Knowing who you are, what you believe in and what you stand for as a person will greatly improve your chances of finding success happiness, and achieving what you want from your life.

To determine your values you need to think about what is really important to you as a person, in all areas of you life. One of the most famous Americans of all time, Benjamin Franklin, set out how he intended to live his life at the age of 22. He came up with the following 13 categories temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity and humility. He wrote a sentence or more about each of these topics and resolved to live his life in accordance with these values.

Im not suggesting anyone should follow this example and try to live up to this ideal. Everyone is unique and only you can decide what is most important to you. There are, however, some areas that many people may find of use as a general framework:

Relationships with family, friends and other people; work/career and overall occupational satisfaction; personal integrity, self respect, inner harmony, spirituality; quality of life, happiness, pleasure, fulfilment; financial security and money matters; health and fitness.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Youll probably find other subjects important to you that youll also want to consider. Nor will everything mentioned here be important to everyone, but if you spend some time considering your thoughts on these areas a starting point, this should help to get you looking and thinking in the right direction and give some indication of your values.

Another exercise that can help is to honestly think about how people who know you would describe you to someone else. Are you happy with these descriptions? Does this fit in with your image of yourself and how you would like others to see you? What traits would you most like be known and remembered for?

If you are serious about creating your ideal future, clarifying your values will be one of the most important exercises you will ever undertake. If youre not altogether happy with what you discover, the good news is that you can change anything about yourself - if its important enough to you, and you are prepared to make the commitment and put in the necessary effort.

What you have been in the past and where youre coming from doesn't really matter. Its where your going thats important, and self awareness and determining what really matters to you most will make creating you ideal future much easier.

It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are." Anonymous