Are you living by your values?

I’ve had some interesting conversations recently on the topic of values, and based on anecdotal evidence from these conversations, it seems that a lot of people are not living by their values and are stuck in the “hamster wheel” of life, doing things that make them unhappy.

What makes it worse is that these people seem to be resigned to their lot in life, even if it is going against their values.

It made me a little sad for humanity when I reflected on how hard it is to not be able to live by your values. It seems that I am one of the fortunate few that has the luxury of living my life and making decisions based on my values. Reflecting back on my adult life and career, I believe that I have made most of my significant decisions, especially work and career related ones based on my values.

When you live your life by your values, there are often compromises to be made, as being too rigid in your values will not work in the modern world. I like to think of it as taking a balanced view as this allows me to flex my values as needed. I do however have a very clear boundary line that I won’t cross so that my values are not compromised.

A quick look on Google for the definition of values returns a definition as “principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life”. Both are important in modern society and the latter, I believe, a guide to life’s personal decisions.

It is my belief that your values shape who you are and how you behave in the world and if you don’t live by your values (or don’t know what they even are), you are at the mercy of others, like litter being blown around in the wind.

If you don’t know what your core values are, I really recommend that you take the time to identify them as they can give you clarity on how you approach and live life. You can run a search on Google for ‘personal values’ and it will find lots of sites that can help you identify your values, by following some simple steps.

For those of you who are in a situation where you are not able to live your values, perhaps through demands of work, I strongly recommend that, in order to preserve your sanity and humanity, you adopt suitable countermeasures to help redress the balance.

For those of you that are curious, my core values are integrity, honesty and authenticity and these values shape my views and behaviours.

I first published this article on LinkedIn on September 14, 2016.