Living Your Values
Why do we have to live our values? We have to because, if not for anything else, our values set the tone, and direction of how we navigate the steering of our lives. It guides as a GPS in unfamiliar areas of life and people. It enables us to make the right choices, decisions, and everything in between that is in alignment with our personal beliefs and worldviews.
It is when we live our values that we live our real, organic, and authentic life. We live to be who we are and not what people expect us to be. We live from inside out and not from outside in, as so many people do when they abandoned or compromised their values.
Living Your Life Values Requires Action
Without any doubt, it is one thing for a person to know his or her values and quite another thing to live your life based on those values. More so, in these days of conflicting voices and arguments against moral principles. You need to take a stand, take action to practice, profess and practice what you believe, that is to the common good.
What core values do you have? By that I mean what is or are your beliefs about your personal life, and the world? What are the things you value most about life? What are the things that are really important to you as a parent, partner, leader, politician?
Make a List of Your Life Values
One of the best ways to know or identify your values is to name them, list them out and arrange them in their other of utmost importance. And why you consider the value, belief, the principle to be precious to you, and to others.
Create the list, study it and filter it as you analyze each value. For instance, if you value faith, ask yourself why do I have to live my life based on faith principles? What are the benefits and risks? Does living by faith add any meaning to my life?
These are the kind of critical questions to ask yourself to filter and challenge and scrutinize your values so that when you finally adopt whatever values, beliefs, you can be able to abide by them and defend them anywhere. Evaluate, filter, make a list, analyze, and adopt.
As for me, it’s about faith, spirituality in terms of my religious belief and practice, and ethics. I can’t tell you how important these values are to my overall well-being. They are like a light unto my feet. They guide my thought, my choices, decisions, actions in any situation.
Living Your Values, Gives Your Life Direction, and Purpose
Living your values will enable you to learn how to handle life situations. It will give direction to your life by leading you to lead a purpose driven life. Rather than being blown around by every wind of change. When everything around you is shaking, and changing, when it seems that nothing makes sense anymore, it is the life values and internalized beliefs that provide you an anchor.
Take, for instance, we live in a world where the self is elevated, where individualism is endorsed, if you have compassion as one of your values, the principles you live by, you must dare to show it by your personal actions towards those who are suffering injustice, poverty, or sick. We are called to be our brothers’ keeper; but I tell you, it takes having the values you want to live for to respond positively to such. This is not necessarily based on religious beliefs.
Having a firm understanding of what your core moral values are, will definitely give meaning, and happiness to you. Because they are the guiding principles in which you based your day-to-day life activities. Consequently, your core values will shape your behaviors, actions, relationships, career, and everyday decisions.
Why because, you will always filter what you need from what you want. You will avoid living a conflicted life because you have a clear knowledge of who you are and what you want out of life, and what you want your life to be about. That’s why, in one of my earlier posts, I talked about self-awareness and its benefits. Living a self-aware life helps you in knowing your values and living your values accordingly.
Your Beliefs and Values Can be Tested
These days, it’s as if every foundation, values, principles, and beliefs are going through some sort of testing. And maybe some people don’t realize that you can’t practice your beliefs in a vacuum. As I look at how things are going today in people’s lives, families, and societies in general, I begin to wonder what the future holds for humanity if things continue this way. It is a situation that calls for people to live a life guided by values and not to leave things by chance or take their life values for granted.
Living a life of compassion, empathy, honesty, faith, love, respect, ethics, and so forth will produce positive effects, instead of the level of negativity and chaos we experience today.
Helping Others Who Deserve Our Help
This concept of helping the under trodden right from time has received spiritual, and philosophical, and social acceptance. Hence, the inscription for the Statue of Liberty,
“ Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the gold door.!” –EMMA LAZARUS
Does that sound like what politicians of today believe and practice? I wonder. How about you and me, and all the people of faith, whatever religion you subscribe to. Are we becoming weary in doing good? I mean, unless we develop the desire, the zeal in ourselves to include the need or the wellbeing of others; our beliefs will atrophy and dry up inside us, as a result of lack of circulation of genuine love and compassion circulating through our religiosity.
How Uncomfortable Do We Feel About the Challenging Times Facing Us
This is the time that calls for collective efforts to tackle some threatening needs facing humanity today. The need for truth, for peace, for Godly fear, and the need for selfless leadership. Hence the clarion call to live your values as an individual. Let us be the change we expect to see. The need to deemphasized greediness, worship of materialism over the worship of the giver of life. We got to learn how to adjust our minds, to open up our hearts to accommodate, help, support in kind or service.
And we also have to remind the political leaders what the Statue of Liberty stands for, and what the heartbeat of God is about. We can’t afford to be indifferent and expect things to get better. People are becoming bitter for different reasons. Are we really seeing the handwriting on the wall?THE NEED FOR SELF-AWARENESS
Let People of Goodwill Be Bold to Stand for the Truth
Decidedly, let us learn how to summon up courage to speak truth to powers. God is no respecter of persons. He hates wickedness, dishonesty, lies, and greed. We have to stand up for the truth. The truth of knowing that we are all immigrants and strangers on earth. The truth of being our brother’s keeper, the truth of helping the needy to survive, the truth of not closing our eyes and hearts against the suffering families, a starving child, homeless people, and any form of injustice.
It is very easy and normal at these days of difficulties and uncertainties, for some people to cultivate their secret gardens of success, abundance, good investment returns and never open their wallets, or their gates to others who are struggling. I want to motivate us with this line of thought this morning that for us to live a spiritually healthy life, or even to be politically correct in our thinking and actions, we have to have empathy; we have to show compassion to others.
We can’t allow the virus of self-absorption, or party absorption, to spread because it can be as deadly as the COVID-D19. And the only cure for it is to have the heart of compassion towards one another. Let there be healing, hope, love, forgiveness, and decency in our lives and in the land! https://goop.com/wellness/mindfulness/at-home-wellness-routines/
“You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.” –ELDRIDGE GLEAVER
Take Away From
Some of us today have put our personal values and beliefs to be questioned, Why? Because of our love for position, power, money, and so forth. And we know it, but we try to silence the inner voice reminding us of the slippery slope we are.
Be courageous to live your values, I know that there is a special kind of happiness, power, confidence, and meaning when you practice what you believe, and live according to your inner convictions. As a result of speaking the truth, and holding unto your core beliefs, if they are based on moral principles. But if, as time goes on and you realized that some of your beliefs are wrong, you have the freedom to seek change.
I am really passionate about the topic of self-improvement and I’m always happy to check another self-improvement blog. Values are important to follow as you say. I think they are also important when choosing a partner, to have shared values. Without any doubt it is one thing to know your values and another thing to live according to your values, as you say. It also always important to review your values. Values are also important because they serve as filters to evaluate one’s decisions and future actions.
For me too it’s about faith and spirituality. These values are very important for me. They guide my actions and decisions. Living according to your values gives you mental peace. It gives direction to ones life. Values are especially important is times of big change.
Wow, I love this! This is an excellent input, candidly stated.
Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Very delighted to read your response to
this post. Thank you so much for amplifying my thought on this topic. I think that you and I can quickly agree that many people are no longer living their values, hence the conflicts and lack of mental peace, confusion, and chaos we see today. But the good news is that we can recover, we can make a U-turn and ask ourselves the hard questions of Who am I? What am I living for? What do I want to be remembered for? We have a purpose, and God has a blueprint for each and every one of us.
Please, let’s keep connected!