Your values are the core of who you are. Your principles. Your feeling for what’s good, important or beautiful in life. Your values drive your attitudes, your preferences and the decisions you make. Everything from how to spend your spare time to who you choose to marry. And yet most of us don’t think about them at all – beyond noticing when someone else’s differ from ours! Instead, most of us just live each day as it comes. And rarely ask if what we’re doing is really maximising our potential. Or why we make the choices we do... So thinking more about your values is a really good idea. Start by spending a little time each evening thinking back over your day. Ask yourself what emotions you felt and the choices you made – and try to see the values that lay behind them. Because many of them are learned, and things you learn you can change. And that could make a real difference to your life. Values, attitudes and preferences can be entirely personal, but many depend on the community you belong to. Like how some societies put group interests ahead of those of an individual, whereas westernised societies do the reverse. Or the way food preferences vary around the world. Some cultures think certain kinds of meat are disgusting, for example, while others think they’re delicious. Some people eat insects, other’s would rather die. Mostly our own culture’s values are so familiar we never question them. Though they’re often clear from what we respect most in the community. Like the way singers are paid more than teachers! Another example’s our sense of right and wrong. Mostly we think it’s the same as the law, so that what’s legal defines what’s right or wrong. But might a community pass a bad law? Of course they might – there’ve been endless examples around the world. Which means that there are values that lie above the law, for example, that can be used to decide whether a particular law is a good or a bad one. And that’s the way true greatness lies. Not in wealth or possessions, but in seeing past narrow personal values, or those of your particular culture or group, and working towards more universal principles. Those might be religious, of course, but there are many examples of secular criteria that have motivated some of the world’s greatest leaders. Bentham’s ideal of doing what produces ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ is a good example. What do you think were the values which motivated the most inspiring leaders of the past century? Nelson Mandela, for example, or Mahatma Gandhi. How do your values stack up against theirs? And how should you change them so that your life can really make a difference? It’s easy to be overwhelmed by everyday crises. But if you always work towards achieving the highest values, then you’ll never be forgotten. LIKE Premier Private Investigations & Consulting Credit: Dr Chris
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 19:45:58 +0000