True personal growth ultimately will lead to fulfillment, and it's my intention with these podcasts to connect more deeply with you. Thank you for joining me, Anne Corbin, and my guests, and welcome to this episode. When somebody says, hi. How are you? What's your usual answer? Do you see yourself as feeling overwhelmed, stressed and spinning too many plates at once? And do you feel that you are living your life in alignment with your values? These three questions are very definitely connected.
I was listening recently to a talk being given by Deborah Poneman who is an American personal development speaker and trainer, and she was discussing some statistics about the hours that it's considered normal for Americans to work compared with in various other nations. But before I give you the figures, did you know that about 88% of people, not just Americans, are unfulfilled by their work and up to 75% of those actually hate it?
No wonder so many see life as something that they have to get through rather than enjoy. And, oh, the crazy cost of living at the moment isn't helping, but I won't be getting sidetracked today by, all that I could say on that subject. Consider this, if you work a 9 to 5 day with a lunch break, that's 35 hours per week or 16 180 hours per year, assuming that you have 4 weeks off, allowing for public holidays and 2 weeks annual leave.
It does not take account of overtime, and it could be that your employment has more generous annual leave. This is just a frame of reference. Okay? 16 180 hours is a normal full year's work. Of course, if you are self employed, that is an entrepreneur, unless you've really cracked the code, you're probably working much longer hours, especially in the early days. And chances are that you treat weekends the same as every other day. Not good.
The point of Deborah's talk was that we all need time off. We should not be working 7 days a week. If you rest better, then you're able to work better. Work smarter in other words because you're, you're more on the case. And find time to meditate or make time. This will pay huge dividends and if you're thinking I can't possibly make time for that, then you need meditation more than ever. Now you know the Japanese are noted for their intense work culture?
Well, they're also very protective of their downtime. And Americans work 137 hours per year more than the Japanese. That's very nearly 4 weeks. The Japanese even have a word for death from overwork, and that word is karoshi, death from overwork. Americans apparently have one of the least healthy work cultures. And the British work, 260 hours, that equates to 7 and a half weeks less than the Americans.
But actually, I believe it would be miss misleading to think just in terms of weeks because I would say that the difference is more likely to come from long working days and taking work home particularly to do at weekends. And these days, we're expected to work on holiday. Laptops and holidays do not go together. Now here's the staggering part. Americans are working 499 hours per year, more than the French and some European countries.
And as for the Mediterranean countries with their siesta culture, well, they're probably doing even fewer hours. Deborah commented that if you ask an American how they are, the most common answer is busy, and the second most common answer is tired. Speaking as someone in the British culture, I can tell you that here we're either saying busy or even busy busy. And other common answers are not so bad, shrugging the shoulders, can't complain or even bearing up.
Now bear in mind that your subconscious brain hears every word you say, so each cheerful answer that you give, such as, great, thanks, how are you? Is so much better for your own psyche than, alright, I suppose, Can't wait for the weekend or even the kids are driving me mad. So why not have a standard upbeat answer up your sleeve? You aren't letting the side down by looking on the brighter side and it's better for you, even if you are bending the truth a little. And think body language too.
It makes you feel better if you stand straighter. And if your posture, that is your face and your physique, are both drooping as you reply, then your unconvincing positivity could get challenged. And before you know it, you're heading for one of those poor me conversations because misery loves company. Back to the work ethic, the busy busy and my second opening question, do you feel overwhelmed, stressed out and that there's never enough time?
Most of us feel this way some of the time but if it's all of the time, you need to seek the cause of the imbalance and do something about it. Which leads me right into the third question, would you say you're living life in accordance with your values? It's surprising how very many people don't really understand that question. But it's one of the major keys to living a happy, fulfilled and abundant or prosperous life.
Maybe you're fine with the question, but could you list your top five values in order of importance to you right now? You might well have come across values instruction in the past, especially if you aren't new to personal development but supposing you've done the discovery process, how much of it do you remember? It's another of those massively important life map studies that isn't even mentioned at school.
And it's fair to say the same goes for many uni courses because by then, you are specializing and all your time is spent in research and discussion in your chosen areas and not much else. Been there, done that. Of course, much as I'd like to, I cannot take you through a values examination in a brief podcast. It's a workshop sort of topic. It takes time. But there's more than enough time now to give you an overview, and I hope convince you that it really is worth your while to dig a bit deeper.
A value is simply something that's important to you, and everyone has their own unique set of values. Most parents will put their children or families at the top of the list. For many, physical things spring to mind when I say something you value. But values are aspirational as well. They can be things like convenience, trust, integrity, health, and so on. In other words, these are abstract nouns if you want to talk grammar. And by that, I mean things that can't be touched.
Doctor John Demartini has a free quiz on his website. It takes about half an hour to complete it, so it's very broad brush, but it's a great place to start. He takes you through the process of identifying your values because there are clues in your day to day life. Where do you spend the most money or most of your time for example? It can be very revealing to do that quiz. And, of course, your values will change over time.
It's interesting to reflect as time passes and, your life progresses and your values change. I believe that the site will still be keeping a record for you, so that makes it really convenient and easy to compare your growth. And you can print out the summary and, conclusion of the of the, the quiz results and keep a hard copy for a record if you like filing these things.
Personally, I've come across the values training several times over the past, say, 10 years since I began ramping up my personal development studies. And that free test is very useful, but, well, it gives you a wake up call. And to be honest, I didn't remember the results much beyond the day I did the tests. Probably because when I was introduced to values as a concept, I didn't appreciate how important they are.
John Di Martini is famous for being the values guru, but I was initially taught values by other trainers who just directed us to his site for further information. I haven't studied with him because back then, things were all done in person, and he was very expensive. What I've learned since those early days is that one way you can define values is by separating them into categories, priority values and ways of being values.
And this makes it easier to think them up for yourself and, well, to be aspirational. You can produce lists of what you consider important and then prioritize what's of highest importance, and then you create a hierarchy which is not all that easy. Then you go through a self analysis inquiry and establish whether or not you feel that you're living in alignment with the values. And this is the nub of the problem. Let me give you a typical example.
Suppose health is high on your list, but you're guilty of 1 or more of the following, eating junk food, eating excessive sugar or artificial sweeteners, and remember soft drinks are full of those. You're seldom exercising, you're drinking alcohol, smoking. Well then, do you really value your health? Or maybe honesty is one of the values you listed and yet you feel free to take home pens and other stationery from the office where you work because, well, they don't really pay you enough, do they?
Or maybe you steal their time using the phone in office hours. Because they can afford it. Or supposing you're using your own phone. It's still on their time and maybe you're checking it multiple times per hour to see the situation on social media. Well, this is all theft, so maybe honesty isn't really a value. There's no criticism or judgment here. I'm simply attempting to describe what living in alignment with stated values really involves.
Until you genuinely identify values that matter to you, you cannot assess whether or not you're living in alignment with them. But when you know that something on your list is truly important, then going through the processes that I've mentioned are really useful in alerting you to lifestyle changes that you really need to make. Living in alignment with your values causes a dramatic improvement in your health, your prosperity and in your relationships.
In my top level training we spend a whole month working on values and it has been described as the most transformative part of the entire course. We work on another super useful way of splitting up values as we identify what we describe as towards values and away from values. Towards values are things that you want, such as independence, self respect, a great figure or appearance.
And away from values are the things that you don't want in your life, such as guilt, apathy, despair, judgement and so on. So first we identify them, then we do the hierarchy and finally we dig really deep and work out rules for each of them. If you would like to discuss any of this further do please contact me at awaken.plus and I will be happy to answer your questions. You can set yourself up to win the game of life. Become familiar with the laws of the universe. You have infinite potential.
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