I have discovered a shortcut to determining my core values and purpose in life and that shortcut was 5 Dynamics. No kidding. Recently I have been reading a lot about goal achievement and how to transform your life into something better, greater, with more meaning and well… more of everything. There is an immense amount of advice in this particular area of self-help and personal growth.

Since I’ve focused on this topic it seems like I’ve read the same advice over and over again with different sentence structures and writing styles. The advice goes as follows… discover your values, your purpose, your function then attach your values to all the action items you need to do to accomplish your desired outcomes. This makes the actions or tasks that you are required to perform to attain your goals much easier to face and do. Overcoming obstacles such as procrastination, fear and television are completely easy to overcome because you have directly tied action to core values. Your everyday activities have much more meaning than an average “to do” list.

I then set out to determine what my “values” were. Values that I’d seen suggested such as “courage” or “integrity” did not speak to me. They seemed overused and a bit medieval. Of course I aspire to be courageous and to have integrity. I see this in movie characters and epic novels. Those words are not uniquely mine. What is that value that will make my heart sing with recognition? What value or word will make me jump from a slump and do anything to experience it?

Luckily I came by a list of values that was the most unusual list I’d ever seen. There were over 200 words to choose from. Words that I never saw on a values list… ever. Words like peace, creativity, grace, connected, privacy, freedom. These were my words. And there were more. I whittled down my list to the thirty or so words that resonated with my heart. Then I saw connections to them. I saw categories and buckets to put the words into. At last I had my values list and all of a sudden I realized it was my 5 Dynamics report. My report revealed many of the values that drive me to perform and excel. Some of them were hidden from me until I took the time to look within myself.

The 5 Dynamics reports that result from taking the assessment talk about how I learn, communicate and how I work. But now, I realize the report also disclosed what I hold dear… what I value. Are my values driving my learning style? Is “how I do things” creating my values? If I changed how I did things then would my values change? The hidden treasure here is that I now know that purpose and values are driving what I do. By becoming clear about what these things are I am able to be more clear about what I do and how I do it. This creates better outcomes and, ideally, out of the self-help section for some time.