50 Part I: Introducing NLP
importance than B; if the answer is no, B needs to be moved above A. For
example, in the list of values below, which relate to your job, you may
decide that security is much more important to you than adventure:
Success
Power
Achievement
Adventure
Security
When you put these values into an order of importance, you may well
find the ones that surfaced later have greater significance for you.
- After you arrange your values, ask yourself if one value would be
useful for you to have in this area of your life, but which is currently
missing. Where would you slot it in the list of existing values?
For instance, if you value your job but can’t get the level of success you
want, perhaps you need the element ‘fulfilment’ in your hierarchy. In
fact, by going through the above process you may decide that your new
hierarchy looks as follows:
Success
Fulfilment
Achievement
Adventure
Security
You may find step 3 easier to do if you write your values down on pieces of
paper; you can then move them around rather than crossing out and adding
values.
Conflicting values
When your means values are aligned (see the preceding section), achieving
your ends value becomes much easier. Unfortunately your values can end up
in conflict. You think you want to move towards an outcome but your uncon-
scious mind has other ideas that actually move you away from your objective.
You may have had a very financially poor childhood and have a strong away
from poverty value, which is in direct conflict with a towards wealth value. So
