The 7 Habits of Highly Impactful People - Habit Number 1: Values

You want to have impact in your business and life, right?

Here’s the thing: you already do! But it’s not necessarily the impact you want to have.

Having a positive influence in your business, community, and even the larger world takes disciplined effort. When you make those efforts habits, you’re on your way to big impact.

In this series of 7 articles, I’ll share what I’ve learned from years of coaching people who want to have impact, and from my own work and research. You’ll learn the 7 habits of highly impactful people.

These habits pay off hugely, not only in how much impact you have, but financially in your business too. Consciously impactful businesses mightily outperform those whose focus is just profit.

Before we get started with the first habit, let’s spend a little time to be clear what we’re talking about here.

What does it mean to be impactful?

1. Impact starts with you: While most of us want to create a positive impact through our business, in order to have impact, you have to start with you. How do you show up in the world? How do you want to be with people? What do you want to offer them? That has impact.

2. Impact is much more than your get-to-do list: To be impactful, you must first understand your larger mission or purpose in your business. I used to call it your Big Why. I now call it your Impact Purpose. That’s because the impact you want to have guides every aspect of your business.

3. Your intentions will determine your impact: Author Gary Zukav wrote, "It is wise for us to become aware of our intentions and choose them according to what we want to produce." Whatever your intention is about your impact, whether it's conscious to you or unconscious, that's what'll play out.

This series of articles is about making intentional choices related to the impact you want to create in your business and personal life.

Habit #1: Get Clear About Your Own Values

A universal habit among some of the most impactful people in the world is that they became clear about their own values.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, your behavior arises out of what you hold as most important, what you value. When you are clear about what values are the most important to you, you can use that awareness to have impact from that deeply rooted and grounded foundation.

Here’s a practical exercise that will help you start to get clarity about your own values.

Set aside some quiet time for yourself and start writing down value words that are deeply important to you. To start, write down whatever comes to your mind. You can always edit this list later.

Think of situations in your life or business that were really powerful experiences. What values did you demonstrate in those situations?

Here are some value words that may help you in creating your own list:

• Honesty

• Integrity

• Professionalism

• Doing quality work

• Humility

• Kindness

• Fun

• Joy

• Compassion

• Treating people with respect

• Adaptability

• Dependability

• Creativity

• Warmth

• Balance

• Curiosity

• Freedom

• Persistence

• Resilience

If some of these values resonate with you deeply, you can certainly add them to your list. You may have others: spend some time and create your own unique list of values.

Your list of values are not simple words but something much more. I call them ‘Pull Priorities’ because they draw you. They pull you forward toward the impact that you want to have.

They come from inside of you and they don't push you like an outside force imposed on you. Like someone else’s ideas about what they think should be important to you.

They give you a grounded center to work from and they help define you and the impact you want to have.

To achieve mastery in the first habit of highly impactful people, revisit this list of your Pull Priorities regularly so that you are always clear about what you value. You can even post your Pull Priorities on a wall so that they're front of mind.

Measure what you’re doing against the values you decided were important to you. Are they aligned?

Keep the habit of clarity around your values and they'll help you with every other habit of highly impactful people that we're going to talk about in the upcoming articles.

It’s an ongoing process to become impactful, both personally and with your business. Following the 7 habits of highly impactful people will increase the positive influence you have on the people in your work and life.