Bringing your values to your business and your life can be a very powerful and exciting experience and, as with any process, it takes time. You will find there are two approaches that can be taken. One, you can bring more of your values to your work. Second, you can reduce the influence your current lifestyle has in directing your business. You'll find it most powerful to use both approaches.

1. START WITH ONE VALUE: One effective way to inject more of your values into your business is to take one value you feel is particularly important to you and that you find is lacking in your present work. Take for instance, integrity. Let's assume it's an important value for you. One way to consider integrity is that there are three levels of integrity. The first level is keeping your word -- doing what you say you will do, by the time you said you would do it. The second level is being true to your standards and ideals The third and most profound level is being true to yourself.

2. WHERE IS IT PRESENT AND WHERE IS IT MISSING: Taking the one value, look to see where it's present and where it's missing in your work. Make a list of the areas. Next to the missing list, write out what steps you could take to bring more of the value to the area. Once the list is complete, take the top four or five areas you feel would most effectively bring the value to bear in your work.

3. SET A DATE: Next to the steps you are ready to take, place a realistic date by when you will take the action or actions. Once these steps have been completed, go to the next value and repeat the process.

4. BRINGING INTEGRITY TO WORK: This whole process is an exercise in integrity because you will be bringing your values to the workplace. In other words, your work will be consistent with who you are, the most profound and deepest level of integrity. A natural by-product of such a process is workability. Even though the process can be challenging, it is ultimately very rewarding. You will be injecting your values into the work you do and in the process taking much of the lifestyle driven motivation away. To augment this process, let's look at how to speed up the process.
 

5. ELIMINATE DEBT: How to do it? Here's one method that has worked for thousands of people. It's one of those processes which is simple yet not always easy, but the results are worth the effort. I call it the snowball approach to debt elimination.

6. MAKE A LIST: Make a list of all your personal debts and your business debts. If you work for a company, you may only have personal debts to work on. If you have both, you can follow this plan in both arenas, or work first on your personal debt and later on your business debt.

7. PRIORITIZE THE DEBT: Make a new list of the debt you'll be working on in the following order: list the largest debt amount at the top and the lowest amount at the bottom. For most people, that will mean your home mortgage will be at the top and your credit cards will be at the bottom. Here is how to start the snowball rolling down hill.

8. PAY THE MOST ON THE LEAST: You want to pay as much as you possibly can on the debt that you can pay off the fastest which is the one at the bottom of the list. Pay the minimum on all the other debts you have until that first debt is retired. Of course, you must continue to pay your home mortgage, and whatever the minimum is for the other debts. But the idea is to pay off the debt at the bottom of the list as fast as possible.

9. REDIRECT SAVINGS: If you are currently placing money away in savings, redirect this money to paying off debt. Again, this advice may sound contrary to what you've learned in the past, but consider it for a moment. If you are paying 15-18 % or more on credit card balances while socking away money that is only drawing 7-8%, you're losing money. Focus on one thing at a time. First, pay off your debt and then you'll have plenty of extra money to save.

10. CUT UP THE CREDIT CARDS: This debt elimination plan becomes totally ineffective unless you are willing to stop living off of credit. For most people this means cutting up the credit cards. If you feel you must keep one for those "unexpected emergencies" then once you've paid off a card, take it and put it away where it's not easy to get to, like a safe deposit box. Then, use it ONLY for a legitimate emergency. (No, a big sale at the mall doesn't count.)

11. EVALUATE YOUR SPENDING HABITS: Look for "unconscious spending." We all have it. Money we spend which really doesn't add significantly to the quality of our lives. Most people, once they commit to becoming debt free are amazed how much money they can add to the snowball without any sense of deprivation. One good place to look besides credit card spending is automatic debits to your checking accounts or credit cards. Businesses make it easy for you to pay them in these ways because you quickly become unconscious about the monthly payments. It's similar to what gambling casinos do when they turn your cold hard cash into plastic chips. Before long your forget that the blue chip is really $25.

12. STICK WITH THE SNOWBALLING: Once the first credit card is paid off in this fashion, the snowball starts to pick up speed. You can then add the amount you were paying on the first card to the minimum you've been paying on the next debt on the list. Each time you pay off a debt, the amount you can apply to the next one increases. By the time you get to your mortgage payment, you'll have enough money to pay off 2-3 months worth of principle at a time. (Remember, most of the mortgage for the first several years is interest.)

Through this method, most Americans are able to become completely debt free within 5-7 years since the loan system limits how much debt we are able to accumulate to about 35% of our annual income. Beyond that, banks won't approve you for a home mortgage.

As your personal debt diminishes, you will find it easier to bring more of your values into your life. In the process, don't be surprised to find that you've got more time for your family, more time to pursue your other interests and more time to enjoy the real American Dream -- freedom from worry.

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W. Bradford Swift is director of Life On Purpose Institute -- an organization dedicated to people clarifying their life purpose and living true to it -- where he is a coach, writer and trainer for other coaches (http://www.coachingonpurpose.com). Hundreds of his articles have appeared in such diverse publications as Modern Maturity, Hope, New Age Journal, Yoga Journal, and many others. He may be contacted by email: brad@lifeonpurpose.com; by phone: 1-800-668-0183; or visit the Life On Purpose Institute website: http://www.lifeonpurpose.com. For a FREE subscription to Purposeful Pondering Ezine, send an email to PurposefulPondering-subscribe@egroups.com.