How To Make Your Values Matter

by Carmel O' Reilly

What’s Inside this Book

Welcome to my book about how to make your values matter throughout the chapters of your WorkLife story. Here is a preview of what’s inside, along with the main ideas and the meaning behind these.

WorkLife is our life at work, where we spend one third of our lives. It is also the impact our work has on our life outside of work, and the impact our life outside of work has on our work. All areas of our life in and out of work are so intrinsically linked, they cannot be separated, nor do I believe should they. I believe WorkLife needs to be considered holistically.

Your values are your beliefs about what is important to you in your WorkLife. They can change over time. They form the core principles that help guide you through life.

In this book I tell two stories:

1. A WorkLife Change is Needed when Values are Out of Sync: Ted’s story of how he went from Nuclear Research Engineer to Urbanisation Planner, in order to live his WorkLife with passion, purpose and pride.

2. Staying True To You Values When Times Get Tough: Linda’s story of how she had been forced out of work by a set of destructive values, the negative impact this had on her mental wellbeing, and how she needed to ensure this never happened again.

I share the exercises that helped Ted and Linda work through their challenging situations to resolve their dilemmas. I present these as the following assignments for you to work through:

Discover or Rediscover Your WorkLife Values Assignment

This assignment is to help you think about your key values. This greater awareness is valuable for when you consider what type of job role, sector and work environment will suit you best, along with what is important to you in your life outside of work that you need to take into consideration.

Develop a Practice of Continuous Self-Feedback Assignment

This assignment is to help you to continuously strive towards living your WorkLife true to your values. Giving yourself in-the-moment self-feedback will allow you to understand the good and bad reactions you have in different situations, and towards different people. This will enable you to make the best decisions based on what is important to you.

Develop a Practice of Insightful and Effective Self-Questioning Assignment

This assignment is to help you realise the importance of using questions to get to what really matters for you at every stage of your WorkLife, and to then use the information that comes to you through the answers to make that happen.

Staying True to Your Values when Times Get Tough Assignment

This assignment is to help you take an objective standpoint while honouring your values in making the best and right decision for you when faced with a dilemma that is in conflict with your values.

58 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 2, 2020

About the author

Carmel O’ Reilly is the founder of School of WorkLife. She was born and grew up in Ireland, and now lives in Shoreditch, London.

Her work and subsequently her first book, Your WorkLife Your Way, and its companion workbook, focus on helping people live their best WorkLives by managing their learning, development and growth, through effective self-feedback, insightful questions and the ability to shape and tell their unique story.

Her School of WorkLife book series tells WorkLife stories of the obstacles, failures, and successes people encountered in their WorkLife. Each book includes the exercises that helped navigate these situations, which are presented as assignments for readers to work through and adapt to their challenging WorkLife situations.

Her books are designed to help you gain insight and inspiration in your chosen area of WorkLife, and then support you in achieving what is important to you in your WorkLife learning, development and growth. You will learn to take ownership of your strengths and potential, as well as assessing your challenges to determine where you are stuck, to then uncover solutions to move forward.

Her new book, WorkLife Book Club Volume One takes you on a journey through the streets of Shoreditch, East London, as the members share culinary experiences, while discussing WorkLife struggles and successes through the wisdom found in the books they read.

The premise behind the WorkLife Book Club book is that experiences we have in our WorkLife shape our understanding of the world. Stories help communicate truths about human behaviours and relationships, bringing an opportunity for change and development. Books help anchor WorkLife conversations through characters, plots and settings, enabling a range of issues to be worked through.

"My stated mission is to guide learning through reading. I also have a secret mission, which is to draw attention to stories of change and active decision making – people standing up and saying they want to do something different with their WorkLife. I want to highlight stories, books and discussions that focus on in-depth portrayals of subjects inner feelings, thoughts and motivations. While readers will not encounter the exact scenarios they read about, they will be able to use an increasingly finely tuned ability to understand and respond to multiple competing viewpoints." Carmel O' Reilly.

You can connect with Carmel through her website: https://schoolofworklife.com where you can sign up to receive stories that are grounded in the reality of real situations of the ups and downs people experience in their WorkLife. People's incredible stories designed to be helpful, insightful and inspiring. On her website you can also access Carmel's Learning Through Reading series - stories inspired by real WorkLife struggles and successes, presented as case studies for group discussion.