What Do You Value?

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What are your core values? Do you live your life by them? Do you base your decisions on them? Do they provide the direction for your life? Do you show up every day with the intention of expressing them?

For most people the answer is not only “No,” but they’ve never even thought about it. While I have always strived to be a “good” person, it wasn’t until recently that I really evaluated which values are at the center of who I am.

My core values are spirituality, integrity, joy, connecting to others, creativity, and freedom. Yours are likely different, and are based on your life experiences and understanding. No one’s core values should be judged as “right” or “wrong.” They are part of what makes us unique and help create our individual perspective. And our individuality is a very good thing!

Identifying your core values increases your mindfulness. Evaluating them can help you determine what value you were expressing during a time when life was really good, and can provide clarity to past upsetting experiences when you understand what value was being challenged. And you can pinpoint where you are compromising your values, and why.

Because integrity is prominent in my core values, yesterday I made lists of where I am in integrity with myself and where I’m not.

What I can celebrate was that the first list was way longer than the second. But the list of where I am not living in integrity with myself was enlightening. As I contemplated it, one of the things I noticed was that seemingly disparate areas were actually related. For instance, I uncovered a lingering fear about money that I can now tie back to stress eating. Aha!

Just having that awareness has brought me incredible clarity and has released some catabolic or negative energy for which I couldn’t otherwise figure out the cause.

When we guide our lives by the bigger picture of who we are, the navigation gets a whole lot easier.

What are the values and principles you live by? Who are you at your core? How could identifying those specifics change your life?

Together we can do it!

 

 

6 thoughts on “What Do You Value?”

  1. Nice post 🙂
    An accident six years ago crippled me and left me with a physical pain that will never go away. In the end my body became my prison. That forced me with a good help from a cognitive behaviorist to peel of everything and find the core of me. That part was still free and no prison in the world can take it away.
    Since then I live and do most of my actions according to the core – which for me is love-for humans, animals, plants- you name it.
    If and when my actions are not guided by my core i do not feel good.
    It is strange that I just came over your post (or you visited me) because yesterday for the first time I did not act from the core and I messed things up big time.
    But such is life and if I let love reign hopefully I will be forgiven.

    Thank you for this reminder of sticking to my core (which materially has left me with almost nothing – but spiritually with almost everything) before I went to much astray.
    Almost scary that I needed your post right at this moment

    Perfect love

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    • I’m glad that I could be there to remind you. You are doing an amazing job of living by your core values, and I hope you will forgive yourself for not being perfect. We are not meant to be. That you are able to succeed the majority of the time says incredible things about your focus and character. Thanks for stopping by and leaving such a wonderful comment. I have started following your blog and look forward to more beautiful and inspiring posts. Hanna

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  2. Hi Hanna, how true that often it is the values that we hold on to so dearly that make us what we are & affect all the decisions we make.I loved your point about a time to time evaluation of where we stand and whether we have made any compromises as that will help us getting back on track! Thanks for stopping by and hope to read more of your posts!;)

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Love your comments!