Decoding Your
INNER DRIVE

True values are as specific to you as your fingerprint - they are the very essence of you: what you’re drawn to, what you inevitably seek out, what you live for.

They are a kind of internal compass, pointing you toward the activities, people, and places that most fulfill you and away from the situations and people that are likely to feel unfulfilling.

If you think of which activities and relationships truly nourish your innermost being, those are your highest values.

Just as no one else can choose your fingerprints - no parent, teacher, political leader, or religious figure - can define your values. Only you can look into your own mind, heart, and soul and discover what is truly most important to you.

Every human being lives moment by moment, with a set of priorities, a set of values, things that are most important to least important in their life. This set of values determines how they perceive, decide and act in life.

Whatever’s highest on that list of values, highest in priority, the thing that’s truly most important, most meaningful, most inspiring, most fulfilling in their life, they spontaneously, intrinsically are driven to fulfill it. And they see whatever happens along the way as feedback and `on the way` instead of `in the way` and failure. But as you go down the list of values, in the hierarchy values, you tend to procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate in taking action.

Since each of us is unique and has a unique set of priorities or hierarchy of values, what is most important to you may be completely unimportant to someone else or vice versa. Your or their highest values or highest priorities may occur in any of the seven areas of life.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Your true values arise from and are therefore determined by your conscious or unconscious voids (what you perceive as most missing in your life). Your empty feeling desires to be fulfilled.

What you perceive as most missing (void) in your life therefore becomes what you perceive as most important (value).

Your underlying private voids drive your overlying public values. Fulfillment means filling full your perceptually empty voids.

Contentment means filling your mental sphere of awareness with content. What is important to you is what you want to import into your sphere of awareness and influence. In all of us there exist voids, mysteries or unknowns that occur in the seven primary areas of life – spiritual, mental, vocational, financial, familial, social and physical.

- To some fulfilling their spiritual mission is most important.
- To others expanding their mental faculties and education is most important.
- To others fulfilling their career and achieving success in business is most important.
- To others generating and accumulating financial wealth is most important.
- To others becoming married and developing a stable family is most important.
- To others contributing to society and becoming a leader is most important.
- To still others keeping fit, handsome or beautiful and maintaining health is most important.

Your values are basically things you perceive are missing that you want to fill. As Aristotle said, your emptiness drives your fulfillment. Your void drives your value. What is missing drives what is important.

Whatever is intermediate between what is high and low on your list of values or hierarchy of values act as means to an end but not the end in mind.

All other values below the highest value could be considered means to the end in mind, sometimes considered extrinsic values supporting the intrinsic most value or chief aim.

Whatever is lower on your list of values is where you require motivation from without to get you to do it because it is less important. It is where you procrastinate, hesitate and frustrate. It is where you are undisciplined, unreliable and scattered. It is where you have your greatest chaos, disorder and disorganization.

Whatever is highest on your values you are intrinsically driven from within because it is most important to you. It’s where you’re most disciplined, reliable and focused, it’s where you’re most adaptable and resilient. It’s where you have the greatest order and organization. It’s your most authentic, inspired self.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

There are 3 things you have control over in your life: your PERCEPTIONS, DECISIONS, and ACTIONS.

You have the power to see how everything in your life is helping you fulfill what’s deeply meaningful to you.

Taking command of your perceptions and linking whatever happens in your life to what you value most and prioritizing your actions according to your highest values will lead you to expand your self and life mastery.

Mastering your life begins with taking command of your PERCEPTIONS, DECISIONS, and ACTIONS.

If you can manage your perceptions, make prioritized decisions and act on them, you can master the power of your mind to live a meaningful and purposeful life.

Anything you perceive as supporting your higher values you label as “good, or terrific”. It elates you and warms you up.

Anything you perceive as challenging your higher values you label as “bad, or terrible”. It depresses you and cools you down.

Your current decisions are based upon every past experience that you labeled as being 'positive and supportive to' or 'negative and challenging to' your highest values, all of which remain 'stored' in what some psychologists have called your subconscious mind in the form of seeking impulses and avoiding instincts.

You fulfill a void and value through either a sensory perception or a motor action.

If you’re like most people, when asked what your values are, you might find yourself listing abstract qualities such as: honesty, integrity, trust. Or perhaps you’ll refer to a set of religious beliefs, a patriotic ideal, or a code of morality.

These are probably not really your own personal values. Rather, they’re what I call social idealisms: socially acceptable ways of thinking and behaving.

Social idealisms sound nice. But they don’t necessarily reflect the true driving force that shapes your perceptions, decisions, actions, and feelings.

You might genuinely believe that you’re inspired by these ideals. But they are more likely to reflect your ideas of how you think you should, ought to, or have to behave - not what you truly value most.

Whatever your set of values are, they will also dictate and generate your private morals and public ethics.

Anything you perceive as supporting your higher values you’ll open up to and label it `good`.

Anything you perceive as challenging your higher values you’ll shut down to and label it `bad`.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Since there appears to be more than one thing missing in your life at any one time (voids) there is more than one thing important to your life at any one time (values). Because not all things have the same relevance and/or are not of the same value, a hierarchy is formed.

This hierarchy determines your set of priorities or hierarchy of values.

In other words, the hierarchy of your voids determines the hierarchy of your values. The hierarchy of your values determine how you perceive (what you selectively attend to), what decisions you make and how you act (what you selectively intend) in your world and therefore determine your transient destiny.

Since your values change over time your destiny therefore changes over time. The summation of your series of destinies determines your evolving life journey.

Your ultimate or relatively unchanging core values dictate your infinite journey the most. Your transient, changing, crusted hierarchy of values dictates your series of transient finite destinies.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

The more important a value is, the higher it will be on your hierarchy of values list and the more discipline, reliability, order and organization you will have associated with it (steadied, focused – attention surplus order).

The less important a value is, the lower it will be on your hierarchy of values list and the more indiscipline, unreliability, disorder and disorganization you will have associated with it (unsteadied, scattered – attention deficit disorder).

When something is low on your values list you will procrastinate, hesitate and frustrate doing it.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Imperative language is a key indicator as to whether you’re truly living congruently with what you value most or not.

Pay close attention to the words you’re using on a daily basis.

Anytime you find yourself using imperative language such as 'shoulds', 'ought to's', 'have to's', 'got to's', 'need to's' - it's feedback letting you know you’ve injected the values of some outside authority and you’re now going against your own values trying to fit in with theirs.

It means you’re not doing something inspired and intrinsic.

It’s an external force pushing you and motivating you to do something you don’t actually want to do.

This is where you disengage, and this energy saps your vitality.

Your true individual values are demonstrated by the indicative language 'choose to', 'love to', 'inspired to'.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

You identify yourself by your highest value.

If you have young children and your highest value is your children, you will call yourself a mother or father when asked who you are. If you have businesses and your highest value is business, you will call yourself a business entrepreneur when asked who you are.

If you are a young teenager and your highest value is playing baseball, you will call or identify yourself a baseball player when asked who you are.

Whatever is highest on your list of values is your identity.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

People often say, “I’ve got to find my passion” or “I’m looking for work or a relationship that I can be passionate about.”

As a result, many have come to believe that the secret to an inspired life is passion. “Passion,” however, is not a synonym for our highest values.

“Passion” literally means “suffering.”

It refers not to our most inspired or higher natures, but to our animal selves, the ungoverned, out-of-control emotions that often drive us toward immediate gratification, addiction, and other states that are by definition not aligned with our highest values.

Passion often drives us to seek a kind of perpetual bliss that is unobtainable even as we strive to avoid unhappiness, challenges, discomfort, or suffering, which are ultimately unavoidable.

So if you choose to live by your passion, you are not living according to your highest values. You are simply following the impulses and instincts of your animal nature, manifesting lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, and addiction — “passions” that can become significant obstacles to leading a fulfilled and inspired life.

Indeed, when people live according to their lower values — when they follow other people’s values or subordinate themselves to social idealisms — they often seek immediate gratification, passion, or some other type of addictive pleasure. Instead of starting on the long, rewarding journey of inner fulfillment of their highest values, they seek instant gains and outer pleasures.

Rather than being driven by passion, truly fulfilled human beings will follow their mission, inspired by their highest values and most integrated being.

Just as your values are completely individual and unique to you, so is your mission the expression of your own unique contribution to the world.

Discovering this mission — the contribution that only you can make — is the key to a life that can be meaningful beyond your wildest dreams.

Whatever is highest on your list of values, the ancient Greeks called the ‘Telos’, or the ‘end in mind’. The more recent Napoleon Hill called your highest value ‘your chief aim in life’.

Whatever is highest on your list of values you are inspired from within to fulfill. Nobody has to get you up in the morning to get you to act upon your chief aim. This highest telos is sometimes called, your calling.

The study of this highest value the Greeks called teleology, which is ‘the study of meaning and purpose’. You are therefore teleological and are living ultimately according to your Telos or highest value, and are living purposely.

You are living with what Eastern mystics call dharma and not karma. You are living inspired, not ‘despired’. You are living fulfilled instead of unfulfilled.

Your purpose is the most efficient and effective pathway to fulfill your greatest amount of voids with the greatest amount of value. Therefore your highest value is your present life purpose or mission.

Whatever is highest on your list of values is where you are most disciplined, reliable, and focused. It is where you are most ordered and organized, and where you display the greatest degree of mental attention, retention, and intention.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Whatever is highest on your list of values is also something that you will endure and even embrace the balance of pain or pleasure in its pursuit equally.

Things that are highest on your list of values you will do whatever it takes to fulfill, regardless of outer challenges or circumstances.

And since whatever is highest on your list of values is your purpose, you will not let anything stop you from fulfilling it.

You will persevere toward its fulfillment. Nothing will stop you from your highest value.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

The executive center or prefrontal cortex makes up approximately 30% of your brain, 11% of a chimpanzee’s brain, 7% of a dog’s brain, 3% of a cat’s brain and 1% of a mouse’s brain.

It is the most evolved part of the brain.

It allows you to focus, to have foresight, to organize, to plan, to be purposeful, to set goals, to time manage, and to control your impulses and instincts.

It continues to develop beyond puberty.

When you live according to your highest values or top priorities, blood, glucose, and oxygen goes into your forebrain, which is the executive center of your brain.

So, any time you fill your day with the highest priority actions and do what is most important, meaningful and inspiring in your life, you wake up the part of your brain that is involved in inspired vision, strategic planning, objectivity, execution of plans, and self-governance.

This is also when you tend to feel the most fulfilled, grateful and able to handle anything.

When you perceive that you’re living by your lower values, you tend to shut down your higher executive function and activate the lower, more primitive, fundamental functions of your brain.

This shuts down your foresight and instead opens up polarized perceptions of hindsight which lead to increased volatility of emotions and ultimately frustration.

When you attempt to live in your lower values, you’ll lower your self worth, your inspiration and enthusiasm. You’ll be less adaptable and less resilient.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Anytime you’re attempting to live by somebody else’s value, you’re going to lose your identity and you’re going to self-depreciate.

You’re designed to self-depreciate anytime you’re living by anything other than your highest values.

Whenever you set goals according to your highest values, you tend to be more objective and more resiliently balanced or neutral.

When you set goals in your highest values, you’re likely to be more centered in your true self-worth which will tend to awaken a spontaneous, intrinsic drive to expand your empowerment.

When you truly value yourself, the world values you.

Remember, the magnificence of who you are (your highest values) far exceeds any fantasy set of values you could be attempting to impose upon yourself.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Isn’t it interesting that so many people subordinate themselves to great leaders - political, religious, and artistic leaders - and yet, the great leaders achieved their influence precisely by not subordinating themselves and trying to live according to somebody else's values?

Great leaders refuse to placate the social norm or to remain stuck in stagnant traditions or old paradigms. Great leaders are authentically living according to their highest values.

They embrace the challenge of giving birth to new original ideas and new visions by living in their highest values, and thus ultimately succeed in making significant and novel contributions to the world.

You can do exactly the same thing if you choose.

You can resemble the great leaders who have left their mark on history. You can draw on your truest self - as expressed by your highest value - to make a great contribution to the world.

Whenever you set goals and intentions that are congruent with your highest values you will walk your talk.

You’ll be spontaneously inspired to solve problems and awaken your greatest potential as a human being.

When you set goals that are congruent, you’ll be more likely to achieve them and you will awaken your natural inborn leader and generate certainty in your actions.

You will awaken a belief in yourself that you know what to do, who you are and that you can.

You will become affirmative towards the universe and feel that the universe is working in your favor.

As Albert Einstein emphasized, his contempt for authority made him one.

You are not here to live in the shadows of anyone, only to stand upon the shoulders of the greats.

Each man or woman’s power comes from their ability to understand and fulfill their own highest values and to shape their lives accordingly.

With every new accomplishment you’ll create an internal drive to expand yourself and your ambitions even further onto the great deep and beyond.

You expand or radiate outward more than contract and gravitate inward.

So your time and space horizons will naturally expand when you set goals and intentions that are congruent or aligned with your highest value.

The magnitude of space and time within your innermost dominant thought determines the level of conscious evolution you have obtained.

And the magnitude of space and time will continue to expand with every new congruent objective.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

The way to achieve fulfillment in all areas of life: mental, vocation, financial, familial, social, physical, and your inspired spiritual quest, is to align your goals and your highest values.

This might sound simple — because it is simple.

In all my courses I show you how to use this process to enable you to empower all seven core areas of your life.

Most people are living lives of quiet desperation instead of the amazing lives of inspiration that is their birthright.

No matter who you are or what goals you have, understanding the application of values can help you create an extraordinary life that inspires and fulfills you every day.

When you set goals and intentions according to your highest values you have the highest probability of achieving what you intend and would love.

Whatever is highest on your list of values will be where you are most disciplined, reliable and focused.

Achieving is a science. Once you know what is truly most important to you it is simply targeting your actions onto the path of fulfilling it.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

If you’re not filling the needs or higher values of the individuals that you’re selling to – customers, clients or students – there will be no business.

If you narcissistically project your values onto your clients and don't meet their needs, eventually the feedback is likely to let you know that it’s not working.

If you altruistically sacrifice your needs to try to fill their highest values, your profit margins will tend to go down as a result. So, in order to make a fair exchange that is sustainable, you need to have equity.

If you’re not meeting people's needs (their highest values) there’s no demand.

When you run a business, the hierarchy of your values as a leader will influence all the way down the line, including anyone you hire.

Individuals don’t tend to go to work for the sake of a company, but instead they go to fulfill what they value most. If they feel that their job duties are helping them fulfill what they value most, they are likely to be engaged, inspired, productive, innovative, creative, love going to work, have gratitude for their job, love what they do, and be inspired by the vision.

Learning how to delegate what’s lower on your values to someone who has the task higher on their values frees you up to do the highest priority, most important thing you can do to serve the greatest number of people and produce the most income.

If you can't communicate what YOU value most in terms of what OTHER people (your employees) value most, they’re less likely to be engaged.

It’s for this reason that I suggest that each and every employee of yours goes through the FREE Demartini Value Determination Process on my website. Consider doing the same with the individuals that you hire. Then go through it with them being mindful and cognizant that their highest values are the only thing you can expect them to do.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

You will self-depreciate when you are not living according to your own unique values, and subordinating to outside authorities trying to live in their values.

You’re only sustainable in your own highest values.

If you don't learn to value yourself, don't expect to have wealth. If you don't acknowledge the value of your unique expression of life, the world will keep devaluing it until you do.

Whenever I speak about money to audiences and ask the question ‘How many of you want to be financially independent?’, everyone raises their hand. When I then ask how many of them actually are financially independent, almost no one puts their hand up.

This indicates that a lot of people are devaluing themselves and actually value buying things more than they do saving and putting money into things that generate more money. If you do not have a value on wealth building, you cannot expect financial independence.

Money automatically goes to the person who values it the most.

People who don’t value money keep spending it and make it disappear. So that’s why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The higher the value you place on serving people, becoming fairly rewarded, and building wealth, the more likely you’ll save and invest money and build the fortune that you say you want.

The further away wealth building is from your highest values, the more wealth building and your highest values will conflict with each other.

So if you truly want to build wealth, and wealth is not yet high on your values, your first step is to connect wealth building to your highest values.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

The art of communicating your values in terms of other people’s values is called “caring” when it is applied inside close relationships and “selling” when applied outside.

Anyone you perceive as supporting or living according to your higher values you tend to lift them up and place them on a pedestal and make them a hero or an authority.

You tend to project their values into your life and attempt to live according to their values more than just yours.

This leads you to experiencing internal moral dilemmas and a need for outside motivation to keep you “focused” or going against your own values wherever there is any distinction.

You end up injecting their values into yours and hear yourself using imperatives like “I have got to,” “I should,” “I ought to,” “I am supposed to,” “I need to.” This results in a state of disempowerment.

Anyone you perceive as challenging or not living according to your higher values you tend to lower them down and place them in a pit and make them a villain or a subordinate to you.

You’ll attempt to inject your values into their life and you’ll expect them to live according to your values more than just theirs.

This leads them to experiencing internal moral dilemmas and a need for outside motivation to keep them “focused” or going against their values wherever there is any distinction.

You end up projecting your values onto theirs and hear yourself using imperatives like “You have got to,” “You should,” “You ought to,” “You are supposed to,” “You need to.”

Expecting someone to live outside their highest values is futile and will lead you to frustration which is the source of many of your relationship conflicts.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Once you have identified your unique set of highest values and start living more congruently with what’s most important to you, you’re more likely to live by priority, fill your day with things that are deeply meaningful, and awaken your greatest potential.

People who live by priority (their highest values) tend to achieve more than people who don’t.

When it comes to mastering and empowering all areas of your life, there are seven divisions that I refer to:

1. Spiritual: Your meaningful purpose or inspired mission for your life
2. Mental: Creating innovative ideas that contribute to the world and using your mental capacities to the fullest
3. Vocational: Career success, achievement, service
4. Financial: Financial freedom/independence
5. Familial: Family love and intimacy
6. Social: Social influence and leadership
7. Physical: Health, stamina, strength, and well-being

Any of these seven areas of life that you passively don’t empower will leave you vulnerable to becoming overpowered by more assertive others.

Plus, the more areas of your life you don’t empower, the more likely you are to feel like a victim of your history instead of a master of your destiny; that the world is controlling you; and that you are living by duty and not by design.

In my opinion, that’s not the wisest way to live.

My highest values are researching, writing, traveling, and teaching.

Understanding these values has enabled me to create a life based on these values. I live on a luxury ship that enables me to travel the world even when I’m “at home,” studying the laws of human potential and writing about what I’ve discovered. I also fly around the globe to teach others about what I’ve learned.

Other people have different values.

Rose Kennedy’s highest value was raising a family of leaders.

She spent her days nurturing, educating, and inspiring her children, grooming them for the leadership she envisioned as their birthright.

She would not have found my life fulfilling, any more than I would have been fulfilled by hers.

Yet by understanding her own highest value and shaping her life accordingly, she both found fulfillment and was of profound service to others.

Whenever I meet a parent who tells me that their highest value is caring for their children, I think of Rose Kennedy and the power she found in knowing her highest value.

One of my clients, a respected doctor, whose highest values was healing, learning more about healing, and teaching others to heal, his life faltered when he tried to build wealth and to create a fulfilling life for his family in a way that was disconnected from his highest values.

His life became far more productive and fulfilling when he found a way to link his wealth-creating efforts to his highest values so that he could build wealth and security through healing, learning, and teaching.

Another client’s highest value was dancing. Although she was middle-aged and slightly overweight, she was a graceful woman who simply loved to dance.

When I met her, she felt despair about not finding work that fulfilled her — and she had absolutely no idea that at her age, she could create a life organized around her devotion to dance.

By showing her the power of values, I helped her build an international dance touring business based on the activity that she loved most.

Her enterprise succeeded because it was deeply rooted in her highest values. This in turn enabled her to live her destiny, activate her genius, and create a fulfilling career.

In order to determine your hierarchy of values all you are required to do is look truthfully at exactly what you do within your daily life.

Your daily life demonstrates your true set of values first hand.

Your daily life doesn’t lie.

Literally, in everything you perceive or decide and act upon, your values are being demonstrated.

I have summarized into a simple format, a process, a method, or a way to determine your hierarchy of values or set of priorities. I call the method the Demartini Value Determination™ Process.

It includes thirteen (13) value determinants. These value determinants are reflections of what your actual life demonstrates to be truly important to you. You generally have space, time, energy and money for what is truly important to you at any moment in time.

Your set or hierarchy of values is constantly demonstrated by your life.

You can’t avoid them, nor override them.

Every decision you make is based upon your set of values / priorities.

You are constantly making decisions according to what you think will give you the greatest advantage over disadvantage, greatest reward over risk in each moment.

Everything you sense and see is an opportunity according to your values.

Everything you decide, and everything you act upon is based on your hierarchy of values. When you begin to contemplate and then determine your set of values, it is important to look honestly at what your life truly demonstrates.

To determine your top, highest priority values, contemplate the following value determining questions listed below and then write or fill in the adjacent lines with your three most honest and accurate answers.

Your answers will be based upon what are truly demonstrated to be the most important values in your life.

Your life’s demonstration speaks louder than your assumptions, hopes or idealisms.

Be sure to fill in the lines with what your life truly demonstrates and not what you hope, wish, desire them to be and not what you think or feel your society or family wants them to be.

You are neither good nor bad for your unique set of values. You are simply you. So write what is true about you. What does your life demonstrate as important to you? What do you value?

The more specific your answers, the greater will be your results and the sooner you will be able to take advantage of the power of the values factor.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Below are 5 of the 13 Value Determination Questions. By answering all 13 questions 3 times, you’ll end up with 39 answers that you’ll organize in priority to determine what’s most important to you:

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

Throughout your life your hierarchy of values will change in part or in whole.

What is important to you at one age or stage will be quite different from what will be important to you at another more advanced age or stage of life.

As these priorities or values evolve, so does your life. What you see and act upon changes too.

Your hierarchy of values dictates your destiny. Since you have evolving values you have evolving destinies.

Your series of destinies dictates your life’s journey.

Your life’s journey is a summation of your many evolving destinies.

You can change any behavioral pattern once you know what the person’s highest values are and can demonstrate to them that by taking an alternative course of action they can receive far greater advantages over disadvantages and greater rewards over risks.

It is unwise to ever label an individual as rigid, stubborn, pig-headed or unwilling to change.

It is wiser to discover what is truly most important to them and show them how the changes you recommend will serve their highest values. Once the

advantages, benefits and rewards are sufficiently seen and shown to outweigh, in their minds, the disadvantages, drawbacks and risks, their behavior changes into a new direction.

If you decide you would love to change your hierarchy of values you can do so by intensifying the void on the value and cross referencing benefits with existing values.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

You will think that you are making mistakes when you inwardly judge yourself for your perceptions, decisions and actions made according to your own true highest values when you are comparing them to those values you have injected from the authority you admire.

You will think that others are making mistakes when you inwardly judge them for their perceptions, decisions and actions made according to their own true highest values, when you are comparing them to the values you have projected from yourself to the subordinate you despise.

Whenever you judge your own perceptions, decisions or actions, unconsciously determined by your own hierarchy of values according to the values of those you admire you will judge yourself negatively and become ungrateful to you.

Whenever you judge their perceptions, decisions or actions, unconsciously determined by their own hierarchy of values according to your values you will judge them negatively and become ungrateful to them.

Imbalanced perceptions of others, leads to ungrateful states of mind.

People you infatuate with or resent occupy space and time in your mind and influence your behavior and leave you ungrateful to yourself or them.

By subordinating to the authority of others you automatically decrease the probability of living true to your own highest values. Remember, envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide.

The reason you end up infatuating with others is because you are too humble to admit that what you see in them is already inside you - to the same degree and kind, magnitude and multitude, quantity and quality. You are deflective in your awareness, not reflective, meaning you are not owning in you what you see around you.

As Aristotle shared, the seer, the seeing and the seen are actually the same, but you have not yet awakened your awareness to your true self completely.

You resent others because you are too proud to admit that what you see in them is already inside you - to the same degree and kind and again you are deflective.

As Schopenhauer believed, you become your true and whole self to the degree that you make everyone and everything else yourself. Nothing is ultimately missing in you. You just have not yet awakened to it or recognized it. As Plato believed, all learning is recollection.

Your mind will become clouded by brain noise, which is the accumulation of the injected and projected values and their resultant moral dilemmas.

Your mind will become true and clear only when it is reflective and balanced.

Since you are unique according to your unique set of values, your most original, ingenious, innovative ideas will emerge from your mind only when your mind is balanced and reflective, not deflective.

Leaders emerge out of authentic states.

When the voice and vision on the inside is louder and more powerful than all the opinions of the outside you have begun to master your life.

I would rather have the whole world against me than my own soul.

• 1. What do you fill your personal, intimate, or virtual space with most? ____   ____   ____
• 2. How do you spend your time most? ____   ____   ____
• 3. How you spend your energy and what energizes you most? ____   ____   ____
• 4. How do you spend your money most? ____   ____   ____
• 5. Where are you ordered and organized most? ____   ____   ____
• To access the full set of 13 Value Determination questions click below:

When you try to live incongruently with your highest values and you are not true to yourself and not authentic, the world offers subtle, or in some cases drastic feedback responses to you.

All symptoms in each of the seven areas of your life represent feedback to you to be authentic.

There are certain signs that you can look out for, be aware of, to know if you are trying to live by someone else’s values.

• You hear yourself using imperative language: ‘I should be doing this’, ‘I ought to be doing this’, ‘I am supposed to be doing this’, ‘I need to do this’, ‘I must do this’, ‘I got to do this’, ‘I have to do this’, instead of: ‘I love to do this’, ‘This is what and who I am’, ‘This is what I choose to do’, ‘This is what I dreamed about’. When you are doing something that is high on your values, you don’t say ‘should.’
• You will experience the ABCDEFGHI’s of Negativity. Anytime you have unrealistic expectations on yourself to live outside your own values, you are going to beat yourself up with the resultant ABCDEFGHI’s of negativity.
  
  *ABCDEFGHI's of negativity: Anger and Aggression, Blame and Betrayal, Criticism and Challenge, Despair and Depression, desire to Exit and Escape, Futility and Frustration, Grouchiness and Grief, Hatred and Hurt, Insanity and Irritability

You basically have to make sure that you are congruent with your highest values or you will automatically feel that you are beating yourself up inside.

That beating yourself up inside is actually a gift because it is trying to get you to set authentic goals according to your real highest values.

That is your mind/body trying to help you get authentic and get congruent and set real objectives that match your true highest values.

So these are signs that when you are not living according to our highest values you will feel like you are ‘sabotaging’ and you will feel you can’t stay focused or that you can’t stay disciplined. You may even say to yourself ‘What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do what I say I should do?’ and these kinds of internal imperatives. This language all gives the incongruence away.