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When Worlds Collide

Oct 112010
 

Last week, I talked about how the uniqueness of our individual values, and explained how if our core truths remain unrecognised or unrealised by others, we can feel frustrated, disappointed or angry. A conflict with your loved one can often be a result of the struggle to align your own set of values with theirs – so clearly, it’s vital that we obtain a clear picture of what’s most important to us, so we can communicate our needs with each other, and make sense of any situation where our values are clashing with another’s.

This week, I’m going to help you figure out your own values, and understand the bedrock of principles that guide you through life – so here’s an exercise for you to do. If it helps, you can do this with a lover or a friend.

Step 1: Write down 5-10 values that are most important in your life. For instance, they might include: partnership, freedom, love, trust, wealth, stability, family, nature etc. Think about how you like to spend your time, what you’re passionate about, what you fill your life with, what you think and talk about, and your goals. There’s a more comprehensive list at the end of this blog, if you need a few more ideas!

Step 2: List those values in order of priority. Then, when you’ve found your top five values, ask yourself what each means for you personally. For instance, when you drill down into the value of ‘partnership’, it might mean ‘stability’, and in turn that might mean ‘trust’. In another example, ‘career’ for you may mean ‘freedom’, or it could also mean ‘prosperity’ or ‘wealth’ or ‘security’. Keep exploring until you instinctively feel that you’ve made it to the core ‘truth’ behind a particular value. Be aware that if you’re struggling to drill down any further into a value’s meaning, it might already be a core value. By now you should have identified the 5 core values that are most important in your life.

Step 3: Take a moment to reflect on how closely you’re living your life in line with your newly discovered core values. Ask yourself “how closely, from 1-10 am I living in alignment with this value?” (with 1 being ‘not at all’ and 10 being ‘completely’). Make note of how closely your life is matching your values, and you’ll gain some insights into the areas of your life that need some extra work to bring you into alignment.

This exercise can be invaluable in giving you greater awareness in problematic areas of your life. For instance, you may disagree over your partner’s decision to go away on their own for a few days, until you realise that it’s not the relationship that’s under threat, but your own core value of trust… and that’s because (for whatever reason) the issue of trust is higher on your radar than it may be on your partner’s.

This insight into the key motivators that drive your actions and behaviours can help you to understand why you (or someone close to you) can sometimes react so strongly to something that can seem unimportant to others.

This kind of knowledge can help us to find new solutions that better support our values, while also helping us get to the root of a problem, instead of struggling to understand a different point of view. What’s even more exciting is the realisation that when we gain greater awareness of our key values, we can immediately recognise why we’re so ‘charged up’, and choose to react in a different way, diffusing any tension, misunderstandings and overreactions before they even begin.

Happy exploring!

In love and light,

Taranga

Values list:

Adventure
Affection

Authenticity

Balance
Beauty

Belonging

Bliss

Challenge

Commitment

Communication

Confidence
Control
Creativity

Dignity
Discipline
Ecstasy

Energy

Education
Excitement

Faith
Family
Fitness

Friends
Freedom
Fulfilment
Forgiveness
Fun
Generosity

God
Growth
Happiness
Health
Hope
Honesty
Humour
Independence
Integrity
Intelligence

Intimacy

Intuition

Joy

Kindness
Knowledge
Love (romantic)

Love (unconditional)

Marriage
Mindfulness

Nature

Optimism

Partnership

Passion

Peace of mind
Pleasure

Popularity

Power
Progress

Prosperity
Reason
Respect

Security
Self-reliance
Sensitivity

Service
Sexuality

Spirituality
Strength
Success
Trust

Truth
Wealth

Winning

Wisdom

 
http://www.victoryag.org/faith.htm

Hidden Agendas

Oct 112010
 

Sitting around a table with friends after dinner the other night, and assisted by a couple of bottles of free-flowing Shiraz, the conversation inevitably turned to sex. Nothing new there, you might say… doesn’t it often?! Well, what most surprised me from this particular debate was the realisation that each of us is hardwired to enjoy sex for all kinds of different reasons.

Long gone are the days when sex was purely about procreation – and even in our more enlightened age, we might still believe we have sex for one basic reason; because it feels good. Yet beneath that truth lies a smorgasbord of erotic possibilities, driven by desires that are uniquely personal and individual, and always evolving.
Here are just a few of the reasons we came up with for why we have sex:

– To connect with another person.
– To give another person pleasure.
– To feel pleasure myself.
– To connect with my inner self.
– To scratch an itch.
– To blow of steam and release tension.
– To feel desired and sexy.
– To feel needed and important.
– To get out of my head and into my body.
– To surrender control.
– To experience a kind of altered state.
– To feel 100% present and in the moment.
– To build intimacy.
– To create a spiritual or mystical connection with a partner.
– To generate and circulate more ‘life-force’ energy.
– As a ‘workout’, to boost endorphins and feel good.
– To celebrate a birthday.
– To say thank you for something
– To ‘escape’ and avoid pain during times of feeling overwhelmed.
– To open up emotionally when feeling blocked.
And last but not least – When trying to have a child!

That’s a surprisingly long list of motivating factors, for such a seemingly universal act. So it’s no surprise that we can often feel that our sexual needs aren’t always being met, especially if we neglect to talk with our partners about our individual values, wants and desires.

When your sex motivators are often very different from those of the person you’re having sex with, it can be challenging to ensure you’re both getting what you need. Our values and needs are shaped by factors like our upbringing, our families, a previous relationship or a life-changing incident – and if those core truths remain unrecognised or unrealised, we can feel frustrated, disappointed or angry. In severe cases, it can even spell the end of a relationship.

So what’s the solution? We must firstly figure out the true nature of our own unique needs and desires, and then share them with our partners, so we can be more aligned and aware in our sex lives.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be offering some tips and guidance to help you discover your authentic sexual self, along with ways to share those truths with you partners. In the meantime, why not have a go at listing some of your own primary sex motivators to help raise your awareness, and shed some light on this often overlooked aspect of our sexual appetites.

In love and light,

Taranga

 

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