Andreea Niculescu - The Live Your Values Deck: Sort Out, Honor, and Practice What Matters Most to You

Copyright 2021 by Lisa Congdon and Andreea Niculescu.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-7972-0886-2 (epub, mobi)
ISBN 978-1-7972-0612-7 (deck)

Design by Kristen Hewitt.

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

Some people are fortunate enough to have the answers to these questions at their fingertips and to use them to guide every decision in their lives. But what about the rest of us? If we dont know the answers to these questions, how can we make the decisions that are best for us? Because we live in a world with increasingly intense distractions and mental pollution, many of us have lost touch with what really matters to us. We may even feel like were living our lives on autopilot, passively making decisions in the rush of our everyday lives without taking the time to reflect on whats most important.

What really matters to us can be summed up as a set of values. Our values are the underlying principles that we hold as most important. Every action we take, consciously or not, comes from an underlying valueone we likely learned and embody through a combination of things like family experience, culture, role models, and life experience.

Heres the exciting part: Research tells us that when we live a life that is guided by an awareness of what matters most to usotherwise known as our core valueswe exhibit lower stress, more confident decision-making and problem-solving skills, better attention to health, and more willpower to persist at difficult tasks. We have the ability to act more assertively, communicate with more compassion, and make wiser career and work choices; we have a stronger sense of confidence and enhanced relationship intimacy.

Knowledge is power.

Francis Bacon

We all have core values, whether were aware of them or not. Theyre the values that remain with us for most of our lives. While core values can sometimes shift and change over timedepending on our life circumstances and discoveriesfor the most part, they remain stable over the course of our lives.

Once you identify your core values, you may find yourself choosing relationships with others who have complementary values, especially in your primary relationships. Or, depending on your core values, you might shift your daily schedule to include more time for yourself, more time with friends, or more time to exercise your creativity. The result: a life lived in harmony with whats most important to you and a life filled with greater purpose.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values, and follow my own moral compass, then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

Michelle Obama

Were excited to introduce you to Live Your Values, a joyful, deceptively simple, yet effective tool that will help you sort out your core values with the goal of living a happier, more aligned life. Our hope is that as you become familiar with your core values, youll use them as a filter for making decisions about everything, from how you spend your time and your money to who you choose to be in relationships with.

Useful for everyone from ages 12 to 112, Live Your Values will:

• Offer you names and definitions for seventy-three core values, so you can choose the ten that are most important to you. Weve left two cards blank so you can write in two values that are not included in the deck.
• Provide a structure for determining your core values, the ten values that are the most important to you.
• Present you with a snapshot of values that are important to you (but arent the most important), which may also be enlightening!
• Suggest ways to infuse your core values into your daily life, helping you make decisions, guiding your choices, and helping you solve problems when you feel like youre not living in alignment with a particular core value.
• Act as a barometer for how you grow, evolve, and change over time. For example, you might do the sorting activity once a year on your birthday or every five years to see how your relationship with your values has changed or whether your perception of your core values has shifted over time.

In my early forties, I found myself at a personal and professional crossroads. For the first time in my adult life, I felt adrift. Id always been a steady person with a clear path, so the Capricorn in me was unmoored. Every turn I made seemed to only add to the confusion. The self-help books at my favorite bookstore felt daunting and were either too theoretical, not very practical, or super boring. As an immigrant raised in Romania, I felt a cultural truth in my bones, one that caused me to avoid seeking help. Oh, you have a problem? Go out and plow the field, and youll sort it out. Plowing was what Id always done. I was a mess.

A wise friend posed a pivotal question: Have you ever done a personal values exercise? I backed up slowly with a puzzled look and responded, What in the world is a personal values exercise? It sounded so woo-woo. Curious, I did the exercise anyhow. And when I did, I found that it wasnt just simple and revelatory; it was also surprisingly fun. It confirmed the most important things for me and shed light on values Id sometimes fought but that I knew in my heart are at the core of who I am. It illuminated the decisions I needed to make in order to align how I was living my life with what Im made of. After doing the exercise, I was on my way. And then lightning struck: If I could help even one other person illuminate their values, this would be my lifes work. My dream is that no one will reach adulthood without having an easy, compelling way to sort out what matters most and what guides their every decision.

Ill never forget the day I was introduced to the values exercise. I was in my late thirties and working for a nonprofit. The organization was invested in helping its leaders better understand themselves, one another, and the people we worked with, so they gave us the exercise as a tool to that end. At the time, like Andreea, I was at a crossroads. I was feeling increasingly unsatisfied with both my work and my life outside of work. I was a bit lost and didnt know where to channel my angst. When I got to the step of sorting the values cards, it became clear to me that I actually knew far more about what was most important to me than I realized. And after I was finished, I also realized that my life at the time wasnt entirely in alignment with the core values Id identified. It was on that day that I began thinking seriously about what it means to live a purpose- and values-driven life. That values exercise set me on a course to completely change how I showed up in the world. For example, one of my core values is creativity. Another is contribution. As I began the work of diving into what I really wanted to do with my life, I left my job and started my career as an artist. I also committed early in my art career to using my work and my platform to make a positive difference in the world.