To live a meaningful life, it’s important that you’re aware of the values and the principles that govern your life. Knowing what your values are can help you to make good choices and decisions in life. They can also help you to prioritize competing interests and help you mitigate conflicts in your life. Do you know what your values are and the guiding principles that govern your life? It is worth the effort to take the time to know and understand why your values are important to you. Once you know what they are, as much as possible consciously try to live your values and principles everyday. That really is the challenge for all of us, isn’t it? How can we consciously live our lives according to our values on a daily basis.

Below, I’ve outlined some principles that I believe can be useful in helping you consciously live your values. They are:

1. Human beings have many facets or aspects to our beings. These facets include the spiritual, physical, emotional and mental or intellectual aspects of our beings. If any of these facets are out of alignment, success can be more difficult to achieve. I believe one of the keys in life is learning how to balance all aspects of our humanity. One of the ways that you can learn to lead a balanced life is by ensuring that you have an overarching vision for your life that includes these various facets or areas.

2.Each person has many gifts, talents, skills and abilities. To have a truly meaningful life, we need to learn how to use our gifts and talents to their full potential in order to serve others. One of the most fulfilling aspects of life is for each of us to actualize our potential through the gifts, talents, skills and abilities that we are blessed to have.

3.Find a way to spend time with those that you love everyday and do the things that you enjoy. Each person has people that they love and things or causes that they are passionate about. Doing the things that you enjoy and being with the people you love makes life more meaningful (and enjoyable).

4. Knowing your values and living them are important keys to life. It is important to know what your values are in order to feel fulfilled. If love, health, family, spirituality, financial abundance and service are important to you ensure that you are living your values daily to the best of your ability. If you’re not living according to your values, you can feel disconnected with life.

5.Knowing your priorities helps you keep your focus in life. While it’s important to know what your values are, it’s also paramount to be aware of the competing priorities in your life. There will be many competing priorities between your personal and professional life. Knowing how to prioritize them ensures that you are leading the best life possible. You can achieve your goals and fulfill your dreams according to your personal definition of success, if you learn how to manage your priorities.

6. Learn how to deal with life’s challenges. We all know that life is a beautiful gift. Each one of us have many blessings to be thankful for. It is good to have an attitude of gratitude. As there are beautiful parts of life, there also will be challenges. For the challenges in life that inevitably come our way, having support can make all the difference on how we deal with those challenges. Throughout your life, ensure that you are developing practical, emotional, financial and spiritual support systems that can help you deal with any challenge or issue that arises. Aligning with your spiritual or moral compass can certainly help you when life becomes challenging.

7. Life is ultimately about service to others. It’s wonderful to be successful and ambitious, especially when you’re pursuing goals that are meaningful. We all want good health, loving relationships and abundance in all areas of our lives. Service to others is one of life’s highest callings. Success and abundance is much more meaningful when along life’s journey we can be of service to others along that journey.

Today, take some to time to reflect on your personal values and operating principles. In a future post, I will look at the topic of values in depth. I would love to hear from you. How are you consciously living your values on a daily basis? Is it easy to do or from time to time, do you find it challenging?