How to determine your values? An exercise which can help you

A big part of my life I was stumbling through it, not really giving a lot of fucks about anything. I wanted to party, meeting girls and nice things like a big TV, a nice appartment etc and of course enough money to support all this.

But in the back of my head I had a differnt view on myself were I was determined to achieve something in my life, beeing succesful and get some meaning into all this.

At a time I felt very down, vulnerable and confused what I really want a friend showed me the following exercise:

Imagine you are at a funeral, all your family members, friends and peers from working are sitting there. The coffin is open and you approach it.

You see yourself in it.

You are not scared or sad about this but you realize you are at your own funeral.

You sit down and decide to watch it for a while.

A family member stands up, steps to the microphone and begins talking about you, they share memories and talking about the qualities you had.

After this a friend does the same and so does a colleague. Even people you never met but admire can talk at your imaginary funeral.

What do you want them to say? How you want to be remembered? What do you can do NOW to become this person? What do you have to do consitently? Do you have to acquire new skills? Or change some bad habits?

Write it all down and reflect on it where you are and where you want to be.

This didnt solve everything at once but it got me going to move again into a more positve direction. I am way more inline and especially aware who I want to be. How I want to react in certain situations with family members,friends and even strangers.

I want to leave you with, what I think is a great quote and was very fitting for my situation a couple of years back