To become more productive we must get our priorities straight.

In previous articles I??ve written about a couple of ways to strip away the unimportant clutter from our lives. Things we might think we have to do or should do but often really don??t have to do.

However, when we have started to declutter our lives of the unimportant we must also find what??s important to us.

Therefore it??s essential to find what your values in life are. When you work from your values, when you are aligned with them, your self-esteem goes up. Your energy and motivation goes up. You feel calm and relaxed. You feel great and you become more productive.

And in those advantages of living more congruently with your values lies also one way to finding your values. Which things and activities in your life makes you feel that good? Finding those can lead you to what your values are.

Ask yourself: what are my important values? A couple of examples of values are joy, creativity, security and attractiveness. Write down the 10 most important you can come up with. Then order them in order of importance. Steve Pavlina has an excellent list of 374 values to choose from over at his site.

It??s important to find your values. Not the values from your mom, dad, friends, relatives, personal heroes and your culture. But the values that pop out of that list for you.

When you have found your values, start thinking about how you can better align your life with your values. Maybe you need to focus more on your writing or making your own fly-fishing lures. Maybe you need to spend more time with your friends and/or children and less time at the office. Maybe you can find another position in your company where your values better match the job and thereby makes you more productive and raises your sense of self-esteem.

Another thing about values is that everyone has internal rules. These rules measures when we think we have our values fulfilled. If one value you have is to be successful then your inner rules might determine that you are successful when you have landed that big client or have gotten a 50% pay raise. Or when you are the top company in your line of business.

The problem with the rules is when you have internal rules that tell you that to in order to be successful you have to have made 10 million dollars and live in a castle. Or to feel attractive you have to three cute girls throwing their phone-numbers and themselves at you. It??s not impossible or improbable rules, but they can lead to a lot of frustration.

Take a piece of paper and a pen and try to figure out how you know when your values are fulfilled. Then think about if your rules are beneficial and helpful for you. If they are not, if they limit the quality of your life, then consider changing them.

In one of Tony Robbins seminars there was this one guy who was successful but depressed. He had it all – the money, the house, the great job - but his internal rules told him he wasn??t a success until he had earned a certain number of millions of dollars. This arbitrary number was something that was still somewhere in the future for him. Tony contrasted him to another man in the audience. He was seemingly a lot happier. His rule for feeling successful was simply:

Another day waking up above the ground is a successful day.

And the thing is, just because you set such a “low” rule for feeling like a success doesn??t mean that you lose your motivation. It just means that you feel better about yourself. And that??s a better place to be to become more productive than beating yourself up all the time and feeling like a loser.

To change your inner rules try to keep them in mind. For example, write them out on a piece of paper. Tape the paper to the fridge or beside your bathroom mirror. This will remind you every morning and every night. And your new way of thinking will start to seep into your mind and replace the old one. If you have several rules to change, focus on the most important first.

And remember to re-evaluate your values once in a while. As we move through life we change. And so may our values and their relative importance to one another do too.

為了使生活更加多姿多彩，我們必須了解自己的潛在品質。

    在之前的文章中我已經寫了幾種拚棄生活中瑣碎雜亂事情的方法。譬如那些我們可能認為自己不得不做或應該去做，而事實上我們不須要去做的事情。

     然而，當我們開始理清生活中瑣碎而雜亂的事情時，我們必須認清對我們來說什么是重要的。因此，關鍵點是，發現在生活當中，你的優點是什么。當你賞識自己的潛在品質并在生活中保持這些品質，你的自豪感將與日俱增，你的精力和動力將更加充沛，你會覺得坦然自若，并且你將因生活更加多姿多彩而感覺非常棒。

    而以上這些與自己的內質相協調的生活所帶來的好處，也展現出了一個發現自己潛在品質的方法——哪些事物或行為令你在生活中產生這些良好的感覺呢？找到它們就能夠幫你發現自我的潛在品質。

    捫心自問：什么是我最重要的品質？舉幾個例子，優良品質往往使人快樂，充滿創造性，使人覺得安全，富有魅力。將你能夠想到的優點中最重要的十個寫下來，然后按照重要性將其排列。在史蒂夫.巴甫里納的網站
里有一張極好的列有374個品質的單子可供選擇。

    確定你的內質是很重要的。這些品質不是來自于你父母，朋友，親戚，個人英雄主義或是你的文化所灌輸給你的，而是你自己從上述列表中選出來的。

    當你確定自己的品質后，就開始思考——如何將這些品質更好的融入到你的生活中去。也許你該更多的關注自己的寫作或者是制作自己的蠅釣誘餌；也許你應該花更多的時間和自己的朋友或是孩子相處，而不是老待在辦公室；或許你可以在公司里另謀一個職位，換一份跟你的內質相和諧，一份使你事半功倍，一份能使你感到更加自信的工作。

    此外，有關個人品質的另一個問題是每一個人都有自己的衡量準則。這些標準會衡量我們自己的內質有否完全體現。如果你的一個要求是取得成功，那么當你得到一個大客戶或是工資提高了50％的時候，你的內在標準就會確認這樣的收獲是否就是成功。或者還是當你的公司成為同行領頭羊的時候你才獲得成功。

    然而，對于這些標準所出現的一個問題是：當你把成功的價值標準定義為掙了1000萬，并住進自己的城堡里或是有足夠的魅力吸引三個美女給你電話，并以身相許時。這種“成功”不可能做為衡量的標準，因為它們只會帶給你更多的挫敗。

    拿出紙和筆把你認為可以衡量你是否已經實現了所追求的品質的那些標準寫下來。然后想想這些標準對你是不是有所裨益。如果沒有，并且發現它們的存在降低了你的生活質量，那么考慮更改這些標準。

    在托尼.羅賓斯的討論會上曾有這樣一個人，他是成功的，但是并不快樂。金錢、房子、體面的工作，他都有了，但是他內心的那個衡量標準告訴他只有成為百萬富翁的時候他才算是真正的成功。對于他，這個意想的數字在未來是否能實現還很難說。托尼將他與在會的另一個人比較，這個人看起來很快樂。他的成功的標準很簡單：

    如果明天可以在地上睡醒，那么這一天就是成功的一天。

    這里的關鍵是，并不是因為你確立了一個“低”標準，你就會失去動力。這只是表明了你的自我感覺良好，而這種感覺比起不斷的鞭策自己，并感覺自己失敗來，使你處于更好的狀況，令你事半功倍。

    改變你的衡量準則，并把它記下來。例如：把他們寫在紙上，并貼在冰箱上或是洗澡間的鏡子旁邊。這樣就可以在每天早晚提醒自己。你的新的思路將開始滲透到你的腦海里，并替代舊的思路。如果你有好幾個準則需要更改，請先更改最重要的一個。

    一定要記得，當我們隨著時間而改變時，過一段時間重新審視你的品質。并且我們的品質以及品質之間相關的重要性也要適時調整。