Why doesn’t this feel right anymore?
I worked in an organisation where I started to feel extremely unhappy with the way things were panning out. At first I just put it down to the fairly big changes that had taken place, however it was more than that, something just didn’t feel right anymore.
I started to examine what was going on externally, around me looking to find the answers to what was making me feel so uncomfortable. There had been changes to the focus of my job and I was no longer able to spend most of my time doing what I loved doing - culture change activities, which was how it used to be and was a key part of my role.
However, when I looked inside myself, I realised it was the way in which the changes were introduced that didn’t sit comfortably with me and I wasn’t content or satisfied with the changes to my role. There was a mismatch with the way things were happening and my values. I tried to have conversations to talk about my role but nothing was changing, from there it became clear to me that I needed to leave in order to remain true to my values and therefore myself. From then my values have become my sense checker when things don’t feel right anymore; I go back to them to see what doesn’t ‘fit’.
In our lives we experience many people in various roles, scenarios and places. We all have our very own little belief system, our principles, which guide us through life and remind us of our standards and how we want to be, namely our values!
They are likely to be your measure of whether your life is turning out the way you’d like it to. If the things you do and the way you behave are in tune with your values life will usually be good and you’ll feel a sense of satisfaction and contentment. However when things don’t align to your values things can feel very different and wrong. This can cause unhappiness, as you heard from my experience earlier.
Some people have very clear values and know what they are and these remain at the heart of everything they do, however for some they haven’t really thought about them and some people just don’t have them. Think about yourself, do you have values? Can you articulate them? Do you think you might respond to situations and people differently if you knew what your values are? Would you make different decisions based on what you believe to be important to you?
Here is a great tool from Mind Tools that helps you to think about and define what your values are.