask yourself:
What really matters to me right now? What do I most want to experience right now that is calling to me?
If you find yourself thinking something like “making money” then you need to go deeper and ask yourself “for what”? Money is great, but what do you want it to allow you to be able to do, learn, pursue, experience? That will be the real answer.
After you choose your Value Setpoint, then ask:
What conditions have worked for me in the past to support something like this? What are the optimal possible conditions to do this? How might I need to shape my life to support this?
My answer:
In my case, right now I’m feeling called toward creative output—writing. Having written full novels (unpublished) and a travel memoir (self published) and many articles for national magazines as well as my own blog posts, I know that I create best with stability, consistency and routine.
I also know this is not my natural state of being—because I’m drawn toward constant growth via challenge, change and experimentation. Also I have spent two decades healing complex PTSD, which means I experience generalized anxiety and bouts of debilitating depression that can make consistency difficult. This has improved drastically, but requires constant awareness.
Fortunately, I have learned that many seemingly impossible challenges can be overcome when you are clear on your Value Setpoint, because then can organize your daily decisions around supporting that. It provides a focused question to ask myself daily: how can I better support this Value Setpoint (creative output)? I also read my personal Vision Statement daily to guide my decisions.
Try It Now:
1. Choose your Value Setpoint.
2. Write down the conditions that will fully support that (based on past experiences or by looking at others who’ve done what you’re wanting to do).
3. Create a daily tracking sheet to ensure you make decisions that move you in this direction. Write down the decisions you made that day and how they moved you toward that, or away from that.
The universe delivers when we align with our truth + move toward it + ask for help with it + trust we will be supported.
In my personal experience, making this conscious choice + decisions to support it + daily tracking = a life that feels totally aligned with me and therefore creates my best outcomes. It also continues to lead me to contribute to this world in unique ways I never imagined. It allows me to harness my intuitive impulses, then use conscious decisions to drive that forward.
Let me know how it goes.
Shawn xo
