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If you spend any time working out, you know it’s important to strengthen your core. This mean the muscles that are around your trunk and your pelvis, and all the way up to your shoulders. Keeping your core strong helps to keep your lower back muscles, hips and abdomen aligned for better balance and stability. You feel better, look better, stand taller when your core is strong. You perform better, not only in sports, but in your activities of daily living. If your core is weak, the way you move your arms, legs and entire body will be affected. Building up your core, will give you more power in all that you do. A strong core is really the underpinning for everything you do physically.
Your core beliefs and values are also the underpinning of who you are and how you act in the world. A coaching colleague who resides in Lebanon, (and who is a lovely person), Dania Dbaibo Darwish, Coach, Counselor, Hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner, of Coaching Your 3 Ps-Personal and Professional Progress, posted something this morning about double standards being all around us. That made me think about the absolute necessity to be strong in our own knowledge of our core beliefs and values, as well as consistent in how we perform and how we present ourselves to the world. Our core values must be aligned with our behavior, in order for us to stand tall, to stay balanced, to feel empowered in a Universe that presents us all-too-often with many challenges, sadness and ethical dilemmas.
Our values and beliefs are what fuel us and guide the choices we make in business and in all aspects of our lives. They affect our business performance and our personal relationships. Not only do we need to know and understand our own core values, but we need to be able to articulate them to others at various times, in addition to demonstrating them. . If we are part of too many life situations where we find conflicts with that which we most respect and honor, our respect for ourselves begins to weaken and ultimately, we lose the respect of others who matter to us.
We form our values as we grow up. Some come from our families of origin and/or from our religious and spiritual ideologies. Some come from our life experiences, education and training. Together they form the core of who we really are. Sometimes, though, when we are caught up in too much drama, when we are too busy struggling to succeed, perhaps when we have excessively bought into the values and beliefs of others, or when our self-esteem isn’t as good as it could be, we lose sight of our own important values. We need to take them out into the sunlight, brush the dust off them, and really examine them and what they mean to us. In doing this, we begin to reflect and to create a mental list of what is truly important.
In fact, why not actually create that list? Sit down and write out five or six of the most important things you hold true and dear, that guide your life, or that you would like to guide your life. Narrow it down even further, if you can, to your top couple of core values. Post this list somewhere prominent and pay attention to it. Look at it daily for a while and form each one into an objective or pledge to yourself. By focusing on these commitments regularly, you will be building them up. You will be strengthening them till they become once again ( or anew) the rock-solid underpinnings for the life you want to lead.
