Tag: values

Values

The last three weeks or so, I have been completely off of my normal, regular routine schedule. I’ve had a marvelous, fun and productive time, but I’m feeling pretty fried. I overheard someone say, “I need to catch up with myself.” That words it perfectly. I need to slow down and catch up with myself. If you don’t give yourself these slower, regular scheduled times to assimilate everything that you’ve experienced, you start just going through the motions, and you start behaving like a zombie. At least, this is my experience. I am someone who craves a fair amount of solitude and I’ve been starved of solitude for a while now. This morning I am being nourished by solitude and I feel myself “catching up with myself”. As an extroverted introvert, solitude is what plugs me into my replenishing energy source. I feel myself getting charged back up.

I listened to a podcast the other day, and one of the participants, Jessica Lanyandoo said this: “Happiness comes as a direct result of living in accord with our values. When you are living in a self-appropriate way, you’re happy. I mean, I’m not saying you’re giddy. But (living in accord with our values) is what leads to authentic happiness, inner peace (and) inner balance.”

It’s so true, isn’t it? Often what we say what we value, is not what we are showing the world what we are valuing. We can say that we value family time, but in reality, we are spending most of our time trying to climb the corporate ladder. We can say that we value health, but we get take-out for dinner every night. We can say that we value peace, but we allow ourselves to get caught-up in online drama and arguments. We can say that we value financial security, but we get ourselves into debt in order to “keep up with the Joneses.” A good exercise to get back into alignment with your own values is to quickly, and off-the-cuff, without thinking too much, list 5-10 core values that you deem the most important for yourself, in your own life. (and do this activity privately. Be honest. List your own true values. Do not list what you think that you should value, based on the judgments of others. No one will see this list.) Then, rank these values in order of importance to you. Finally, look at this list of what you believe are the most important elements in your life, and get brutally honest with yourself if you are truly living in accordance to your own values. Is where you spend the majority of your time, energy, attention, and money, truly in line with what you deeply value? If you are not experiencing mostly happiness, inner peace and inner balance, why is this? When you look at where you are spending the preponderance of your time and energy and mindspace, is this in true alignment with your core values? What’s pinging you to change? What area or areas in your own life, are asking you to steer the ship in a different direction, in order to get us back to your own true north?

Our values are what define us. Our values are what give us purpose in living our lives. Our values speak to what we think is most worthy in our life experience. If we are not living up to our own values, we know. We feel the negative emotions that are trying to get us back on track to our core truths. If we live in alignment with our deepest values, we generally feel peace. “Happiness comes as a direct result of living in accord with our values.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1604. What do you think is the most dangerous profession in the whole world?

Currency

credit: Think Smarter, Twitter

There are so many things vying for our attention and energy these days. And we give it away so freely and easily, as if we have endless stores of it (even though we don’t). We forget to harness our energy. We forget that it is “us” that has the wheel. Your still, small voice inside of you – your perfectly attuned, highly perceptible, built-in GPS system will never scream out for your attention. It won’t try to compete with, nor enforce control, as to where you put your attention and energy (and thus your precious time). But if you listen to your body and to your emotions, you will understand if where you have been putting your attention, your focus and your energy, is really the best place for you to spend it. What increases your energy? What depletes it? What restores and renews your energy? What flames and burns your energy out quickly? Where are your energy leaks – slowly and secretly draining out your energy stores, little bits at at time? Do you need to bank your energy somewhere else? Have you built appropriate boundaries around your energy stores?

Spend some of your time, energy, and attention on these questions today. The insights which you get from this exercise will be incredibly valuable. (Remember, as the post by Think Smarter states: “Our energy IS our true currency.”)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Beliefs and Values

“For you to understand me, the first thing you should know about me, is that I am not you.” – Mindset For Life, Twitter

This quote is so key. The other day I read something interesting. It said that we all know and understand that we have a tendency to project our own negative qualities on to others, as a way to disown these qualities in ourselves. (That’s where the phrase, “Point one finger at me, and three fingers are pointing back at you” comes from.) When we are feeling particularly critical about something in someone else, there is usually some similar trait in ourselves that we strongly dislike, and we can get that insight about ourselves, if we are humble enough to play detective on our own selves, instead of focusing always on the faults of others. Even more interesting to me was that my reading also said that we also have the tendency to project traits that we do like about ourselves, on to others. We think that parents, or partners, or friends, or teachers, or bosses, should have certain likable, familiar traits, and so we often project these positive traits on to people, whether they actually possess these traits or not. Both projections make us feel safe and in control, but neither are rooted in reality. These projections do not make for authentic, healthy relationships.

The above quote also got me thinking about an interesting conversation that I had with a friend the other day. She works for her church, and she mentioned that her church’s denomination is having a lot of controversy within its membership about certain key issues. She mentioned that she, herself, was struggling with where she stood on some of these issues. We both talked about how difficult it is to get a consensus on anything, in any group. Even in my marriage, my husband and I don’t agree on every single thing. Trying to find just the right place to eat, or where to go on vacation was often tricky among our family of six, until my husband and I finally, out of frustration, used our executive privilege. (Raising four kids got me really familiar with the term, “herding cats.”)

That’s the hard thing about joining various groups, and thus being labelled as a member of that group. Do you honestly believe in every single platform of your own political party, or your own religious affiliation, or your own workplace’s stance on everything?? Are your beliefs so solid that they could never be changed, even as you grow and change, and as the world around you changes?

My weekly horoscope by Holiday Mathis said this: “Your beliefs, which are based on the best information you have in a given moment, will inevitably change as the world does. There’s no shame in this. Values, on the other hand, withstand the tests of time. Love, tenderness, beauty, harmony and teamwork are values represented in your week.”

Beliefs are different than values. With whom, and where, and doing what, do you spend most of your time and your energy and your resources? Whether you like it or not, these people and these things are what you value more than anything else. You may scoff, and say to yourself, “Well, I can’t stand my job, but I have to feed my kids.” That’s fair. You value supporting your family and their well-being. Is that a bad value?? It seems pretty virtuous to me. However, your belief may be, “I have to do this particular job, and I have to work these amount of hours to feed my kids.” Is that the truth? Is this particular vocation the only way to feed your family? Would it be possible to work at a different job, or to work less hours? Beliefs are flexible. They can be changed. Do your beliefs support your values? This is what is most important. Be honest with yourself about your beliefs, and see if they honestly support your highest values. If you value inclusiveness, do your affiliations support this value? If you value family time, do your career and your hobbies support this value? If you value health and fitness, do your habits support this value? Where can you alter your beliefs to better support what you truly value? And remember, this is a private project. Go back to the first quote, I used in today’s post. What I most value in life is probably different than what you most value, and that is okay. That is what gives us such amazing variety and contrast and unique experiences in this life on Earth, which we are living right now. Just make sure that you are living the values and the beliefs that are true to you, so that you don’t cheat yourself, nor cheat the world, of all of the variety and mélange that is deserved to be experienced by all of us, right here and right now!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.