Day 8: Discover Your Values

Today you will learn what values are, why values are important to have for living a life of purpose, and the how to process for uncovering your values.

Summary

What are Values?

Values are collective meanings that society has agreed upon and guide what we pay attention to as a collective.

• Meaning is to the individual, what values are to the collective.
• There is no such thing as a universal meaning of life but only the unique meanings of the individual situations.
• However, we must not forget that among these situations there are also situations which have something in common, and consequently there are also meanings which are shared by human beings across society and, even more, throughout history.
• The possession of values alleviates man’s search for meaning, because at least in typical situations he is spared making decisions.
• But, he has also to pay for this relief, for in contrast to the unique meanings pertaining to unique situations it may well be that two values collide with one another.

Values are passed down to you by your parents, teachers, and elders in society, teaching you how to navigate the world. But as times change, values must also change to adapt to the new world.

• And because of this, we often disagree with values based on our own personal meaning. We discover that we have to define those values for ourselves and begin ranking our values to what's most important to us.

Why are Values important to purpose?

Having a shared cultural system and hierarchy of values, stabilizes human interaction.

• In the absence of such a system, people simply cannot act.
• It's hard to perceive without values because both action and perception require a goal and a valid goal is by necessity, something that's valued.

We experience much of our positive emotion in relation to goals where we see ourselves progressing.

• The very idea of progression implies value, because you are moving towards a more valuable state.
• Without a system of value, humans experience pain, anxiety, chaos, hopelessness and despair.

Unless we are consciously aware of our values, we may let them lead us in places we don't want to go.

• Consciousness is what's going to help you understand yourself and see where you go against collective values, where your meaning is different than societies.
• An individual's consciousness commands him to do something which contradicts what is preached by the society to which the individual belongs.
• The unique meaning of today is the universal value of tomorrow. This is the way religions and ideologies are created and how values evolve.

Knowing your values also helps you make decisions in life, including big, life altering decisions and small everyday choices.

• One of the best ways to live a meaningful life is to align your short-term actions with your long-term values, making your future self proud of your present self.

How to discover your Values

There are two reasons people don't understand their values:

• First, we don’t stop to question what they are, and so our values are shaped by pop culture, the media, and the influence of others.
• Second, we don’t understand that some values are more important than others. And many values are in fact not values at all, which means they get in the way of what's truly important to us.

First Exercise: Create a Ranked List of Values

• First, use the list of values from Personal Values to start brainstorming the values that are extremely important to you.
• Second, rank your values from most important to least important. This will give you a framework for making decisions when two values come in conflict.
• Finally, be clear what each value means to you.
• If you wish, you can also use their free assessment tool to help with the process.

Second Exercise: Values Worksheet by the Minimalists

• Use the worksheet to identify the different values as described by the Minimalists.
• Foundational values: your unshakeable principles, the things that will always remain the same.  
• Structural values: things that are very personal to you
• Surface values: little minor things that make your life better, but it's okay if they're not existing in your life.
• Imaginary values: these are the obstacles and things that actually get in your way and may be values that are being placed upon you by society, something that you don't actually agree with.

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Activity

Use either exercise above to create a list of values you identify with and ranking them in order to make decisions in the future.

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.