As I write, we are over halfway through 2020, a year that has brought so many changes. I’m very conscious that Covid-19 has impacted and affected people in so many different ways. For some, it has been an incredibly challenging and stressful time, with loss of income, fear of illness, fear of losing a loved one, and isolation as just some of the challenges faced. For others, isolation was a time of reflection, a time to focus on what is important and what can be left behind. Isolation also offered respite for some people, giving the opportunity to simply be at home and enjoy family time without the feeling of pressure to do things, buy things, and attend things.

For me personally, it’s been a mixed bag with of course concern for family, both here and overseas, but overall I’m aware that we have been so very fortunate in many ways. I quite enjoyed lockdown and home learning, for the opportunity to enjoy time with the kids, and the simple pleasures of reading, cooking, board games, and no rush to have to be anywhere at a certain time. Oddly, the restrictions opened up freedom from time constraints.

Work wise, there was definitely change for Cara Counselling. With change can come opportunity; and I expanded into offering online counselling, as well as seeing more clients take up the Walk and Talk option, in order to be outdoors rather than in the enclosed space of the traditional office setting. All of which led me to look at my home differently.

 We had listed our house for sale back in February, with the idea of the new house having a separate home office where I could occasionally see clients. Once Covid kicked in, and my husband was working from home, and the kids had spent a good chunk of time learning at home, we realised how well our house met our family needs. As house inspections stopped and we stopped hearing from our agent, we probably ‘nested’ a bit; snuggling together on the sofa with movies and popcorn, going for walks to the local park, or on bear hunts around the block, and really re-discovering how much we love our neighbourhood.

When real estate ‘normality’ restarted to a certain degree, and our agent reappeared with potential buyers, we ended up getting multiple offers, but not just quite enough to tempt us out of our new found home comforts. And we came up with a solution to the separate home office issue; by deciding to use the space we have, and build an office inside our garage.

Where do values come into all of this?

Oh the decisions to make along the way! The ‘discussions’ with my husband about whether or not to accept one of the offers we received for our house; the second guessing of what the real estate market might do and whether we were making the right decision; and the awareness that we were lucky to have choices like these and not be facing actual problems!

To help me work through these decisions I used the strategies I talk to my clients about; I did a lot of mindfulness and going out for walks to calm my mind, and I asked lots of questions about how each small decision or worry fitted into the bigger picture. This included asking ‘What are my values? What is important to me?’ And the answer for me is family, and helping people; feeling useful. Plus openness – to ideas, people, and places, and to opportunities.

 What goals are linked to these values for me?

• Making time for the kids (or rather keeping up the feeling of family time that we appreciated during lockdown)

• Being present with the family when I’m at home

• Offering clients options on where and when they access counselling, and providing a comfortable and inviting space. 

As I looked at what having my office based at my house could look like, I found that it fitted in with these goals. The small bit of time saved in the evenings by ‘commuting’ from the garage into the house after seeing clients at 6.00 or 7.00pm could mean not missing reading time with the kids.

Having the dedicated office space could mean way less temptation to sit on the laptop at the dining room table answering emails, or updating the booking calendar, or doing accounts, or any of the other admin tasks that support the main work of being with clients.

Having a physical office space means retaining that flexibility for clients of choosing between face to face, outdoors or online for their counselling. And owning the space that I work from gives me control over air-con, and access, and parking, and all the little things that I feel help to make my office space cosy and welcoming for clients.

 I’m now into week two of having clients come to the new office, built into the garage at the front of the house and it’s working out great!

Connecting with your values 

So if you’re stuck on a big decision, or a few smaller decisions, or find it hard with all the decisions, it can be a great strategy to connect with your values and goals, so that your actions are purposeful. The questions I ask my clients when we’re working through some of this stuff are along the lines of ‘how does it serve you?’, ‘does that help you get where you want to go?’, or we’ll work though the options on the whiteboard and nut out the pros and cons of each one.

 If you’ve tried this strategy but you don’t know where you want to go, then picking an option to help you get there is much harder; that’s when we tend to find that there is no one option really ‘speaking’ or jumping out as the ‘right’ answer.

If you’re not really clear on what your values are, or you feel like you have goals, but hadn’t really thought about that connection to value, here’s a few thoughts that may help.

What are values?

In ‘The Confidence Gap’ Dr Russ Harris describes values as ‘desired qualities of ongoing action’. He goes on to say that ‘in other words, your values describe how you want to behave as a human being: how you want to act on an ongoing basis; what you want to stand for in life; the principles you want to live by; the personal qualities and character strengths you want to cultivate.’ (Pg. 16).

If you want to get a sense of character strengths, the VIA Character Strengths survey might be a great starting point. The free version gives you an ordered list of your strengths, or you can pay for a report that gives a deeper insight on your strengths and ways to apply them.

Or simply spend some time thinking about what matters to you; perhaps ask yourself the following questions, and write down and reflect on your answers. Dr Timothy Sharp (also known as Dr Happy) has written a number of books on happiness, including The Happiness Handbook, where he suggests these questions to ‘help you clarify what is important and what your purpose is to be:

• What do you admire most in other people?

• Ideally, how would you like to be thought of or remembered by others?

• Think about the last time you really experienced a sense of satisfaction. What was it about the activities you were engaged in that made you feel good?’ (The Happiness Handbook; pg. 34).

Have a go at thinking about your values, and see if having a clearer link from values to goals to actions helps take some of the anxiety out of decision making.

And, as ever, give me a shout with any questions! Cheers – thanks for reading, Louise