Clarify Your Values
One Universe made up of all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of Being, and one Law, the Reason, shared by all thinking creatures, and one Truth.
MARCUS AURELIUS
One of the most important characteristics of leaders, and of the most successful people in every area of life, is that they know who they are, what they believe in, and what they stand for. Most people are confused about their goals, values, and ideals, and as a result, they go back and forth and accomplish very little. Men and women who become leaders, on the other hand, with the same or even fewer abilities and opportunities, go on to great accomplishments in whatever they attempt.
Life is lived from the inside out. The very core of your personality is your values. Your values are what make you the person you are. Everything you do on the outside is dictated and determined by your values on the inside, whether clear or fuzzy. The greater clarity you have regarding your values on the inside, the more precise and effective will be your actions on the outside.
The Five Levels of Personality
You can imagine your personality by thinking of a target with concentric rings. Your personality is made up of five rings, starting from the center with your values and radiating outward to the next circle, your beliefs.
Your values determine your beliefs about yourself and the world around you. If you have positive values, such as love, compassion, and generosity, you will believe that people in your world are deserving of these values and you will treat them accordingly.
Your beliefs, in turn, determine the third ring of your personality, your expectations. If you have positive values, you will believe yourself to be a good person. If you believe yourself to be a good person, you will expect good things to happen to you. If you expect good things to happen to you, you will be positive, cheerful, and future oriented. You will look for the good in other people and situations.
The fourth level of your personality, determined by your expectations, is your attitude. Your attitude will be an outward manifestation or reflection of your values, beliefs, and expectations. For example, if your value is that this is a good world to live in and your belief is that you are going to be very successful in life, you will expect that everything that happens to you is helping you in some way. As a result, you will have a positive mental attitude toward other people, and they will respond positively toward you. You will be a more cheerful and optimistic person. You will be someone who others want to work with and for, buy from and sell to, and generally help to be more successful. This is why a positive mental attitude goes hand in hand with great success in every walk of life.
The fifth ring, or level of your personality, is your actions. Your actions on the outside will ultimately be a reflection of your innermost values, beliefs, and expectations on the inside. This is why what you achieve in life and work will be determined more by what is going on inside of you than by any other factor.
As Within, So Without
You can tell how people think, most of the time, by looking at the conditions of their outer lives. A positive, optimistic, goal- and future-oriented person on the inside will enjoy a happy, successful, and prosperous life on the outside, most of the time.
Aristotle said that the ultimate aim or purpose of human life is to achieve your own happiness. You are the very happiest when what you are doing on the outside is congruent with your values on the inside. When you are living in complete alignment with what you consider to be good and right and true, you will automatically feel happy and positive about yourself and your world.
Your goals must be congruent with your values, and your values must be congruent with your goals. This is why clarifying your values is often the starting point to high achievement and peak performance. Values clarification requires that you think through what is really important to you in life. You then organize your entire life around these values.
Any attempt to live on the outside in a manner that contradicts the values you hold on the inside will cause you stress, negativity, unhappiness, pessimism, and even anger and frustration. Your chief responsibility to yourself in the creation of a great life is therefore for you to develop absolute clarity about your values in everything you do.
Know What You Really Want
Stephen Covey once said, “Be sure that, as you scramble up the ladder of success, it is leaning against the right building.” Many people work hard to achieve goals that they think they want only to find, at the end of the day, that they get no joy or satisfaction from their accomplishments. They ask, “Is this all there is?” This occurs when the outer accomplishment is not in harmony with their inner values. Don't let this happen to you.
Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This applies to your values as much as to any other area of your life. Values clarification is something you do on a “go-forward” basis. You continually stop the clock, like a timeout in a football game, and ask, “What are my values in this area?”
In Matthew 16:26, the Bible says, “For what [has] a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The happiest people in the world today are those who are living in harmony with their innermost convictions and values. The unhappiest people are those who are attempting to live in conflict with what they truly value and believe.
Trust Your Intuition
Self-trust is the foundation of greatness. Self-trust comes from listening to your intuition, to your “still, small voice” within. Men and women begin to become great when they begin to listen to their inner voices and absolutely trust that they are being guided by a higher power each step of the way.
Living in alignment with your true values is the royal road to self-confidence, self-respect, and personal pride. In fact, almost every human problem can be resolved by returning to your values. Whenever you experience stress of any kind, look into yourself and ask, “In what way am I compromising my innermost values in this situation?”
Watch Your Behavior
How can you tell what your values really are? The answer is simple. You always demonstrate your true values in your actions, and especially your actions under pressure. Whenever you are forced to choose between one behavior and another, you will always act consistent with what is most important and valuable to you at that moment.
Values, in fact, are organized in a hierarchy. You have a series of values, some of them very intense and important and some of them weaker and less important. One of the most important exercises you can engage in to determine who you really are and what you really want is to organize your values by priority. Once you are clear about the relative importance of your values, you can then organize your outer life so that it is in alignment with them.
Examine Your Past Behavior
There are some insightful ways to help you determine your true values. First of all, you can look at your past. How have you behaved under pressure in the past? What choices did you make with your time or money when you were forced to choose? Your answers will give you an indication of your predominant values at that time.
Dale Carnegie once wrote, “Tell me what gives a person his greatest feeling of importance, and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.”
What makes you feel important? What raises your self-esteem? What increases your sense of self-respect and personal pride? What have you accomplished in your past life that has given you the greatest sense of pride and satisfaction? These answers will give you good indications of your true values.
Determine Your Heart's Desire
The spiritual teacher Emmet Fox wrote about the importance of discovering your “heart's desire.” What is your heart's desire? What is it that, deep down in your heart, more than anything else, you would like to be, have, or do in life? As a friend of mine asks, “What do you want to be famous for?”
What words would you like people to use to describe you when you are not there? What would you like someone to say about you at your funeral? How would you want your family, friends, and children to remember you? How would you like people to talk to them about you?
What kind of a reputation do you have today? What kind of a reputation would you like to have sometime in the future? What would you have to begin doing today in order to create the kind of reputation that you desire?
Your Past Is Not Your Future
Many people had difficult experiences growing up. They fell on hard times and became associated with the wrong people. They behaved in ways that were illegal or socially unacceptable. Some were even convicted and sent to prison for their crimes. But at a certain point in life, they decided to change. They thought seriously about the kind of person that they wanted to be known as, and thought of, in the future. They decided to change their lives by changing the values that they lived by. By making these decisions and sticking to them, they changed their lives. And what others have done, you can do as well.
Remember: It doesn't matter where you're coming from; all that really matters is where you're going.
If you were already an outstanding person in every respect, how would you behave toward others? What sort of impression would you leave on others after you had met them and spoken with them? Imagine you could be a completely excellent person. How would you be different from who you are today?
How Much You Like Yourself
In psychology, your level of self-esteem determines your level of happiness. Self-esteem is defined as “how much you like yourself.” Your self-esteem, in turn, is determined by your self-image. This is the way you see yourself and think about yourself in your day-to-day interactions with others. Your self-image is shaped by your self-ideal. Your self-ideal is made up of your virtues, values, goals, hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
Here is what psychologists have discovered: The more your behavior in the moment is consistent with what you feel your ideal behavior should be, the more you like and respect yourself and the happier you are.
On the other hand, whenever you behave in a way that is inconsistent with your ideal of your very best behavior, you experience a negative self-image. You feel yourself to be performing below your best, below what you truly aspire to. As a result, your self-esteem and your level of happiness decrease.
Perform at Your Best
The moment that you begin walking, talking, and behaving in ways that are consistent with your highest ideals, your self-image improves, your self-esteem increases, and you feel happier about yourself and your world.
For example, whenever you are complimented or praised by another person, or given a prize or an award for an accomplishment, your self-esteem goes up, sometimes dramatically. You feel happy about yourself. You feel that your whole life is in harmony and that you are living congruent with your highest ideals. You feel important and valuable.
Your aim should be to deliberately and systematically create the circumstances that raise your self-esteem in everything you do. You should live your life as if you were already the outstanding person that you intend to be sometime in the future.
Know What You Believe
What are your values today with regard to your work and your career? Do you believe in the values of integrity, hard work, dependability, creativity, cooperation, initiative, ambition, and getting along well with people? People who live these values in their work are vastly more successful and more highly esteemed than people who do not.
What are your values with regard to your family? Do you believe in the importance of unconditional love, continuous encouragement and reinforcement, patience, forgiveness, generosity, warmth, and attentiveness? People who practice these values consistently with the important people in their lives are much happier than people who do not.
What are your values with regard to money and financial success? Do you believe in the importance of honesty, industry, thrift, frugality, education, excellent performance, quality, and persistence? People who practice these values are far more successful in their financial lives than those who do not, and they achieve their financial goals far faster as well.
What about your health? Do you believe in the importance of self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control with regard to diet, exercise, and rest? Do you set high standards for health and fitness and then work every day to live up to those standards? People who practice these values live longer, healthier lives than people who do not.
Think Only About What You Want
Remember, you become what you think about most of the time. Successful, happy people think about their values and how they can live and practice those values in every part of their lives every single day. The big payoff is that the more you live your life consistent with your values, the happier, healthier, more positive and energetic you will be.
Be True to Yourself
Perhaps the most important value of all is that of integrity. A billionaire once said to me, “Integrity is not so much a value in itself; it is rather the value that guarantees all the other values.”
This was a great insight for me! Once you have decided that you are going to live consistent with a value, your level of integrity determines whether or not you follow through on your commitment. The more you discipline yourself to live consistent with the very best you know, the greater is your level of personal integrity. And the higher your level of integrity, the happier and more powerful you will feel in everything you do.
Truly great men and women are always described as having high levels of integrity. They live their lives consistent with their highest values, even when no one is looking. Mediocre men and women, on the other hand, are always cutting corners and compromising their integrity, especially when no one is watching.
Live in Truth with Yourself and Others
Decide today to be a man or woman of honor. Resolve to tell the truth and to live in truth with yourself and others. Crystallize your values in each area of your life. Write them down. Think of how you would behave if you were living consistent with those values, and then refuse to compromise them for any reason.
Once you accept complete responsibility for your life and for everything that happens to you and then create an ideal picture of your perfect future and clarify your values, you are ready to begin setting clear, specific goals in every area of your life. You are now on the launching ramp and ready to take off toward the stars.
CLARIFY YOUR VALUES
1. Make a list of your three to five most important values in life today. What do you really believe in and stand for?
2. What qualities and values are you best known for today among the people who know you?
3. What do you consider to be the most important values guiding your relationships with others in your life?
4. What are your values regarding money and financial success? Are you practicing these values daily?
5. Describe your picture of an ideal person, the person you would most want to be if you had no limitations.
6. Write your own obituary to be read to your friends and family at your funeral, exactly as you would like to be remembered.
7. What changes could you make in your behavior today that would help you to live in greater harmony with your values?