The following is a free guide for hosting a single Mastermind session. For more information on Masterminds, please start here. If you’d like to join an upcoming Mastermind, please sign up here.
Date: August 20, 2020
Theme: Living your values
Prompt: What are your explicit and implicit values and how can you live them on a daily basis?
Thought-starters:
- An illustrative list of values: “39 Core Values – And How to Live by Them” by Tchiki Davis in Psychology Today, July 12, 2018
- How morals have changed over the last 100 years: “Changing morals: we’re more compassionate than 100 years ago, but more judgmental too” by Haslam, McGrath, and Wheeler in The Conversation, March 4, 2019
- Resume vs. eulogy virtues: “David Brooks’s Search for Meaning” by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker, May 27, 2015
- Eastern vs. Western thinking: “How East and West Think in Profoundly Different Ways” by David Robson at the BBC, January 19, 2017
- Habit formation and change:
- “How to Start New Habits that Actually Stick” by James Clear at jamesclear.com
- “Habits: How They Form and How to Break Them” an interview with Charles Duhigg at NPR, March 5, 2012
- Commitment devices: “The is the Best way to Stick to your Goals” by Patrik Edblad at patrickedblad.com
- Mission statements:
- “Creating a New Mission Statement” by Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times, January 5, 2015
- “Want to Give your Family Value and Purpose? Write a Mission Statement” by Bruce Feiler in The Atlantic, February 25, 2013
Pre-work: Please take some time to reflect on the following:
- Success: Think of a value that you explicitly identified as important to you and then successfully integrated into your life
- Failure: Think about a value that you explicitly identified as important to you but have been unable to integrate into your life in a meaningful way
- Implied: Reflect on the values that you implicitly hold and the way they inform your behavior
For your successes, why and how were you able to embody them? Why not for your failures? And for the values that are implied, how do you feel about them now that you’ve brought them into your consciousness?
Facilitation questions
- What are some of things that you value?
- What are some implicit values that you realized? How does that make you feel?
- In terms of living your values:
- What are examples of successes?
- What was a time that you realized something you value, made an effort to live that value, and were ultimately able to do?
- Why were you able to succeed?
- What are examples of failures? Why did you fail?
- What are examples of successes?
- What did you think about the approaches to habit formation and commitment devices?
- What might you commit to doing in the future and how would you ensure that it happens?