{"id":53,"date":"2011-12-02T00:05:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T06:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allisonwatts.com\/blog\/?p=53"},"modified":"2020-12-24T16:01:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T22:01:30","slug":"dentistry-profession-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allisonwatts.com\/dentistry-profession-passion\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are You Searching For?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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What Are You Searching For?
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by Allison Watts<\/strong><\/span>
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What are you searching for?<\/strong>  Profound, right?  But really, it is.<\/strong>  Here's why: Our minds play tricks on us by answering the question, "What am I searching for?"<\/em> with things like success, happiness, balance, etc. But what do those answers really mean?  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When we get an answer, say success, we need to ask ourselves, "What would that give me?"<\/em> and when we get that answer, we need to ask again, "What would that give me?" <\/em>and keep asking until we come up with what's really underneath.  What we are really seeking is an understanding of our values.  <\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I strongly believe one of the most important components of success is living in alignment with our values. <\/strong> I have done values clarification so many times and maybe you have, too…  I have claimed values others listed thinking "Yeah, that's an important value for me, too."<\/em>  I've come up with my own and tried to live by them.  I have explored them and attempted to discover what was most important to me many different ways and been told many things about values.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I have been told that we are ALWAYS living in alignment with what we really<\/u> value (our money and our time follow what we care about most, even if it's not conscious).  I've also been told that you can live out of alignment with your core values and if you do, it's like torture. I've been told values can change and I've been told that our core values never really change. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I believe how much we value one thing over another may change during different stages of life, but the things we value likely change very little throughout our lives.  I also believe we always live in alignment with what we really value, even if it's unconscious.  I also believe you can live out of alignment with what you say you want and it is miserable.  <\/span><\/span>
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Our values come from several sources<\/strong>, our culture, parental and familial influences, teachers, friends, and other environmental influences such as television, the internet and other media<\/em>.  Most of our values remain at the unconscious level.<\/strong>  We don't spend conscious time deciding if the things we see and hear are valuable to us.  We rarely question most of the values that we live by.  So we are in essence living quite unconsciously….<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These are two questions that now need to be answered: <\/span>
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