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Defence Health HubFinding your Footing: Navigating Change with your Core Values (Stress Less, Strategise More series)
Part of the "Stress Less, Strategise More" webinar series with Chief Mental Health Officer, LTCOL Steve Kearney.
Finding your Footing: Navigating Change with your Core Values
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um just by way of introduction I'm Steve Kearney I'm the chief mental health officer for the nzdf um and uh this is our stress less
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strategise more session today's lunchtime session isn't on values and using those to navigate challenging kind
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of Life circumstances and situations um while we're just waiting for stragglers maybe just do yeah a bit
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of a cons check so in your um in your uh teams bar you'll have a little icon with
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uh some like um hand claps and thumbs up and stuff like that so I just want you
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to kind of hit hit whatever one of those captures where you're at right now as you sit there which one of those is
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closest to kind of how you where you're at and and how you tracking okay so a
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few shocked faces that's cool mostly thumbs up some laughter that's great good start
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promising uh good okay some and some Shock faces sweet so as we go through
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today um I'd encourage use those buttons if uh mostly because it's weird for me
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if I am sitting here talking to myself I'll do that I love the sound of my own voice but um it's easier and more
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engaging and fun for everyone if uh if people kind of get involved so if you want to offer a comment or jump on the
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um emojis then that's then please do that right and I might ask you to do that as we go through a couple of things
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today and then the other thing I'll get you to know about or have a look at is we've got um the Q&A session um uh the
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Q&A option is enabled for this session so if you got any questions if I stop making sense I'm on my third coffee for
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today so I'm about uncaffeinated so um if I stop making sense then please check
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a question in the Q&A and Frank Harkin one of the CPO team is helping me out
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today is my kind of beautiful assistant lovely assistant Frank and he'll be just nudging those across to to my awareness
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um so I'll try and keep one eye on that so if I'm looking this way that's typically what I'm doing I'm trying to
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figure out what the um what the what's going on in the Q&A cool um any kind of questions before
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we get started check those in the Q&A
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now uh okay so I will we'll make the slides available there's a couple of
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slides that might actually be good for you to have a look there's also at the end I'll introduce a bit of a handout and so you can and I'll put a copy of
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that in the in the um Chat thing for this as well so so any of the hard copy
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stuff you'll get a copy of there as we go through cool all righty so let's get
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underway I'm going to share my screen uh so you can see what I've been uh
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thinking and we'll get into it so today's presentation is finding
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your footing and navigating values uh can you give me a thumbs up if you can see my screen can you see my
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screen there we go sweet ass so um thanks very much te thanks all so that's
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what we're here for today we're going to talk about values right and um just to kind of uh welcome everyone here I know
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and want to acknowledge that this is a stressful time for a lot of us across defense both uniform and civilian but
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for many of us civilian Faro um and so I I was sort of just to preface our
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session today I was reminded of some words as a famous psychologist a guy called Martin saligman who introduced
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some of the ideas we're going to talk about today and he wrote a self-help book and in the first sentence of his self-help book was uh there are two
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kinds of self-help books the ones that teach you how to lead a perfect life and the ones who teach you how to live with
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an imperfect one and so uh this this his book and this presentation are very much
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the latter all right there are no Magic Bullets in my experience life does stuff too and throw stuff at you and so uh
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what we're looking for today is to help you to get just to move in the right direction for you
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right and to um help you out in whatever way might be possible and feasible so
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that's what we're going to do today and so in terms of ground rules like I said if you've got any questions check them in the chat or in the Q&A and um Frank
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will nudge them across and put them on my attention if I need if they would if I need to deal with them or address them here and now um otherwise look forward
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to your participation via emojis so my time in defense I've learned that that uh it's good to always
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start with the bottom line up front because sometimes people's attention drifts shock shock horror uh and so the
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bottom line up front for this presentation is nicely captured by this um MTI
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faki right so uh translated that comes to seek the treasure that you value most
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dearly if you bow your head let it be to a lofty m so the idea and one of the key messages
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from will be from today will be in times of trouble it really helps to know what matters to us and how we're going to
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prioritize our time and our and our attention and our energy and our love yep cool so here's what we're going to
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talk about we're going to talk about why having purpose and meaning is important spoiler alert you live longer if you've
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got a clear sense of purpose and meaning how to tell the difference between values and goals and in Western
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communities Western culture we focus very much on objectives and goals but today we're going to focus more on values and I'll talk about what those
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are we're going to talk about the difference between values that you have and the values that the world might have
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kind of told you you should have and and some ideas about how to separate those two for you and we're going to talk
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about some practical things you can do to help live your values and practical things you can do to help clarify your
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values everything I do today or talk about today is googleable and at the end of the session I'll give you a couple of
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kind of if you are the kind of person that likes to kind of read a bit more I'll give you some references you can go to to kind of test ideas and explore
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ideas a bit more cool everything I talk about today is derive from a particular
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approach to mental health and and therapy and well-being called acceptance and commitment therapy or act so if you
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Google acceptance and commitment therapy values for instance you'll get a lot of what we're coming up to up with today or we're going to cover
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today so before we get started would like you to do is on a piece of paper in front of you I'd like you to write down
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three numbers just any three numbers at random between 1 and 100 and I'll just give you
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um 20 seconds just to do that right on a piece of paper in front of you write down three numbers between one and
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100 cool
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okay now what I'd like you to do is next to those three words or beside those three words I just get you to write down
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the word that is on this list so in front of you you should have a rough list of about about 100 uh adjectives or
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descriptives and just write those down whatever three words you picked so you might have picked 73
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organized 85 shy and 37 immature y all
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righty now what I'd like you to do is imagine that it is your 65th birthday
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and all your friends and Faro are gathered around and they are
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um talking about the things that that they treasured and loved and enjoyed
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about you and having you in their life now the things The Impressions that you've left with
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them my question is what if you were remembered as those three things that are on that are written down in front of
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you right some of them might be bad some of them might be neutral some of them might be
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good I'm curious of the three things who who's use the emojis if you're happy with the Emojis give us a thumbs up if
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you're a bit surprised you know or you'd be a bit uncomfortable maybe put the shocked Emoji let's see how let's see
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how we're tracking so what what what did people where did people land with those three some thumbs up some thumbs
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up cool righty so if we the moral of this story
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is if we go through life and we don't make active choices intentional choices about how we want to
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be in the world and the Impressions that we want to live uh leave with the people that matter to us then the universe will
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pick for us life will pick for us and sometimes we won't we won't like or we
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won't they would be other than we would have would have wished so a key kind of message from today is how can you be
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better and more intentional at choosing how you want to be in the world uh
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because that helps with a bunch of stuff if you have a clear sense of who you want to be and how you want to be that
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helps with with a bunch of things so here's what I wanted to do now is go down the list and think about what
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three would I pick if I could pick any three of those are on that list what
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would they be and if there's ones that aren't on the list so for instance um it might be
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um uh courageous right whatever it is but if what are
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three words that at your 65th birthday if the people that were you cared about
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were gathered around and were talking about who you were what would you what would you hope they might say about you
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just write down three words there you might have different words for
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different roles so what would I how would I be as a partner how would I be as a parent how would I be as a leader
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how I be as a human being all right hold on to that thought
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and we will come back to that so values can be helpful for a range of
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reasons and I'll go into some of the research in in in a minute but at a fundamental level all organisms
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including that amoeba on the screen in front of you can do two things they can move away from stuff or they can move
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towards stuff now if we live a life that is dominated
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by things we're moving away from things we don't want to feel things we don't want to have happen if all our choices
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are dominated by what we are avoiding then that gets very stressful our brain
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and body operate differently when we're moving away from stuff and trying to avoid stuff than when we're moving
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towards stuff and engaging in stuff yeah so life a life that includes moves
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toward things include steps towards things that matter to us and tends to be
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more fulfilling and more vital and more and richer that said it's still going to
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include things that are scary sad or frustrating so moving towards your
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values often times will actually lead to a short-term increase in anxiety and
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distress and frustration and sadness right so moving towards with that matter
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to us sometimes lead to an increase in those things more commonly not always but commonly in the short term then that
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dissipates over the long term and so um if you are here to get rid of stress uh
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or to get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings then this kind of this session isn't going to be a good fit for you if
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you are here to figure out okay how do I move towards the things that matter um
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even in stressful times how do I do do things that are reflect who I want to be
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even in stressful times and difficult times that's more what we're going to talk about
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today um yeah so a value is a chosen quality or
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direction of action that is personally meaningful and guides you to how you
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want to be and how you want to live your life yeah so often times in Western
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culture we speak about go so that's the objective I want this career goal I want
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this family goal I want this financial goal all of those you know the target
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the objective values are more about how I want to conduct myself as I move
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through life uh what are the principles that guide my actions as I move through
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life so how I want to be and who I want to be I'll just pause there for a moment
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and just check has anyone got any questions or anything uh they want to am I rambling am I making
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sense me just check out give me a thumbs up te let's check who's actually listening give me a thumbs up if if
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things make sense so far give me a thumbs down or something else if they
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don't cool
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TR awesome okay we'll keep moving
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so values uh kind of have a number of qualities the first is they're chosen by
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you right so a lot of us grow up and perhaps more importantly they're not chosen by our community or the society
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around us and many of us get a lot of messages about how we should be and who we should be from the society around us
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right so in that you know one of my areas are interest is particularly kind of how masculine values can make
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people's lives harder and easier and and a lot of the time uh men are hold to uh
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and indeed some of our wo within the defense Community uh get the message that expressing their emotions is not is
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not acceptable and so they they suppress that and that gets in the way then maybe
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of other aspects and a richer follow life and other aspects of their lives right so a value is chosen by you it's a
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choice that you make for yourself it's meaningful so it's intrinsically connects to what you care about and
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what's intrinsically interesting to you it's Direction giving so it helps you make choices about what you're going to
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do with your energy and your time um it's flexible which means that it can
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apply across different contexts and it can apply across different um areas of
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your life so for instance if I so for me personally one of my core values is learning I love anything that I that
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helps me to learn I and feel like I'm learning and learning more and developing a sense of getting B better
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at something I T that tends to be intrinsically rewarding for me and so you know I can apply that to my role at
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work that also applies to Parenting with my little girls it applies to my relationship and my marriage and how to
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how to kind of feel like I'm learning within that so a good value that stands out for us tends to apply across
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different contexts and different parts of our life it tends to be relatively enduring so commonly a value um will be
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something that has been important to you throughout most of your life might change a little bit as your as your
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priorities change in life so as you acquire a family there some rebalancing of values
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but but still there's this fundamental thing um that is intrinsically important to you and generally they help you
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they're positive so they give you something to move towards in difficult times so for me to draw on that example
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of learning you know even when I go through challenging times when I face setbacks it helps me
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if I go okay I'm going to learn from this you know whatever else happens outcome may have been unwanted outcome
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may have been um unpleasant and it makes it a bit easier it eases the burden if I
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if I know or if I remind myself how can I learn from this does it make sense
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where so there's a ton of research particularly in the last sort of 20 to 30 Years Around values and what role
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they can play in terms of your will being uh so one of the key things is
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that they can reduce burnout right because what values do is they help you decide what you actually care about and
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what you don't what you can offer a suboptimal solution on and what and what you what you really want to get right
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they also remind us to do things that keep us at our best right so in order to
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live with my values I know I need to invest in some part parts of my life so for me for learning
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um it I I know that I have to kind of put aside some time to reflect and to
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read books and things so that that that then makes me better in the future and
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and I'll make that a priority um they helps navigate complexity for the same sort of reason they reduce anxiety
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although they don't get rid of it but they kind of sometimes help balance out anxiety they give us something that
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basically we become willing to endure anxiety to face anxiety to experience
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anxiety because we're doing that in the service of something that is important to us uh they promote curiosity they
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promote connection so we find it easier human beings find it easier to connect with someone who has a clear sense of
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their values often times they don't have to share the same values as us but if someone's got a clear sense of their
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values that we find it easier to predict them or to relate to them and understand
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kind of where they're coming from so it promotes connection that way and it promotes good genuinely speaking values
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communities that have strong values have clear values community members with strong values tend to just have better
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outcomes does that make any sense so far all righty so they are different from goals
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as I've said they how you want to be not what you want to be and so we've come back to this list here and if there's a
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value that matters to you um that's not on there feel free to write it down but we're going to do a bit of experimenting
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now around some things you can do to uh to explore your values a little a little
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more and also to um um uh make them clearer and take action
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in the service of your values there is a trap for young players though sometimes our values can become
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rules so here's an example of in the military community in the uniform Community how a value can become a rule
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that makes it harder for people to seek help with mental health conditions right so the value of selflessness at its best
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is about placing the welfare of others above your own however what that means
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is that people have a rule where I shouldn't seek help for my own problems because my health is not a prior
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priority so if if uh a value if and a key combat indicator for when a value
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has become a rule an inflexible rule is that it has the word should or must in
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it right I should be be this way I must be this way right when those kind of
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rules come into play in our heads they it tends to close options off or restrict our
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perspective so just to kind of caution their track fing players uh if you are not sure about
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what a value what value if there's uh if you want to explore kind of a list of values more just to go back to this list
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um you can go to there's a survey if you're the kind of person who likes to fill out psychologist surveys and get
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get the findings and that kind of feedback there's a survey called the values and action survey that's free
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it's out of Pennsylvania University you you have to create an ID but you can do it for free um on their website and if
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you Google values and action survey Pennsylvania you'll get it and um that's actually a validated really nicely
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structured way of getting an insight into your values and as an aside um it's
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by that guy Martin Salman that I mentioned before who uh who's talked about living with an imperfect
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life uh cool okay so what I'd like to uh
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what we're talk about now is the importance also of having a sense of how
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your values reflect or are lived across different parts of your life sometimes
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when we're under stress when we're under pressure when there's a lot going on in life we NE we focus all our attention on
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one domain one area of our life and we neglect the other parts of our
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lives for many of us I suspect what we tend to do uh in our organization is we
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focus really heavily on work particularly when we're under pressure and we tend to diminish or lose focus on
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Leisure relationships and personal growth the kind of other key areas of um
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of our of our well-being right so what I want you to do is I've got on the slide
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there pick pick one one domain that is important to you right now and what I'd
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actually get you to do is I want you to pick the domain in your life which you feel like maybe you are living your Val
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your least you are least living your values in that domain at the moment so
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that that value that you picked out before so it might have been so if I use my example kind of learning and love of
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learning if I was to pick the one where I've neglected that the most lately it would probably be leisure right so I
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applied at work all the time I inflict sort of um relationship advice stuff on
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my wife all the time or books on my wife all the time and I read a bunch of books
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related to kind of personal growth and health as well but I don't I haven't really explored learning learning as
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part of my Leisure World lately so that's what I'd like you to do it's in one of those four areas and what I'll
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get you to do is in the chat or in the Q&A and I'll get Frank just to nudge these over as they come in I just want
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you to put for you which of those four areas have you neglected the most lately
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all right which of those four areas are you farthest from your from your values
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in um does that make sense right so check that in the chat and I'll get
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Frank to nudge them over which are those four things do you feel like you have least lived your
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values and what matters to you
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a look going in
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there Frank will get you to start moving those over if you could personal health and growth is one
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Leisure is one a very common one personal growth and health yeah very common
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right relationships lead cool so for a lot of us right now a lot
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of our attention will be on work and that's appropriate and legitimate right that makes perfect sense what I would
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encourage you to do is to start to think about what are some small things that
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you could do to invest in living your values in some of these other parts of your life that you might have neglected
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and the reason for that is that the evidence suggests that if we put all our eggs in one basket and that basket
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starts to get a bit wobbly then our whole sense of self can get really wobbly whereas if we deliberately and
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intentionally invest in living our values in each of these four areas then if one gets wobbly the other three can
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help us maintain a sense of perspective and a sense of um a sense of self yeah
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so one thing to think about is how can you live your values in some of those other areas of your life over the next
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we while Z Maxin can I get some thumbs up or thumbs down um just to get a sense of
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where people are sitting with
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it cool all right so we'll move
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on so one here we move now into some of the Practical things you can do so um
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and again I'll send you the slides and this is the slide you can use if you decide to do this activity so one useful
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exercise that you can do is sit down and set your intentions and create a
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personal ethos as you face whatever challenges are coming coming down the pipeline for you and setting your
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intentions in relation to those challenges so this is based on some research done out of the US looking at
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sort of various um approaches to sort of setting up your values and deepening
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your understanding of your values and the way this works is that you pick a value one might be the one you picked
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before might be one of the ones on the list here that I've provided and you write you sit down with
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a pen and paper or a pad and paper and write just free free form for 10 minutes without stopping about that value and
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I'll put some Reflections in there some reflection questions in there to help you think about that so where my life
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lives this value what does that mean when have I VI violated this value and what does it cost me what have I seen in
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my life life of this this with this value what do other what what do I look like to others when I live this value
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all of those kinds of things and you really do a deep dive and kind of marinade yourself and what this value is
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what it means to you why it's important to you then you summarize that into like one paragraph So you read it back over
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you pull out the highlights the key points and summarize it into one paragraph now that might seem like a
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small thing to do it might take 15 minutes in total but in one study for example out of the US they got students
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who were approaching the the first year of University and they asked them to pick a value that they wanted to bring
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to their study so it might be reliability it might be focus it might be um curiosity whatever it is right and
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they com and they asked um them to do this exercise in relation to that uh
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year of study and then they got another group who they asked to write smart goal so everyone knows what smart goals are
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specific measurable achievable and realistic in time frames and um they uh compared the two
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groups at the end of the year how did each group go uh with its study and the
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group that had done this exercise had reflected on their values did 5% better
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at the end of the year so that's not a that's a whole grade difference that's not a bad that's not a bad return on a
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15minute excise sites right and the reason they did better is because they had spent some time actually figuring
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out who they want to be in relation to this task they were able to in little
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moments over the course of the term make slightly better decisions that reflected those values so they maybe when tempted
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to go out on a Friday night they might stay in or when tempted to have the fourth beer on a Friday night they might
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head home or when tempted to lie in bed and Skip election they might be just a
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bit more likely to get up and go and go to go to class and those kind of things and all those little choices informed by
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this time thinking about their values LED it to a 5% increase in their in
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their grade at the end of the year so quite a tangible impacts yeah so if it's something if this feels like it's
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something you might want to do sit down some time in the next we while and as you're looking toward the challenges
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challenges in front of you wherever they're coming from work home romantic Financial whatever and set your own
28:30
intentions and see see what might make sense for you yeah
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cool and it's all about these little small steps so one of the one of the
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themes throughout these sessions these lunchtime sessions over the next couple of weeks will be uh making small steps
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we're not after big hey audacious goals we're after doing little things and making little changes that add up over
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time and so now I'm going to introduce a little tool that helps you do that right
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plan for those little changes um and so the this is a short video from a guy called Russ Harris and
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I'll give a reference to some of his stuff later on in the session but I'll just to introduce this idea of this tool
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that you might use for navigating challenges or difficult periods in your life um I'm going to show you a short
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video
29:31
[Music] all day long humans do
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things even if it's just sleeping now some things we do move us
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towards the sort of life we want when we're behaving like the sort of person we want to be doing things that make
29:52
life richer full and more meaningful we can call these towards moves now other things we do move us
30:00
away from the life we want to live when we're acting ineffectively behaving
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unlike the sort of person we want to be doing things that tend to make life worse in the long term we can call these
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away moves now when things are going well when life is giving us what we want it's
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pretty easy for us to choose towards moves to act effectively doing stuff that makes life richer and more
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meaningful but unfortunately life just isn't that easy most of the time and it
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doesn't give us what we want for very long so as we go about our day all sorts
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of difficult situations and difficult thoughts and feelings will arise we may
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experience emotions such as worry we may catastrophize predict the worst we may
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have thoughts popping up that I'm not good enough I'm a loser I'm a failure life sucks it's all too
30:55
hard now unfortunately we easily get hooked by those difficult thoughts and
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feelings and almost every psychological problem from Stress and Anxiety to
31:08
depression and addiction boils down to this basic process we get hooked by
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difficult thoughts and feelings and we do away moves however there are times when most
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of us are able to unhook from these difficult thoughts and feelings and choose towards moves instead and the
31:28
better we get at doing this the better life gets so that's what this approach
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is all about we're going to bring in some helpers to help you get a lot
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better at choosing towards moves as a first step we're going to help you
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identify your values who you care about what matters to you what sort of person
31:51
you want to be and use those values to guide and Inspire and motivate at you to
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do more towards moves and we're also going to develop unhooking skills so you
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can get a lot better and a lot faster at unhooking yourself from all those
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difficult thoughts feelings emotions and memories the more we develop our ability
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to unhook and choose those towards moves that really matter deep in our heart the
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greater our quality of life the greater our health happiness and well-being
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great so that's sort of foreshadows some of the some of the um content we're
32:37
going to discuss over the next couple of weeks as well right last week we talked about dealing with some worry and stuff
32:43
like that and we're going to um touch on some of those other skills that can help us unhook and step back from those
32:49
unhelpful patterns but there Russ talked about the choice point right noticing
32:54
this moment when we can get pulled into things things that are unhelpful things that are move us away from the things
33:01
that matter to us and how we can choose at that moment to to move towards with
33:08
things now um Russ has very helpfully put together a little worksheet or a little one page here where you can come
33:14
up with a plan so that's what I thought we might do for a little for the next five or so minutes is work through um Co
33:21
using that choice point to come up with a bit of a plan for moments that work for us right so so what I want you to do
33:29
is just think about as you sit there for a moment think about when is a small but
33:36
difficult moment coming up for you when you might want to live your values right
33:41
so don't make it like a 10 out of 10 we're not after a real stressful high stakes one I'm after like a little five
33:48
out of 10 you know something that can be a bit tricky it's not overwhelming though so for me and the example we'll
33:54
see later for me I was just thinking this morning uh you know I'm going home tonight from work and uh Friday night is
34:02
takeaway night in the coy household but my two children refuse to have shared
34:07
opinions about what is the best form of takeaway so almost every Friday we have a standoff whether it's fish and chips
34:14
or pizza and so um it gets stressful they squabble they start and then I
34:19
notice that and I start to kick off so or I get frustrated and I notice myself wanting to sometimes do away moves so
34:27
that's an example of the kind I want you to pick one for you what's a small little moment coming up for you where
34:34
you would like to be able to practice living your values and come up with a bit of a plan
34:41
for living your values everyone clear is that making
34:46
sense cool okay sweet
34:54
is so um again now I'll put um a copy of
34:59
this in the uh chat later on um but uh let's just talk it through right so this
35:06
is Russ Harris's Choice point so if we use that example that I just gave and you can do this perhaps even on a bit of
35:12
paper in front of you one of the great things about the choice point is you're only a couple of hours away from having a plan so pick the challenging situation
35:20
and just write a little bit about kind of sitting the scene right here is the situation here's what here's what what
35:28
the context that I walk into that I know can trip me up sometimes so for me it's
35:33
coming home finding a kid squabbling about some random issue now what I
35:40
know is that uh I get grumpy and I have
35:45
unkind thoughts about my kids why can't they be more grateful why can't they just get along why is this such a big deal why do
35:53
we have this drama every time etc etc all those thoughts come kind of crowd in
35:58
right and they start to and I can feel myself getting frustrated and the urge to kind of do things that don't reflect
36:05
who I want to be as a dad so things like that might be I growl at the kids um
36:12
which might work in the short term like it might stop the squabbling but it tends to make things worse in the long
36:18
term right it's a buzz kill for the evening it gets in the way of them kind of telling me about their week and all
36:23
that kind of stuff it doesn't it's not the kind of approachable friendly warm and cuddly dad that I try I'm trying to
36:30
be so what I do is I think about well what are the values that I want to bring to being a dad and for me it's like
36:38
being patient right being patient and being warm and approachable for me I
36:43
think that's really that's really important for me for who I am as a dad uh and who I want to be anyway and so I
36:50
have to think make beig explicit to myself about that and then I come up with a plan for what I'm going to do to
36:57
be that Dad in tricky moments uh and so one of the and this is an idea I actually got from a client is uh I'm
37:05
going to go home tonight and I'm going to start a Nerf fight because there there is no way my kids can stay grumpy
37:14
if they're ganging up on me at a Nerf fight a Nerf War uh and then also now it's a great way of Shifting energy and
37:20
so then once we've done that uh we've had a bit of fun and we've set the tone for kind of enjoying one another then
37:27
then we can sit down and have a conversation about okay let's decide how we're going to do takeaways tonight once the energy and the tension have
37:33
disapparated all right so here's what I would like you to do I'm going to give you um um 30 minute 30 seconds a minute
37:43
or so just to kind of come up with your own little plan so for yourself uh for your scenario the thing you want to do
37:49
just a bit better you want to live your values just a bit better draw that do take a moment just to just to put in a
37:56
few um a few points in each of those down in front of you so what shows up for you on
38:02
the left what you what you notice the thoughts and feelings are what what you tend to do what
38:11
actions follow those thoughts and feelings whether they serve you or not
38:16
whether they're consistent with your values or not put those down Sometimes some shame or some guilt
38:23
or whatever we sh there as well and then have a think of about okay in that moment what value is important
38:30
to you whatever it is it might be compassion it might be focus it might be
38:36
courage it might be connection whatever it is and then think about what are you
38:43
going to do with your hands and your feet and your energy and your attention
38:49
what are you going to do differently to to to live and work and
38:54
be in the direction of your values you know what are you going what is it going to look like to live that value in that
39:03
moment cool okay and now I'd encourage you to take
39:10
that home and give it a go or wherever it is that you're planning on doing it go forth and give it a punch now no plan
39:16
lasts um uh past contact with the Enemy so who knows how this will go with my
39:21
kids and uh who knows how your plan will go but and I no this from having talked
39:27
to a lot of people and working through this with a lot of people doing little things coming up with little plans like
39:33
this won't work every time but it might work some of the time for some people for some problems and sometimes that's
39:40
enough to make a difference yeah cool okay so we're coming up on the end of
39:46
our time so we've talked about a few things today I've talked about why having purpose and meaning and values
39:52
are important makes for better physical health better Mental Health wealth and
39:58
actually richer Fuller lives you know stronger connections with the people around you we've talked a bit about how
40:03
to tell the difference between values and goals values are qualities of action
40:09
they're principles that guide our actions across a range of contexts potentially whereas goals are concrete
40:17
markers which are important sometimes and useful sometimes and and and we
40:23
value them a lot or we they're very important to us in the Western World in particular however when we can't control our
40:31
environment being fixated on goals can be problematic whereas we can generally
40:37
find a way to live our values even if that is difficult or frustrating or anxiety inducing across a range of
40:44
different contexts talked about how to tell the difference between your values and the values that people of society has put
40:51
kind of given you and sometimes that's just you feel tired and flat when you think about those things right and then
40:57
I've given you a couple of kind of practical things you can go do atttention setting so doing that little personal ethos and a choice Point
41:05
exercise and both of those things again are very googleable so you can you can look into those in more detail and you
41:11
can also check out the values and action survey on the Pennsylvania University website if um if you feel like that is
41:19
something that might be useful to help you get a better sense of your values and what and what might be important to
41:25
you and what might be intrinsically rewarding for you across contexts
41:31
cool um everything I've talked about today is so you can revisit and in these
41:37
resources here so mindfulness and acceptance for Stress Management your local library is likely to have that
41:43
have a copy of that or at least have an e copy of it on their e platform uh the happiness trap and the reality slap are
41:49
both by Russ Harris that guy on the video from before uh and they're really practical little resources to read um if
41:57
you going through a big change or if life has kind of swiped you from the um from the side then the reality slap is a
42:04
good book uh in that Russ Harris talks about his own Journey uh having his his son diagnosed with autism spectrum
42:10
disorder um but it applies to all sorts of different challenges and then the last one the the subtle art of not
42:16
giving a a hoot is um uh a good one if
42:21
uh you like good practical sensible advice and guidance
42:27
uh The Immortal words of Yoda there try not do or do not there is no try so just
42:35
reading stuff doesn't make a difference it's when you actually do things differently try different things
42:41
experiment with different ideas and approaches that is actually when you'll learn and get a better sense of what
42:47
works for you and what doesn't so I'd give you I'd encourage you to give it a punt and be and be
42:53
courageous so that's kind of all the slides I had for you team and kind of all the commentary for today uh we got a
42:59
bit of time so if anyone does want to kind of Chuck some questions in their Q&A then please feel free to do that
43:07
otherwise um uh I'll let you get back to to your day um but thanks very much team
43:14
I appreciate your time keep an eye on the on the Q&A just
43:20
as as I wait as we sit here
43:28
here we
43:33
go oh yeah Frank's just reminded us I'll put some stuff and um we'll put he'll
43:39
put some we'll put some stuff online available um either on the health or both on the health Hub and and um uh on
43:46
internet as well
43:55
cool all the best team close things off there hey look I know this is once again
44:00
I know it's a hard time for folk and I'm hope this has been a little bit helpful uh and
44:06
also um I wish you all the best for your weekend and and don't forget to enjoy all those domains of your life right use
44:14
this time to reconnect with Pho use the weekend to do something you love to do for leisure use it to invest in your
44:20
health and your wellbeing uh cool all right folk I'll
44:26
catch you later thanks very much
um just by way of introduction I'm Steve Kearney I'm the chief mental health officer for the nzdf um and uh this is our stress less
0:09
strategise more session today's lunchtime session isn't on values and using those to navigate challenging kind
0:16
of Life circumstances and situations um while we're just waiting for stragglers maybe just do yeah a bit
0:22
of a cons check so in your um in your uh teams bar you'll have a little icon with
0:29
uh some like um hand claps and thumbs up and stuff like that so I just want you
0:35
to kind of hit hit whatever one of those captures where you're at right now as you sit there which one of those is
0:41
closest to kind of how you where you're at and and how you tracking okay so a
0:46
few shocked faces that's cool mostly thumbs up some laughter that's great good start
0:51
promising uh good okay some and some Shock faces sweet so as we go through
0:58
today um I'd encourage use those buttons if uh mostly because it's weird for me
1:03
if I am sitting here talking to myself I'll do that I love the sound of my own voice but um it's easier and more
1:09
engaging and fun for everyone if uh if people kind of get involved so if you want to offer a comment or jump on the
1:15
um emojis then that's then please do that right and I might ask you to do that as we go through a couple of things
1:21
today and then the other thing I'll get you to know about or have a look at is we've got um the Q&A session um uh the
1:29
Q&A option is enabled for this session so if you got any questions if I stop making sense I'm on my third coffee for
1:35
today so I'm about uncaffeinated so um if I stop making sense then please check
1:41
a question in the Q&A and Frank Harkin one of the CPO team is helping me out
1:46
today is my kind of beautiful assistant lovely assistant Frank and he'll be just nudging those across to to my awareness
1:54
um so I'll try and keep one eye on that so if I'm looking this way that's typically what I'm doing I'm trying to
2:00
figure out what the um what the what's going on in the Q&A cool um any kind of questions before
2:08
we get started check those in the Q&A
2:13
now uh okay so I will we'll make the slides available there's a couple of
2:18
slides that might actually be good for you to have a look there's also at the end I'll introduce a bit of a handout and so you can and I'll put a copy of
2:25
that in the in the um Chat thing for this as well so so any of the hard copy
2:31
stuff you'll get a copy of there as we go through cool all righty so let's get
2:37
underway I'm going to share my screen uh so you can see what I've been uh
2:44
thinking and we'll get into it so today's presentation is finding
2:52
your footing and navigating values uh can you give me a thumbs up if you can see my screen can you see my
2:59
screen there we go sweet ass so um thanks very much te thanks all so that's
3:04
what we're here for today we're going to talk about values right and um just to kind of uh welcome everyone here I know
3:13
and want to acknowledge that this is a stressful time for a lot of us across defense both uniform and civilian but
3:18
for many of us civilian Faro um and so I I was sort of just to preface our
3:24
session today I was reminded of some words as a famous psychologist a guy called Martin saligman who introduced
3:30
some of the ideas we're going to talk about today and he wrote a self-help book and in the first sentence of his self-help book was uh there are two
3:37
kinds of self-help books the ones that teach you how to lead a perfect life and the ones who teach you how to live with
3:42
an imperfect one and so uh this this his book and this presentation are very much
3:48
the latter all right there are no Magic Bullets in my experience life does stuff too and throw stuff at you and so uh
3:55
what we're looking for today is to help you to get just to move in the right direction for you
4:03
right and to um help you out in whatever way might be possible and feasible so
4:09
that's what we're going to do today and so in terms of ground rules like I said if you've got any questions check them in the chat or in the Q&A and um Frank
4:16
will nudge them across and put them on my attention if I need if they would if I need to deal with them or address them here and now um otherwise look forward
4:24
to your participation via emojis so my time in defense I've learned that that uh it's good to always
4:31
start with the bottom line up front because sometimes people's attention drifts shock shock horror uh and so the
4:39
bottom line up front for this presentation is nicely captured by this um MTI
4:49
faki right so uh translated that comes to seek the treasure that you value most
4:56
dearly if you bow your head let it be to a lofty m so the idea and one of the key messages
5:02
from will be from today will be in times of trouble it really helps to know what matters to us and how we're going to
5:08
prioritize our time and our and our attention and our energy and our love yep cool so here's what we're going to
5:15
talk about we're going to talk about why having purpose and meaning is important spoiler alert you live longer if you've
5:21
got a clear sense of purpose and meaning how to tell the difference between values and goals and in Western
5:26
communities Western culture we focus very much on objectives and goals but today we're going to focus more on values and I'll talk about what those
5:33
are we're going to talk about the difference between values that you have and the values that the world might have
5:38
kind of told you you should have and and some ideas about how to separate those two for you and we're going to talk
5:44
about some practical things you can do to help live your values and practical things you can do to help clarify your
5:50
values everything I do today or talk about today is googleable and at the end of the session I'll give you a couple of
5:56
kind of if you are the kind of person that likes to kind of read a bit more I'll give you some references you can go to to kind of test ideas and explore
6:03
ideas a bit more cool everything I talk about today is derive from a particular
6:08
approach to mental health and and therapy and well-being called acceptance and commitment therapy or act so if you
6:14
Google acceptance and commitment therapy values for instance you'll get a lot of what we're coming up to up with today or we're going to cover
6:21
today so before we get started would like you to do is on a piece of paper in front of you I'd like you to write down
6:26
three numbers just any three numbers at random between 1 and 100 and I'll just give you
6:34
um 20 seconds just to do that right on a piece of paper in front of you write down three numbers between one and
6:46
100 cool
6:52
okay now what I'd like you to do is next to those three words or beside those three words I just get you to write down
7:00
the word that is on this list so in front of you you should have a rough list of about about 100 uh adjectives or
7:07
descriptives and just write those down whatever three words you picked so you might have picked 73
7:14
organized 85 shy and 37 immature y all
7:21
righty now what I'd like you to do is imagine that it is your 65th birthday
7:27
and all your friends and Faro are gathered around and they are
7:33
um talking about the things that that they treasured and loved and enjoyed
7:39
about you and having you in their life now the things The Impressions that you've left with
7:44
them my question is what if you were remembered as those three things that are on that are written down in front of
7:50
you right some of them might be bad some of them might be neutral some of them might be
7:56
good I'm curious of the three things who who's use the emojis if you're happy with the Emojis give us a thumbs up if
8:02
you're a bit surprised you know or you'd be a bit uncomfortable maybe put the shocked Emoji let's see how let's see
8:08
how we're tracking so what what what did people where did people land with those three some thumbs up some thumbs
8:17
up cool righty so if we the moral of this story
8:25
is if we go through life and we don't make active choices intentional choices about how we want to
8:33
be in the world and the Impressions that we want to live uh leave with the people that matter to us then the universe will
8:39
pick for us life will pick for us and sometimes we won't we won't like or we
8:45
won't they would be other than we would have would have wished so a key kind of message from today is how can you be
8:53
better and more intentional at choosing how you want to be in the world uh
8:59
because that helps with a bunch of stuff if you have a clear sense of who you want to be and how you want to be that
9:04
helps with with a bunch of things so here's what I wanted to do now is go down the list and think about what
9:12
three would I pick if I could pick any three of those are on that list what
9:18
would they be and if there's ones that aren't on the list so for instance um it might be
9:25
um uh courageous right whatever it is but if what are
9:33
three words that at your 65th birthday if the people that were you cared about
9:39
were gathered around and were talking about who you were what would you what would you hope they might say about you
9:46
just write down three words there you might have different words for
9:52
different roles so what would I how would I be as a partner how would I be as a parent how would I be as a leader
9:59
how I be as a human being all right hold on to that thought
10:05
and we will come back to that so values can be helpful for a range of
10:12
reasons and I'll go into some of the research in in in a minute but at a fundamental level all organisms
10:20
including that amoeba on the screen in front of you can do two things they can move away from stuff or they can move
10:28
towards stuff now if we live a life that is dominated
10:33
by things we're moving away from things we don't want to feel things we don't want to have happen if all our choices
10:40
are dominated by what we are avoiding then that gets very stressful our brain
10:46
and body operate differently when we're moving away from stuff and trying to avoid stuff than when we're moving
10:51
towards stuff and engaging in stuff yeah so life a life that includes moves
10:58
toward things include steps towards things that matter to us and tends to be
11:05
more fulfilling and more vital and more and richer that said it's still going to
11:11
include things that are scary sad or frustrating so moving towards your
11:17
values often times will actually lead to a short-term increase in anxiety and
11:24
distress and frustration and sadness right so moving towards with that matter
11:29
to us sometimes lead to an increase in those things more commonly not always but commonly in the short term then that
11:36
dissipates over the long term and so um if you are here to get rid of stress uh
11:44
or to get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings then this kind of this session isn't going to be a good fit for you if
11:50
you are here to figure out okay how do I move towards the things that matter um
11:56
even in stressful times how do I do do things that are reflect who I want to be
12:01
even in stressful times and difficult times that's more what we're going to talk about
12:08
today um yeah so a value is a chosen quality or
12:15
direction of action that is personally meaningful and guides you to how you
12:21
want to be and how you want to live your life yeah so often times in Western
12:27
culture we speak about go so that's the objective I want this career goal I want
12:33
this family goal I want this financial goal all of those you know the target
12:38
the objective values are more about how I want to conduct myself as I move
12:46
through life uh what are the principles that guide my actions as I move through
12:52
life so how I want to be and who I want to be I'll just pause there for a moment
12:58
and just check has anyone got any questions or anything uh they want to am I rambling am I making
13:06
sense me just check out give me a thumbs up te let's check who's actually listening give me a thumbs up if if
13:11
things make sense so far give me a thumbs down or something else if they
13:18
don't cool
13:23
TR awesome okay we'll keep moving
13:29
so values uh kind of have a number of qualities the first is they're chosen by
13:35
you right so a lot of us grow up and perhaps more importantly they're not chosen by our community or the society
13:42
around us and many of us get a lot of messages about how we should be and who we should be from the society around us
13:49
right so in that you know one of my areas are interest is particularly kind of how masculine values can make
13:54
people's lives harder and easier and and a lot of the time uh men are hold to uh
14:00
and indeed some of our wo within the defense Community uh get the message that expressing their emotions is not is
14:08
not acceptable and so they they suppress that and that gets in the way then maybe
14:14
of other aspects and a richer follow life and other aspects of their lives right so a value is chosen by you it's a
14:20
choice that you make for yourself it's meaningful so it's intrinsically connects to what you care about and
14:27
what's intrinsically interesting to you it's Direction giving so it helps you make choices about what you're going to
14:34
do with your energy and your time um it's flexible which means that it can
14:40
apply across different contexts and it can apply across different um areas of
14:46
your life so for instance if I so for me personally one of my core values is learning I love anything that I that
14:53
helps me to learn I and feel like I'm learning and learning more and developing a sense of getting B better
14:59
at something I T that tends to be intrinsically rewarding for me and so you know I can apply that to my role at
15:05
work that also applies to Parenting with my little girls it applies to my relationship and my marriage and how to
15:12
how to kind of feel like I'm learning within that so a good value that stands out for us tends to apply across
15:19
different contexts and different parts of our life it tends to be relatively enduring so commonly a value um will be
15:26
something that has been important to you throughout most of your life might change a little bit as your as your
15:34
priorities change in life so as you acquire a family there some rebalancing of values
15:40
but but still there's this fundamental thing um that is intrinsically important to you and generally they help you
15:47
they're positive so they give you something to move towards in difficult times so for me to draw on that example
15:53
of learning you know even when I go through challenging times when I face setbacks it helps me
15:59
if I go okay I'm going to learn from this you know whatever else happens outcome may have been unwanted outcome
16:04
may have been um unpleasant and it makes it a bit easier it eases the burden if I
16:11
if I know or if I remind myself how can I learn from this does it make sense
16:18
where so there's a ton of research particularly in the last sort of 20 to 30 Years Around values and what role
16:27
they can play in terms of your will being uh so one of the key things is
16:34
that they can reduce burnout right because what values do is they help you decide what you actually care about and
16:39
what you don't what you can offer a suboptimal solution on and what and what you what you really want to get right
16:46
they also remind us to do things that keep us at our best right so in order to
16:52
live with my values I know I need to invest in some part parts of my life so for me for learning
16:59
um it I I know that I have to kind of put aside some time to reflect and to
17:04
read books and things so that that that then makes me better in the future and
17:09
and I'll make that a priority um they helps navigate complexity for the same sort of reason they reduce anxiety
17:16
although they don't get rid of it but they kind of sometimes help balance out anxiety they give us something that
17:22
basically we become willing to endure anxiety to face anxiety to experience
17:27
anxiety because we're doing that in the service of something that is important to us uh they promote curiosity they
17:35
promote connection so we find it easier human beings find it easier to connect with someone who has a clear sense of
17:41
their values often times they don't have to share the same values as us but if someone's got a clear sense of their
17:47
values that we find it easier to predict them or to relate to them and understand
17:52
kind of where they're coming from so it promotes connection that way and it promotes good genuinely speaking values
17:57
communities that have strong values have clear values community members with strong values tend to just have better
18:03
outcomes does that make any sense so far all righty so they are different from goals
18:11
as I've said they how you want to be not what you want to be and so we've come back to this list here and if there's a
18:19
value that matters to you um that's not on there feel free to write it down but we're going to do a bit of experimenting
18:24
now around some things you can do to uh to explore your values a little a little
18:30
more and also to um um uh make them clearer and take action
18:38
in the service of your values there is a trap for young players though sometimes our values can become
18:45
rules so here's an example of in the military community in the uniform Community how a value can become a rule
18:53
that makes it harder for people to seek help with mental health conditions right so the value of selflessness at its best
19:00
is about placing the welfare of others above your own however what that means
19:06
is that people have a rule where I shouldn't seek help for my own problems because my health is not a prior
19:13
priority so if if uh a value if and a key combat indicator for when a value
19:20
has become a rule an inflexible rule is that it has the word should or must in
19:27
it right I should be be this way I must be this way right when those kind of
19:32
rules come into play in our heads they it tends to close options off or restrict our
19:39
perspective so just to kind of caution their track fing players uh if you are not sure about
19:47
what a value what value if there's uh if you want to explore kind of a list of values more just to go back to this list
19:52
um you can go to there's a survey if you're the kind of person who likes to fill out psychologist surveys and get
19:59
get the findings and that kind of feedback there's a survey called the values and action survey that's free
20:05
it's out of Pennsylvania University you you have to create an ID but you can do it for free um on their website and if
20:11
you Google values and action survey Pennsylvania you'll get it and um that's actually a validated really nicely
20:18
structured way of getting an insight into your values and as an aside um it's
20:25
by that guy Martin Salman that I mentioned before who uh who's talked about living with an imperfect
20:31
life uh cool okay so what I'd like to uh
20:36
what we're talk about now is the importance also of having a sense of how
20:42
your values reflect or are lived across different parts of your life sometimes
20:49
when we're under stress when we're under pressure when there's a lot going on in life we NE we focus all our attention on
20:56
one domain one area of our life and we neglect the other parts of our
21:01
lives for many of us I suspect what we tend to do uh in our organization is we
21:07
focus really heavily on work particularly when we're under pressure and we tend to diminish or lose focus on
21:14
Leisure relationships and personal growth the kind of other key areas of um
21:20
of our of our well-being right so what I want you to do is I've got on the slide
21:26
there pick pick one one domain that is important to you right now and what I'd
21:32
actually get you to do is I want you to pick the domain in your life which you feel like maybe you are living your Val
21:39
your least you are least living your values in that domain at the moment so
21:44
that that value that you picked out before so it might have been so if I use my example kind of learning and love of
21:52
learning if I was to pick the one where I've neglected that the most lately it would probably be leisure right so I
21:59
applied at work all the time I inflict sort of um relationship advice stuff on
22:05
my wife all the time or books on my wife all the time and I read a bunch of books
22:11
related to kind of personal growth and health as well but I don't I haven't really explored learning learning as
22:17
part of my Leisure World lately so that's what I'd like you to do it's in one of those four areas and what I'll
22:22
get you to do is in the chat or in the Q&A and I'll get Frank just to nudge these over as they come in I just want
22:28
you to put for you which of those four areas have you neglected the most lately
22:33
all right which of those four areas are you farthest from your from your values
22:38
in um does that make sense right so check that in the chat and I'll get
22:44
Frank to nudge them over which are those four things do you feel like you have least lived your
22:50
values and what matters to you
23:01
a look going in
23:10
there Frank will get you to start moving those over if you could personal health and growth is one
23:18
Leisure is one a very common one personal growth and health yeah very common
23:26
right relationships lead cool so for a lot of us right now a lot
23:33
of our attention will be on work and that's appropriate and legitimate right that makes perfect sense what I would
23:39
encourage you to do is to start to think about what are some small things that
23:45
you could do to invest in living your values in some of these other parts of your life that you might have neglected
23:52
and the reason for that is that the evidence suggests that if we put all our eggs in one basket and that basket
23:59
starts to get a bit wobbly then our whole sense of self can get really wobbly whereas if we deliberately and
24:07
intentionally invest in living our values in each of these four areas then if one gets wobbly the other three can
24:14
help us maintain a sense of perspective and a sense of um a sense of self yeah
24:20
so one thing to think about is how can you live your values in some of those other areas of your life over the next
24:27
we while Z Maxin can I get some thumbs up or thumbs down um just to get a sense of
24:34
where people are sitting with
24:39
it cool all right so we'll move
24:47
on so one here we move now into some of the Practical things you can do so um
24:53
and again I'll send you the slides and this is the slide you can use if you decide to do this activity so one useful
25:00
exercise that you can do is sit down and set your intentions and create a
25:05
personal ethos as you face whatever challenges are coming coming down the pipeline for you and setting your
25:11
intentions in relation to those challenges so this is based on some research done out of the US looking at
25:18
sort of various um approaches to sort of setting up your values and deepening
25:24
your understanding of your values and the way this works is that you pick a value one might be the one you picked
25:30
before might be one of the ones on the list here that I've provided and you write you sit down with
25:36
a pen and paper or a pad and paper and write just free free form for 10 minutes without stopping about that value and
25:44
I'll put some Reflections in there some reflection questions in there to help you think about that so where my life
25:50
lives this value what does that mean when have I VI violated this value and what does it cost me what have I seen in
25:57
my life life of this this with this value what do other what what do I look like to others when I live this value
26:03
all of those kinds of things and you really do a deep dive and kind of marinade yourself and what this value is
26:11
what it means to you why it's important to you then you summarize that into like one paragraph So you read it back over
26:17
you pull out the highlights the key points and summarize it into one paragraph now that might seem like a
26:23
small thing to do it might take 15 minutes in total but in one study for example out of the US they got students
26:29
who were approaching the the first year of University and they asked them to pick a value that they wanted to bring
26:36
to their study so it might be reliability it might be focus it might be um curiosity whatever it is right and
26:46
they com and they asked um them to do this exercise in relation to that uh
26:52
year of study and then they got another group who they asked to write smart goal so everyone knows what smart goals are
26:59
specific measurable achievable and realistic in time frames and um they uh compared the two
27:08
groups at the end of the year how did each group go uh with its study and the
27:13
group that had done this exercise had reflected on their values did 5% better
27:20
at the end of the year so that's not a that's a whole grade difference that's not a bad that's not a bad return on a
27:27
15minute excise sites right and the reason they did better is because they had spent some time actually figuring
27:33
out who they want to be in relation to this task they were able to in little
27:39
moments over the course of the term make slightly better decisions that reflected those values so they maybe when tempted
27:47
to go out on a Friday night they might stay in or when tempted to have the fourth beer on a Friday night they might
27:53
head home or when tempted to lie in bed and Skip election they might be just a
27:59
bit more likely to get up and go and go to go to class and those kind of things and all those little choices informed by
28:06
this time thinking about their values LED it to a 5% increase in their in
28:11
their grade at the end of the year so quite a tangible impacts yeah so if it's something if this feels like it's
28:17
something you might want to do sit down some time in the next we while and as you're looking toward the challenges
28:22
challenges in front of you wherever they're coming from work home romantic Financial whatever and set your own
28:30
intentions and see see what might make sense for you yeah
28:36
cool and it's all about these little small steps so one of the one of the
28:41
themes throughout these sessions these lunchtime sessions over the next couple of weeks will be uh making small steps
28:48
we're not after big hey audacious goals we're after doing little things and making little changes that add up over
28:55
time and so now I'm going to introduce a little tool that helps you do that right
29:00
plan for those little changes um and so the this is a short video from a guy called Russ Harris and
29:09
I'll give a reference to some of his stuff later on in the session but I'll just to introduce this idea of this tool
29:15
that you might use for navigating challenges or difficult periods in your life um I'm going to show you a short
29:22
video
29:31
[Music] all day long humans do
29:38
things even if it's just sleeping now some things we do move us
29:45
towards the sort of life we want when we're behaving like the sort of person we want to be doing things that make
29:52
life richer full and more meaningful we can call these towards moves now other things we do move us
30:00
away from the life we want to live when we're acting ineffectively behaving
30:05
unlike the sort of person we want to be doing things that tend to make life worse in the long term we can call these
30:12
away moves now when things are going well when life is giving us what we want it's
30:18
pretty easy for us to choose towards moves to act effectively doing stuff that makes life richer and more
30:26
meaningful but unfortunately life just isn't that easy most of the time and it
30:31
doesn't give us what we want for very long so as we go about our day all sorts
30:36
of difficult situations and difficult thoughts and feelings will arise we may
30:42
experience emotions such as worry we may catastrophize predict the worst we may
30:48
have thoughts popping up that I'm not good enough I'm a loser I'm a failure life sucks it's all too
30:55
hard now unfortunately we easily get hooked by those difficult thoughts and
31:01
feelings and almost every psychological problem from Stress and Anxiety to
31:08
depression and addiction boils down to this basic process we get hooked by
31:14
difficult thoughts and feelings and we do away moves however there are times when most
31:21
of us are able to unhook from these difficult thoughts and feelings and choose towards moves instead and the
31:28
better we get at doing this the better life gets so that's what this approach
31:34
is all about we're going to bring in some helpers to help you get a lot
31:39
better at choosing towards moves as a first step we're going to help you
31:44
identify your values who you care about what matters to you what sort of person
31:51
you want to be and use those values to guide and Inspire and motivate at you to
31:58
do more towards moves and we're also going to develop unhooking skills so you
32:04
can get a lot better and a lot faster at unhooking yourself from all those
32:10
difficult thoughts feelings emotions and memories the more we develop our ability
32:16
to unhook and choose those towards moves that really matter deep in our heart the
32:22
greater our quality of life the greater our health happiness and well-being
32:31
great so that's sort of foreshadows some of the some of the um content we're
32:37
going to discuss over the next couple of weeks as well right last week we talked about dealing with some worry and stuff
32:43
like that and we're going to um touch on some of those other skills that can help us unhook and step back from those
32:49
unhelpful patterns but there Russ talked about the choice point right noticing
32:54
this moment when we can get pulled into things things that are unhelpful things that are move us away from the things
33:01
that matter to us and how we can choose at that moment to to move towards with
33:08
things now um Russ has very helpfully put together a little worksheet or a little one page here where you can come
33:14
up with a plan so that's what I thought we might do for a little for the next five or so minutes is work through um Co
33:21
using that choice point to come up with a bit of a plan for moments that work for us right so so what I want you to do
33:29
is just think about as you sit there for a moment think about when is a small but
33:36
difficult moment coming up for you when you might want to live your values right
33:41
so don't make it like a 10 out of 10 we're not after a real stressful high stakes one I'm after like a little five
33:48
out of 10 you know something that can be a bit tricky it's not overwhelming though so for me and the example we'll
33:54
see later for me I was just thinking this morning uh you know I'm going home tonight from work and uh Friday night is
34:02
takeaway night in the coy household but my two children refuse to have shared
34:07
opinions about what is the best form of takeaway so almost every Friday we have a standoff whether it's fish and chips
34:14
or pizza and so um it gets stressful they squabble they start and then I
34:19
notice that and I start to kick off so or I get frustrated and I notice myself wanting to sometimes do away moves so
34:27
that's an example of the kind I want you to pick one for you what's a small little moment coming up for you where
34:34
you would like to be able to practice living your values and come up with a bit of a plan
34:41
for living your values everyone clear is that making
34:46
sense cool okay sweet
34:54
is so um again now I'll put um a copy of
34:59
this in the uh chat later on um but uh let's just talk it through right so this
35:06
is Russ Harris's Choice point so if we use that example that I just gave and you can do this perhaps even on a bit of
35:12
paper in front of you one of the great things about the choice point is you're only a couple of hours away from having a plan so pick the challenging situation
35:20
and just write a little bit about kind of sitting the scene right here is the situation here's what here's what what
35:28
the context that I walk into that I know can trip me up sometimes so for me it's
35:33
coming home finding a kid squabbling about some random issue now what I
35:40
know is that uh I get grumpy and I have
35:45
unkind thoughts about my kids why can't they be more grateful why can't they just get along why is this such a big deal why do
35:53
we have this drama every time etc etc all those thoughts come kind of crowd in
35:58
right and they start to and I can feel myself getting frustrated and the urge to kind of do things that don't reflect
36:05
who I want to be as a dad so things like that might be I growl at the kids um
36:12
which might work in the short term like it might stop the squabbling but it tends to make things worse in the long
36:18
term right it's a buzz kill for the evening it gets in the way of them kind of telling me about their week and all
36:23
that kind of stuff it doesn't it's not the kind of approachable friendly warm and cuddly dad that I try I'm trying to
36:30
be so what I do is I think about well what are the values that I want to bring to being a dad and for me it's like
36:38
being patient right being patient and being warm and approachable for me I
36:43
think that's really that's really important for me for who I am as a dad uh and who I want to be anyway and so I
36:50
have to think make beig explicit to myself about that and then I come up with a plan for what I'm going to do to
36:57
be that Dad in tricky moments uh and so one of the and this is an idea I actually got from a client is uh I'm
37:05
going to go home tonight and I'm going to start a Nerf fight because there there is no way my kids can stay grumpy
37:14
if they're ganging up on me at a Nerf fight a Nerf War uh and then also now it's a great way of Shifting energy and
37:20
so then once we've done that uh we've had a bit of fun and we've set the tone for kind of enjoying one another then
37:27
then we can sit down and have a conversation about okay let's decide how we're going to do takeaways tonight once the energy and the tension have
37:33
disapparated all right so here's what I would like you to do I'm going to give you um um 30 minute 30 seconds a minute
37:43
or so just to kind of come up with your own little plan so for yourself uh for your scenario the thing you want to do
37:49
just a bit better you want to live your values just a bit better draw that do take a moment just to just to put in a
37:56
few um a few points in each of those down in front of you so what shows up for you on
38:02
the left what you what you notice the thoughts and feelings are what what you tend to do what
38:11
actions follow those thoughts and feelings whether they serve you or not
38:16
whether they're consistent with your values or not put those down Sometimes some shame or some guilt
38:23
or whatever we sh there as well and then have a think of about okay in that moment what value is important
38:30
to you whatever it is it might be compassion it might be focus it might be
38:36
courage it might be connection whatever it is and then think about what are you
38:43
going to do with your hands and your feet and your energy and your attention
38:49
what are you going to do differently to to to live and work and
38:54
be in the direction of your values you know what are you going what is it going to look like to live that value in that
39:03
moment cool okay and now I'd encourage you to take
39:10
that home and give it a go or wherever it is that you're planning on doing it go forth and give it a punch now no plan
39:16
lasts um uh past contact with the Enemy so who knows how this will go with my
39:21
kids and uh who knows how your plan will go but and I no this from having talked
39:27
to a lot of people and working through this with a lot of people doing little things coming up with little plans like
39:33
this won't work every time but it might work some of the time for some people for some problems and sometimes that's
39:40
enough to make a difference yeah cool okay so we're coming up on the end of
39:46
our time so we've talked about a few things today I've talked about why having purpose and meaning and values
39:52
are important makes for better physical health better Mental Health wealth and
39:58
actually richer Fuller lives you know stronger connections with the people around you we've talked a bit about how
40:03
to tell the difference between values and goals values are qualities of action
40:09
they're principles that guide our actions across a range of contexts potentially whereas goals are concrete
40:17
markers which are important sometimes and useful sometimes and and and we
40:23
value them a lot or we they're very important to us in the Western World in particular however when we can't control our
40:31
environment being fixated on goals can be problematic whereas we can generally
40:37
find a way to live our values even if that is difficult or frustrating or anxiety inducing across a range of
40:44
different contexts talked about how to tell the difference between your values and the values that people of society has put
40:51
kind of given you and sometimes that's just you feel tired and flat when you think about those things right and then
40:57
I've given you a couple of kind of practical things you can go do atttention setting so doing that little personal ethos and a choice Point
41:05
exercise and both of those things again are very googleable so you can you can look into those in more detail and you
41:11
can also check out the values and action survey on the Pennsylvania University website if um if you feel like that is
41:19
something that might be useful to help you get a better sense of your values and what and what might be important to
41:25
you and what might be intrinsically rewarding for you across contexts
41:31
cool um everything I've talked about today is so you can revisit and in these
41:37
resources here so mindfulness and acceptance for Stress Management your local library is likely to have that
41:43
have a copy of that or at least have an e copy of it on their e platform uh the happiness trap and the reality slap are
41:49
both by Russ Harris that guy on the video from before uh and they're really practical little resources to read um if
41:57
you going through a big change or if life has kind of swiped you from the um from the side then the reality slap is a
42:04
good book uh in that Russ Harris talks about his own Journey uh having his his son diagnosed with autism spectrum
42:10
disorder um but it applies to all sorts of different challenges and then the last one the the subtle art of not
42:16
giving a a hoot is um uh a good one if
42:21
uh you like good practical sensible advice and guidance
42:27
uh The Immortal words of Yoda there try not do or do not there is no try so just
42:35
reading stuff doesn't make a difference it's when you actually do things differently try different things
42:41
experiment with different ideas and approaches that is actually when you'll learn and get a better sense of what
42:47
works for you and what doesn't so I'd give you I'd encourage you to give it a punt and be and be
42:53
courageous so that's kind of all the slides I had for you team and kind of all the commentary for today uh we got a
42:59
bit of time so if anyone does want to kind of Chuck some questions in their Q&A then please feel free to do that
43:07
otherwise um uh I'll let you get back to to your day um but thanks very much team
43:14
I appreciate your time keep an eye on the on the Q&A just
43:20
as as I wait as we sit here
43:28
here we
43:33
go oh yeah Frank's just reminded us I'll put some stuff and um we'll put he'll
43:39
put some we'll put some stuff online available um either on the health or both on the health Hub and and um uh on
43:46
internet as well
43:55
cool all the best team close things off there hey look I know this is once again
44:00
I know it's a hard time for folk and I'm hope this has been a little bit helpful uh and
44:06
also um I wish you all the best for your weekend and and don't forget to enjoy all those domains of your life right use
44:14
this time to reconnect with Pho use the weekend to do something you love to do for leisure use it to invest in your
44:20
health and your wellbeing uh cool all right folk I'll
44:26
catch you later thanks very much
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Finding your Footing Navigating Change with your Core Valuespdf - 1.5 MBFinding your Footing Navigating Change with your Core Values