welcome to the science of self I'm Russell founder of Newton Media Group and today
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today is Thursday February 9th 2023.
I don't know what your personal values are in today's episode from Peter Holland's book The
Art of strategic decision making Peter Hollins takes us through a process to understand our
personal needs and how those needs inform our values our principles and our beliefs foreign
If you’ve found yourself asking the question “who am I?”,
you might have also been asking simultaneously, “What should I do?”
Our lack of genuine identity can show itself in an inability to make decisions, to choose a path,
to set a goal, or to say what we want—in other words, what we do is a reflection of who we are.
If we have a problem with one, we usually have a problem with the other.
So, this is where we’ll begin.
If you’re unsure of how to act, you’re also probably a little unsure of who you are.
Knowing how best to act is a question of knowing what kind of person you are.
If you are someone who prioritizes family and social connection above anything else,
for example, you don’t need to think too hard about the dilemma of working late
nights at the office versus spending quality time with your young children.
Your identity informs your choices.
In fact, how we respond to life’s dilemmas, choices,
and difficulties says a lot about the strength of our own values.
We are as we do, and we do according to what we value.
Inner values and principles are like a personal
manifesto that tells us how to act in any situation.
This is our own code of ethics that we’ve devised for ourselves,
and it acts like a guiding light even when—or maybe particularly when—the path is unclear.
How shall we define “values”?
A value is a judgment that makes claims about the priorities we hold in life.
They are principles, rules, or beliefs that give meaning to our lives.
They are what stop life from feeling empty and meaningless, because they are inherently about
meaning—it’s whenever you say, “Thing A is more important and valuable than thing B."
In saying this, it follows that the right thing to do is thing A.
Values not only guide our action when we’re unclear,
they give us strength to carry on when the path might be clear but the journey difficult.
You might have a really difficult time turning down those extra hours at work,
but when you can tune into the deeper value of being present in your children’s lives as
they grow up, you are given strength to make a decision that makes you unpopular at work.
Granted, many of the values you might hold, consciously or unconsciously, are secondhand.
They come to us from our cultures,
our parents, our religion, our political environment, even our historical era.
Some values might be held uncritically,
i.e. you may have them simply out of habit, and haven’t really examined them closely.
Others might be personally chosen after extensive deliberation.
Values can change over time.
We might rebel against the values of our group, accept them completely, or negotiate a little,
but we always have the option to be more conscious and deliberate about our own values.
If you were put on the spot right now and asked what your values were,
how quickly and easily do you think you could answer?
Do you think you could easily list five or ten of the things you most value in life?
Going even further, could you say confidently that your life mostly aligns with these values?
It’s one thing to know what’s right, but there’s very little point in devising a
complete book of rules that you never really intend to follow.
Though the self-help industry might sometimes have you believe otherwise, your identity isn’t
just something you go shopping for like you do a pair of sneakers or a brand of shampoo.
You cannot just pick and choose values—they need
to be a genuine expression of what you really do care about.
This can seem a little like a catch-22 situation—you don’t have an identity so you need
to find your values, but how do you know which values you care about without having an identity?
The process is not as difficult as it seems.
Firstly, know that the process isn’t done all at once—you are
not going to uncover a complete and fully-functioning self in
an afternoon and start living your best life once you wake up tomorrow morning.
It’s a process, and insight will come in fits and starts.
In fact, a life well-loved might be one in which you continually revisit
the question of identity, with your answers deepening on every attempt.
We also need to remember that, in finding values, we are the ultimate arbiters.
We decide.
So, you might need to take the time to tune out every other voice so you can better hear your own.
There is no wrong way to do it.
There’s no right answer.
There’s only what works for you.
Having said that, people are motivated by a lot of
different values, which it might help to consider in finding out our own:
Financial independence or wealth
Being in nature
Romantic love or connection with others
Having freedom and independence
Learning and knowledge
Fun and adventure
Good physical health and fitness
Spiritual or religious pursuits
Art and creativity
Work accomplishments, leadership, business
Security and survival
Social cohesion and harmony in a group
Peace, calm, and contentment; relaxation
Honor, loyalty, and dependability
... and so on.
You might look at all of the above and think that they’re all valuable.
But the trick is in identifying your priorities—those things that are best,
that bring the most satisfaction and meaning.
You may care about creative expression and individuality,
but your love of family stability may trump that ten times over.
You need to know how each of your needs and preferences rank relative to each another.
A good way to find out what matters most is to ask what has seemingly
bought you the most happiness and sense of meaning in the past.
If you look at all your high points in life,
and they all involved adventure and freedom to travel and explore, that tells you something.
It works the other way around too:
in thinking of your life’s most painful memories, why did they hurt so much?
Could it be that these events were moments when your deepest values were disappointed or violated?
Tally up the achievements you’re genuinely proud of and see what they have in common.
Or, look more closely at your worst failures and blunders and ask why
they stung particularly badly—were these times where you acted against your values?
Another trick is to look at the people you admire or wish to be like (or even envy)—what
values do they exemplify?
If all your role models and heroes are self-made entrepreneurs,
is this telling you about the value you place on financial independence?
Maybe.
Or maybe what appeals to you about them is that
they’re unique and following their own dreams, breaking the rules.
Or maybe they are reflecting your yearning for a life filled with more admiration and recognition.
Since you are uncovering your values rather than creating them from scratch,
another general technique is to look at all the decisions you are currently making—they
may speak strongly to values you might not yet be aware you actually have.
Watch yourself closely for a few days or a week,
and notice your decisions when faced with a choice to make.
Notice how you feel when you choose one thing over another.
It might be that you notice yourself often choosing things that leave you feeling bad,
and don’t really feel aligned with who you are.
It may be that you notice key decisions reflecting your values.
Either way, we are already living by values every moment of every day—it’s
simply a question of becoming aware of them and asking whether they’re
the choices that best reflect the values we hold—or want to hold.
Look for patterns.
See if you can find any strong feelings one way or another—are there any non-negotiable sentiments?
What are you absolutely unwilling to do or give up?
Why?
What choices make you feel proud and content, and which ones feel like a
compromise, an obligation, or even something you’re embarrassed about?
Feeling right, however, is just one aspect that helps determine your values.
You also need to make informed decisions about what you really believe in that rely
on more than just your emotional inclinations at any given time.
Say you’re confused about whether you value
your career or your connection with friends and family more.
You’ve found that abandoning your family for work often leaves you feeling guilty,
and so you think maybe you value your family more than your career.
The next step here is to try to find out why you feel that way.
There can be many factors external to yourself that are influencing this feeling of guilt.
Maybe you just have FOMO (fear of missing out),
or your family has ingrained a value system in you that says work should always come second.
To get a clearer picture of what valuing something really entails, it helps to read
a little on the various reasons why one might want to prioritize something over the other.
We are rarely aware of all the reasons one or the other might be a good idea.
Just a few searches will yield several reasons for either choice.
When reading these, don’t just think about which reasons sound more appealing,
think about what feels right to you.
These will often have a lot to do with what your goals in life are.
Are you really ready to sacrifice personal success to have a stronger bond with your family?
Or would you rather focus on your career
while ensuring your family is important, but not paramount?
Thinking in this way will prevent you from repeating the earlier cycle of
simply having imbibed certain values from your surroundings
without really considering what matters most to you.
Values (and the identity that comes with them) are not abstract.
They are real, lived things, out there in the world.
They express themselves in actions and choices.
True, they may not always be expressed perfectly all the time.
But the intention is to live by them.
They are a yardstick by which to measure your life, whether you achieve that standard or not.
This is why it’s more effective to look at your actual life in action when considering values,
rather than just sitting down with a piece of
paper and pulling nice-sounding ideas out of your imagination.
Remember, we are striving for the real self, and not just another false self.
Now that we’ve seen what value-discovery isn’t (it’s not about goals, other people’s opinions,
or switching out one false self for another one), we can look more closely at what it is.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to bring you closer.
STEP ONE: CLEAR YOUR MIND
If we wish to fill ourselves up with something new,
we first need to pour out all the old that’s already there, and start fresh.
We need to let go of any bias, expectations, or preconceived notions.
Being fixed in our thinking, we can imagine we already know the answer
to everything—but this understandably undermines the process of discovery.
You really need to trust that there is something for you to learn,
something unknown out there that you are willing to encounter openly.
It’s difficult, but try to drop (at least temporarily)
any preconceived ideas about who you are.
Your conscious mind may want to jump in and tell you a narrative
(“you’re an introvert, you’re a worrier, you’re XYZ”), but set these aside and
give some space for your unconscious mind to come to the fore and see new possibilities.
We have all been taught which values are “better” than others—we
need to forget this lesson if we want to find our own values for ourselves!
STEP TWO: START A LIST
Remember that values aren’t chosen, they’re clarified.
Trust that you already have them, you just have to discover them.
You don’t want to inadvertently write down
a list of all the things that other people expect you to be.
Scan the list given earlier and see if any of them spark your interest.
If not quite, how could you tweak them so they seem more valuable in your opinion?
When compiling a list, start broadly and don’t censor yourself.
Add anything that strikes you as important.
You might begin by writing “love,” but on further reflection, tease that out a bit more.
What kind of love, and why?
You might decide that what you really value is brotherly love,
friendships, belonging to a community.
You could then put “community” on the list and see if that spurs any further values.
As you go, draw on both your best and worst life memories to guide you, as described above.
The moments you felt most yourself—what was happening, and what were you doing?
The moments when you felt frustrated, violated, disappointed, or uncomfortable—what
was not happening, and what does this tell you about the feelings you hold dear?
You might recall the greatest day of your life so far, the birth of your first child.
In thinking about why this felt so amazing, you jot a few more notes on your list.
You realize that you felt a deep,
deep sense of purpose knowing that you now had someone to look after.
You examine those feelings of hope, of dedication, of amazement.
You realize that being a parent satisfies some of your core values—selfless love,
belonging, trust, and hope for the future.
Ask yourself questions to dig closer toward those things in life that bring a sense of meaning.
What makes a good day good?
What makes you proud and grateful?
What makes life worth living (i.e. you’d be miserable without it)?
Look not only at the standards you hold for yourself, but those you hold for others.
What is a deal breaker for you in your relationships?
What is your idea of a person not living a meaningful and purposeful life?
STEP THREE: PULL IT ALL TOGETHER
Eventually, you should have a long list of things you value.
Though all of these things are important,
they can probably be distilled down to a few main core values.
Read over the notes you’ve made and see if you can group them into chunks.
For example, “community,” “friendship,” and “compassion for others” have a lot in common,
as do “independence,” “freedom to follow my own path,” and “part-time employment.”
Remember, you are not judging anything you have on the list.
If you genuinely identify it as a value, put it down.
If, on further reflection, you really don’t care all that much
about innovation or winning awards, then leave them out.
As you work (without attachment or judgment!), you should start seeing some clarity emerge.
As much as you can, try to connect these ideas to real life—are
these values you’ve actually experienced before meaningful,
or have you just been raised or socialized to assume that you want them?
Once you have some clusters of values,
see if you can dig deep and identify the main theme uniting them all.
In our examples above, friendship, compassion,
and community all have one thing in common: the joy of shared human connection.
Take your time with this—what is it, really,
that makes all of the things on your list so appealing to you?
STEP FOUR: RANK YOUR VALUES
Some people might find that, even after clustering, they’re still left with a big list.
But, life is filled with choices, and since we are limited,
we are often called on to choose between two important and worthwhile things.
This is why we need to clarify further and prioritize our values.
You now want to whittle down to those essential values that you absolutely cannot live without.
The most fundamental, most basic needs of yours,
without which you’d be completely lost, miserable, or pointless.
Even if you can identify a few of these, try to choose between five and
ten values that you feel neatly capture the dimensions of what’s most important to you.
Then, rank them in order of importance.
You might do this in ten minutes or find you need a few days to really contemplate it deeply.
Use your feelings as a guide, and remember not to rush—you are setting aside everything you know
about your false self so that you can meet the acquaintance of your real self—that takes time!
STEP FIVE: LET YOUR VALUES COME ALIVE
If you write something like “physical health and fitness” as a core value,
it may seem a little abstract.
Time to embed this sentiment out in the real world and put it into context!
You want to put these newly discovered core
values into a shorthand form that will inspire you every time you look at it,
and remind you precisely of the best things in life—according to your most authentic self.
For the person valuing physical fitness, a single beautiful image of a ballet dancer
in a powerful leaping pose, mid-flight, might capture the essence of what you value so much:
pushing against the limits of human physicality
to find beauty and expression in the joy of having a living, moving body.
Or, you might find that a certain phrase or quote captures your core value better,
a bit like a mission statement.
Find a stimulus that triggers a strong emotional reaction—it’s these emotions that point you in the
right direction and speak more directly to your inner self than any dry, abstract language could.
STEP SIX: TRY THEM ON FOR SIZE
No, you’re not done quite yet!
Value discovery is an ongoing process.
Once you’ve identified and condensed your core values, see how they fit out in real life.
Leave the list for a while and come back to it, seeing how it feels.
Do you feel comfortable, in alignment,
and clear ... or are some things still not quite feeling like “you”?
Look for the hidden voice of your parents, your culture,
etc., and ask whether they’ve been swaying your list or the way you rank things.
If your intuition pipes up, listen to what it says.
This may sometimes feel like vague, flimsy work, but rest assured that
you are exploring exciting new realms that many people never give themselves permission to enter.
And that’s that.
Your core values distilled into a concentrated essence that tells
you a lot about who you are as a person, and helps you answer a range of questions from,
“What should I do?” to, “What do I want right now?”
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