What Do You Value? Discover That & Your Life’s Path Will Be Clear

Live By Your Values
- Ch: 5.3 of How To Get Your Sh!t Together -

“As you live by your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by other people’s opinions or by comparison to others.” – Stephen Covey

Think of the last time that you accomplished a goal. How long did your happiness last for? How long did it take before you came down from the high, and began focusing on the next challenge? I’m going to guess that it wasn’t long.

Now consider a scenario where you win the lottery. Overnight you become stinking rich. Rich enough for you to never have to work again. You no longer need to consider the price of clothing, food, jewelry, holidays or entertainment. You can buy anything you want, for the rest of your life. Sounds great right? Of course it does; it is party time! But how long would that party time actually last? Really think about this before you answer. The knee-jerk reaction from most is something along the lines of, ‘forever … I would lie on a tropical beach, drink in hand, and relax for the rest of my life’.

While I am sure that you would do that for some time, I predict that eventually you would grow tired of it. Perhaps you would eventually feel undeserving of such decadence and leisure, while others struggle to find work or are living in poverty. You would have the feeling of not ‘earning’ it. All you did was buy a lottery ticket after all.

I predict that after a while you would start to consider your reason for being here, what you truly want from life, what you want to give back to others and how you really want to spend your time. Eventually the luxury and decadence would become you new normal and you would want more. You would want your life to mean something deeper.

Before you disregard this off hand, realise that you have already experienced glimpses of this in your own life. I bet that prior to making a new purchase (car, technology, house), getting promoted, receiving a pay rise, or taking a holiday, you were sure that it would turn your life around. That change would be the linchpin to newfound happiness. And you were right … at least for a little while. But very quickly those changes became part of your new normal, and you grew dissatisfied.

Your dream car, the one you have been lusting over since your teens, was amazing at first, but now you realise that it provides the same function as your previous car (only slightly more comfortably).

Your new mobile phone has a better camera, more memory and significantly better features then your old brick, but now there is a newer model out there with an even better camera, even more memory and some amazing new features.

Initially the pay rise enabled you to fix your house, upgrade your wardrobe, and eat out more often, but it also caused your tastes to rise. Now that you can afford more, what you want is more expensive.

At the start of the holiday all you did was laze on the beach and relax, exactly what you needed, but after a while, you grew bored and restless. You wanted to ‘get something done’, but there was nothing that you could really put your mind towards.

The joy of accomplishing a goal is short lived, almost instantly you are thinking of the next mountain to climb.

There is always more to do, more challenges to undertake and more victories to fight for. It never ends. This perpetual dissatisfaction with the status quo is natural, born from our evolutionary past. We are only here today because our ancestors kept pushing for more. In times of success and plenty, instead of taking it easy and resting, they instead kept working. They were driven to not settle, but rather to keep striving, growing, inventing, saving and securing themselves for the future. This kept them alive when their fortunes inevitably changed. Everyone else perished.

Those same traits are still with us to this day, only they now express themselves differently. Instead of desiring better hunting grounds, sharper stone tools, and more comfortable caves, we now desire more money, grander titles, and more stuff.

Like our ancestors, even if everything is going right, we don’t stay satisfied for long.

Goals Versus Values

Don’t get me wrong, goal setting and the pursuit of success is a vital component of life and shouldn’t be over looked. I have dedicated an entire chapter to their creation and pursuit (chapter 6.3, ‘Set Goals’). However the blind pursuit of a goal in and of itself is pointless.

Unless attaining the goal has an underlying value to you, doing so will be a shallow victory. I’ll prove it to you.

Below, I have written down a goal that is within your grasp. If you chose to dedicate 15 minutes each day towards practice, you could easily accomplish this goal within a year.

You would be able to do something that very few people on earth can do. There are tournaments each year in which people with this skill compete against each other to see who can do it the quickest. People that can perform this feat seem more intelligent than average, and seem to think in ways that others don’t.

Despite this however, I predict that you will not want to pursue this goal. Are you ready?

Goal: Solving a Rubik’s Cube

There is an extremely small number of people reading this who can solve a rubix cube, and probably a couple who have been inspired to bite the bullet and learn. However the vast majority of readers will be content to let the accomplishment of this goal pass them by. Why? Because they see no value in it.

The Problem With Goals

Over the years, I have had many goals. Some of which I have achieved, and many more that I haven’t. The main reason for this lack of accomplishment comes from the fact that because the goals are so long term, I ended up changing before I could achieve them!

The person who set the goal is no longer the person who is pursuing it.

This whole process can become quite depressing, because I end up fighting with myself. I feel compelled to stay the course because I have already contributed so much time, money and effort towards the goal. Only a fool would stop now when they are this close to finishing, right?

As each day progressed, I realised that I was living to the standards of the past. For a different version of myself that no longer exists. I realised that I was in a trap, pursuing goals that I no longer valued. The professional career, the investment portfolio, playing an instrument professionally, getting the dream car, living in the perfect house, earning the karate black belt, the travel plans … the list goes on.

When I realised that I was living for my past, and that those goals were no longer important to me, I needed to make a choice. Do I continue down the path that I am on and accomplish those goals, or do I re-evaluate what I actually value, and head down a new path?

I chose the latter.

Since then, my life has taken some dramatic turns. I quit my job, changed careers multiple times, started writing, got married and had a child. I am significantly poorer financially, but I am now richer in other ways. I have set new goals, goals that I am very driven to achieve. But goals that I am willing to give up on if I no longer value what accomplishing them would provide me with. Now I aim to live by my values.

“Your values are the rudder that steer your life.” – Shandel Slaten

As a part of knowing ourselves, we need to know what we truly value. That way we can live a life and make choices that will move us to be more in line with what we actually care about. But before we can take action to live by our values, we first need to know what they are. For some, this knowledge will be self-apparent, but for others discovering what they value can be quite a challenging process.

Consider your responses to the following scenarios.

Scenario one:
Should you accept the promotion at work? What if it meant significantly more money but also a larger time commitment? What if you had to move out of state? What if it resulted in the firing of someone else? What if your partner did not approve of the new role? What if taking the promotion delays or completely forbids your pursuit of your hobbies?

Scenario two:
You discover that a close friend has a significant gambling addiction. Do you confront them? If so how? Do you offer emotional support, recovery advice or the number of an expert in addiction recovery? Do you cut the friend off for being ‘weak’? If they offer you advice, do you consider it as valuable as you previously did, or is it now tainted by the fact that they have a significant issue with addiction? Do you lend them money?

Scenario three:
You are waiting in line to get some food and the customer in front of you turns and starts mouthing off at you. They are insulting and demeaning you, and it seems like they want to escalate it into a physical conflict.

Do you attempt talk the person down? Do you appeal to others in the line for help? Do you simply leave the line and shop elsewhere? Do you trade insults and welcome the inevitable escalation? Do you respond with physical force immediately? Regardless of what you choose, how do you feel the following day? Do you let go of the incident or dwell on the events contemplating what you should have done?

There are no correct answers to any of these scenarios, it all depends on what you value.

If you value leadership, directness and integrity, your response to each scenario will be drastically different to someone who values family, safety and compassion; which would be different again to someone who values assertiveness, self-efficacy and boldness.

Once you know what you value and why, you will be more equipt to handle any situation, or choice or offer. In addition, if you make a choice that best aligns with what you value, it will simply ‘feel right’. You will be less likely to feel cognitive dissonance or question your actions, because you chose what you align with already.

“It is not hard to make decisions, once you know what your values are.”  – Roy E. Disney

So, the question becomes ‘How do I know what I value?’

One great way is to consider the major and minor decisions that you have made in your past and look for the reasons behind those decisions. By checking what you have done in the past and why, you may see some of the things you inherently value.

You choose what you value.

The problem with this approach is that we often don’t know why we made a choice, or a variety of mental afflictions could have clouded the decision-making process. This may result in a distortion of values. What’s more, people who come from a troubled or neglected past often struggle to know themselves. Given the turbulent nature of their upbringing, they may have never had a secure base to discover the nuances of their personality. In the struggle to just survive, they may have gotten into the habit of making choices that resulted in avoidance of suffering, as opposed to the pursuit of happiness.

Self-discovery is a must for anyone who wants to live a meaningful life. Determining what you actually value is one of the core components of this search.

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TAKE ACTION

Search online for ‘list of values’ and print off a list that has 200 or more.

1) Consider each item on the list and highlight those that you connect with or that you want to connect with.

2) Write up a new list containing only those highlighted words, and cut them down to the 20 values that you most connect with.

3) Repeat this process until you are down to five entries.

4) Arrange those five entries in order of significance.

5) Make up a poster that contains those five values, including a brief explanation of each and place it on your wall to be looked at when making any major decisions.

6) Consider your values whenever you need to make a choice. Choose the option that best aligns with your value system.

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My top five values are the following:
- Constant Improvement: Growth never stops, there is always something to learn.
- Wisdom: The deeper understanding that I can get of myself and this world, the better.
- Deep Connections: What is the point of life if I am not connected to others?
- Family: My son and my wife are my life – I would do anything for them.
- Helping Others: I would like to share what I know to help lessen the suffering of others.

I regularly revise this list making small changes when necessary. My values are generally consistent over time, however as I become more proficient with the skill of introspection, they are becoming more refined.

When completing the above activity, it is important to not judge your choices or consider the opinions of others or how different your values are from what you think other people’s values are.

The goal of the exercise is to determine what you value, not what you think other people should want you to value.

If you are concerned about the opinions of others, then perhaps some of your values should reflect that fact. There is no judgement here. I want to make it clear that what you value is not inherently good or bad. Most values are inherently neutral. The only issues that I have will come from how you choose to express your values.

Valuing authority, leadership, power and control may seem quite dictatorial, but anyone who wants to make a large scale impact upon the world needs to see the worth of those values.

Valuing silliness, joy, fun and carefreeness may seem quite trivial, but anyone wanting to engage with their young children on their level needs to embrace those values to some capacity.

Once you know what you value, you can start to set goals and make choices that correspond with those values. A value driven life is inherently meaningful. If you don’t know what you value, you are choosing blindly.

If you do know what you value, but make choices that contradict those values, you will feel quite empty indeed. Choose wisely!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q) If I live by my values rather than goals, will I ever accomplish anything? What if my values change, or I no longer see the worth of completing what I initially set out to do?

A) If you accomplished those goals, would they really mean anything to you? Remember the Rubik’s Cube example, you could accomplish that goal, but likely you won’t, because it is meaningless to you. What if, in the past you did have the goal of solving a Rubik’s Cube, but have since lost interest? Should you persevere with the goal or should you change directions?

For something as trivial as a Rubik’s Cube, the answer is immediately obvious. But for the more complex situations, it becomes harder to discern. I would advise meditating on the goal and really considering if it aligns with who and what you want to be. If it doesn’t fit, I would suggest discarding it.

Following your values will result in you accomplishing things, but you may not yet know what those things are.

Q) I value family and would gladly spend all of my time with them. However doing so would come at the cost of losing my job and therefore the ability to provide them what they need to survive. How do I balance my values with the practical nature of life?

A) This is the ultimate question. First of all, realise that by working you are valuing your family. Although you are not around your family, your absence from them keeps them alive, and prospering. That being said, there is a balance to be made. How much money do you actually need?

I faced this same dilemma. I value my family, as well as the time to pursue my writing and other hobbies, far more than I value money. To this end I chose to leave full time work to pursue a writing career from home. I work enough to keep food on the table, but we have had to make some sacrifices, but these are nothing compared to the benefits to my family life. It wasn’t easy, and finding the balance requires constant work, but in my experience it was worth it.

Q) How can I quit now? I have put so much work into this goal!

A) How much harder will it be a year or two down the line? The longer you continue before making a change, the more invested you will be. Even if you do accomplish the goal, will you still even care? The sooner you start living by your values, the sooner you will be able to start working on something that you truly see a benefit in.

Resources
Core Values List: threadsculture.com/blog/company-culture/core-values-list-threads/
The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris
Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert

Summary
Work out what you value and then align your goals with them. Make every choice based on those values and your life will become far more meaningful.

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