This is a self-worth step.

It goes without saying, but I shall say it anyway. You are completely unique. This uniqueness goes deeper than perhaps what you can see and track for yourself like your fingerprint, your appearance, your work experience, what you find funny, who you’re attracted to, where you live and so on.

So let’s go deeper - we’ll be exploring your inner world together today. In this step you’ll not only achieve vibrant clarity, from within you, on the qualities and values you want to embody and live in this world but how to actually apply these in your daily life too. 

This then means that not only are you better equipped to keep comparison at bay, but you’ll always know your next decision, how to spend your time, what to invest your resources in, what’s a ‘no’ and what’s a ‘YES’. Your PPP’s to help stabilise and grow our self-worth, as we move to live congruently with these.

This step is included at this point in the Comparison Free Club process, because you need to root deeply in knowing who you are, and what’s important to you, before we turn focus to being excited and inspired by other people.

What are PPP’s?: Prized Personal Pillars

These are the values that you prize and place importance on, in order to live YOUR version of your truth and, by channelling our focus to our own PPP’s we cut off the oxygen to comparison.

I remember clearly the first time I properly ‘got’ values like, really got it, above and beyond corporate diagrams I’d seen at work… but that didn’t tend to feature anywhere outside those dusty folders.

It was a rainy Saturday in a hotel conference room in Crewe, back in about 2012 and I was on a training day for a coaching course and our tutor said: “when you’re not living according to them - your values - or when they are under threat… you will be in conflict with yourself and at all levels of interactions” 

Whoah! “...you will be in conflict with yourself and at all levels of interactions”. 

Yes they are that important.

They are the things that support your feelings of fulfilment and on which rest your ability to be yourself to full capacity, full expression, full truth! 

Because your Prized Personal Pillars are unique to you and your own motivations, they have nothing to do with what you think you should be like or what might be reasonable and acceptable. Please remove any sense of ‘should’ from this process. You’re allowed to want what you want. You’re allowed to think some things are more important than others, regardless of what other people think is important.

OK let’s get going…

I’ll share my PPP’s here as an example. They change every year or so as indeed I, like we all do, evolve and change: 

RECIPROCITY - for me this means listening to others and being heard in return, equality of exchange, meeting people halfway, give and take, not asking anyone to over-extend for me and not over-extending myself either. It means valuing someone and their contribution and feeling valued and respected in return. It means good boundaries too - i don’t allow people to take more than I am comfortable to give.

In my home life this means everyone playing a part in keeping the house clean and contributing to the smooth running of our family life. It’s not all on me or on any single individual to do everything. E.g. My stepson cooks a couple of night’s a week and walks the dog. I do the shopping and my husband puts everything away. These sound pretty simple, even transactional, but without these agreements and living this pillar, our family dynamic suffers and can even be quite toxic

In my work life, reciprocity is if a client forgets we have a meeting which is booked in both our diaries, they know we will rebook and they also know I’m not going to exhaustive lengths to move my schedule around. Why should other clients suffer because they forgot the session?

LEGACY - Always being conscious of how can I leave the world better than I found it? How can I do my bit to create lasting change, making my ancestors proud. How can I pass on kindness, generosity of thought, words, love and spirit? Also, making a tangible difference in this world to the people and causes that matter most to me.

I attempt and intend to make this part of my daily practice and examples include, connecting people I think can help each other out, giving to charity, creating things that will support people now and in the future - hello Comparison Free Club!

 
QUALITY OF LIFE - having the best I can whether it’s pasta or a place, feeling supported and looked after, not compromising, receiving more and better of the things most valuable to me, not rushing or coasting.

This is a really personal one as, you might know, it wasn’t in the too distant past that my husband and I lost everything, including our house, and we have to move in with my mum and dad. We thought it would take us a couple of months to get back on our feet but that wasn’t the case and it was a good year before we had started to put some sort of foundation down after such a traumatic experience.

I remember clearly stretching out every penny from my job to support us - agonising over the food shopping list to balance the budget - putting nothing in the basket that wasn’t on the list because we just couldn’t afford it. Holidays, nights out with friends and new clothes were all out of the question - we had to make do and stretch what we had. Over time things became tired and tattered and I started to note down the things I would renew or replace first as soon as we could. So our compromise could go down. It didn't need to be a fancy or designer upgrade but I wanted to be able to choose quality and have the best we could afford.

Cut to today and how I live this PPP… Personally, this means making sure I’m as comfortable as possible - having really good quality towels, upgrading the wine I love, cleaning the bathroom until it absolutely sparkles, paying for extra legroom on a flight and things like that.

Professionally, quality today means giving myself the time to concentrate on one major project at a time and do it really well and to the best of my ability. It’s also things like subscribing to the best system and working with the experts that can help things run smoothly and keep quality high.

EASE - the absence of struggle, having silent power and strength, flow, feeling like a dolphin swimming through the water, accepting help, good planning, without complication or unhelpful interference

As I’ve shared above, I know well what it is for life to feel hard, to sometimes feel impossible. That’s why this PPP is so close to my heart. I’m not saying I avoid hard situations, or won’t work hard to get towards my soul goals. This is about looking for simple, effective and uncomplicated ways to live rather than participating in busyness or drama!

Ease in my home life is cancelling commitments that are going to tip the balance of our family dynamic, getting the groceries delivered instead of going to the shop, deciding what our family needs are so we don’t get pulled into other people’s agendas.

When it comes to ease at work, I achieve ease by always staying present with and aware of my priorities for the week. I don’t do or attend anything that will interfere with progress on those things.

How to arrive at your Prized Personal Pillars.

You may not need any prompts to define yours - they may be on the tip of your tongue, clearly known to you and ready to flow out onto your page. If that’s the case then please write yours out now with supporting detail about what the words or phrases really mean to you in your life.

If, however, you’re looking for a starting point to define yours or to get the creative juices flowing, these questions will help:

Consider how you compare yourself… if you were to nourish that part of you, what would you fill it with?

What did you wish you had more of when you were young?

E.g. Peace, attention, clarity, loyalty, creativity, expression... which ones do you prize?

What do admire most in other people?

Think of the traits or things you DO NOT like in the world, or in other people… what are the OPPOSITE traits?

How do you connect with other people’s PPP’s and think “oh yes that one”

An excellent resource to ‘shop’ for the right words that sum up your PPP’s is https://personalvalu.es/personal-values-list

WORKSHEET

Living my PPP’s: A Perfect Day

We’re delving into our creative imagination with this bonus exercise! Grab those PPP’s and hold them tight, as we map out our perfect day that allows you to experience everything that is important to you. For every section, imagine as though you are noting down what you’re doing in the present moment (Think: I am waking up in a beautiful bed and I can hear the ocean outside gently lapping the shore!).

Allow yourself to get immersed into the sounds, locations, smells, feelings and energies as you write out how this day would play out. If it serves you, feel free to map out several days, that allow you to live in alignment with all of your PPP’s.

The prompts for your PPP powered day are:

How do you start your day?

What does your mid morning look like?

Where are you around lunchtime?

What does your afternoon look like?

How are you spending your evening?

How do you wind down at the end of the week?

If you feel that this ‘perfect day’ living aligned with your PPP’s is wildly different from your average day, never fear, you can start to create shifts by taking one aspect of your ‘perfect day’ and starting to incorporate it into your current lifestyle.

Either fill out our editable worksheet, or journal with the prompts on paper, so you aren’t limited for space! Be sure to share what you discovered in this exercise! 

[Please download a copy to edit. Tip! Save to a ‘CORE’ folder on your desktop/save to a CORE folder in your bookmarks]
Feel free to share your completed sheet, or any insights you gained from this exercise, with your fellow members :)

SHARE

What are your key PPPs?
Share with us over in the community using the ‘CORE • 5. PPPs’ topic tag, or search to gather some inspiration!

NEXT STEPS

Move on to find your PIPs and activate inspiration with this powerful tool.