Your Core Self—Values and What They Mean for Your Life
Who you are and how you engage with the world can be influenced by a variety of factors. These may include your needs, what you want to achieve, the influence of others, and your reactions to events. But the most significant driver of your identity and behavior should be your own values and worldview. For some, these might be, to some extent, influenced or even dictated by authority figures, e.g., parents, religion, or other individuals or groups with a creed or specific set of values that you have been expected to follow. However, it is important to live according to your own values and be true to yourself. Only by doing this can you live genuinely.
Core values
A great way to better understand who you are is by getting specific about your core values. Some people only have a vague sense of what is important to them and what they’re passionate about. By being specific and exploring those values, you can get to know your essential self, and you’ll be able to act on those values in a more authentic way. I’ve thought a lot about my own core values (peace, civility, integrity, personal health, a healthy environment, mutual aid, and creative expression), and as I’ve gotten older, they’ve solidified in my mind and in who I am. They both influence and are influenced by how I see the world and my place in it (my worldview). Whenever I’m struggling with something or someone, I go back to these values and what they mean to me. They help me to chart the path I follow in my life and ensure I don’t wander too far off of that path.
How to discover and understand your values
If you feel you’re unsure of what your values are or how to incorporate them into your life, there are tools that can help you explore them. Here is a good approach for identifying and incorporating your values by Meg Selig. The following is a distillation of her ideas:
- Explore a list of values and get a sense of which ones resonate with you or get you excited. Here is a good list to start with. Scan the list and pay attention to the values that catch your eye, get you excited, and make you think.
- Think about people you admire and love and reflect on what makes them special to you. What is it about them that draws you to them? What do you admire about them?
- Be aware of yourself. Pay attention to how you react to the events and people in your life and consider what these reactions mean in terms of your values.
- Recall the best and worst moments in your life. These moments can often tell you more about yourself than everyday moments. Why were the great moments great? What about them made them so gratifying to you? What was it about the worst moments that made them so bad?
Once you have a sense of your values, a great way to explore them and how they fit into your life is by creating a personal creed. Developing a creed means writing down your values and what they mean to your life. These can be big-picture ideals as well as practical perspectives for everyday actions and decisions. Your creed is a way to put your values into practice and make them meaningful to you in the way you live your life.
Affecting change
When your values don’t align with what you see around you, you may be motivated to try to change conditions to be more consistent with your vision, based on your values. In a free society, there are a whole host of opportunities to affect change. These include marches and protests, social media, advocacy organizations, and the voting booth. However, not everyone is meant to be an activist on the front lines, and there are many ways to change the world. The most basic way is by living according to the ideals of your values—to affect change through your example. If you engage with the world in a way that is true to your ideals, people will see that and take notice.
My approach to change includes trying to engage with others according to my values and through my work. I’ve been very happy to have a profession in which I can have an impact on the way people interact with the natural environment. I also try to incorporate my values into my writing. Although this blog does not take political stances or address specific issues, it does provide a perspective that is consistent with my values and share that perspective broadly. My values are also part of my creative expression through poetry and music.
Having a good sense of your values and living a life that is aligned with those values will give you a solid foundation and help you stay grounded. Staying true to yourself is a vital aspect of living a meaningful life.
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Artwork by Daria Zaseda
