Why You Need To Know Your Core Values

Formulating your values gives you a strong tool to move toward inner peace.

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The point of view that you function from can act to further or hinder the peace that you experience with another.

You can choose, for example, to come from the assumption of goodwill, that you and the other person are on the same side, and that there is a connection of support where each wants the best for the other. Or you can assume that you have to be on guard and ready to defend yourself and that you are both separate entities with competing needs and wants.

Recently a reader of our blog shared this comment, “I really needed to get this message today because I was tempted to interpret someone’s actions as antagonistic. I was at a crossroad when I read your words and then I could see that I was just assuming the worst.”

As you grow, you gain more skill in how you approach your relationships. It is very helpful if, when you start to get a feeling that something is off in a situation, to look inside yourself before pointing the finger at the other person. Ask yourself, “Is this the way I am looking at the situation or is there something there that doesn’t fit with my inner sense of the right path?”

The way you look at things is often reflective of your core values. Understanding core values and learning what yours are is foundational to creating peaceful harmonious relationships. The more you are aware of those values and can bring your approach to interactions in line with them, the truer you will be to yourself and the feeling of inner peace that brings.

Your core values are those upon which you base your life, your actions and decisions, even when you are not clearly aware of what they are. This can occur because values are often felt rather than thought, and as a result, you may not have put them into words for yourself. And yet they are so critical to your life, inner peace, and all your relationships.

A knowledge and understanding of what yours are can be a great tool for creating mutual solutions to disagreements and misunderstandings in your relationships. It can help in finding a more fulfilling way of applying them to what you do and how you do it in your life. It is helpful to set aside time to take a deep dive into what yours are and formulate them for yourself. This is difficult because we also have all sorts of other feelings that have been socially acquired, and it is hard to distinguish the two. One clue is that social responses tend to be in your mind, and your inner responses can be physically felt. When you have done this, it will give you the opportunity to reflect on whether and how you put them into action.

Once you are aware of your core values, those most central to who you are, you can take a look at your relationships in terms of how much your partner, friends, and even relatives have matching values. It is a critical factor for creating peace and mutual solutions in your relationships, as well as evaluating what you want and what is possible in any given relationship. For deep intimate relationships, a match of core values is very important. Matching means they fit together, are the same or complementary, and are not opposed.

Working with this knowledge will help you to understand areas that may be causing a feeling of disconnection or discomfort in any given relationship. It will also enable you to look at things that appear to be causing problems even though they are not a conflict of values. When this is the case, ask yourself, “If this is not opposed to my core values, why is it disturbing me so much?” Prioritizing issues according to their alignment with your values can help you learn things about yourself and work on areas that may be getting in the way of peaceful relating.

Formulating your values and having an ever-increasing awareness of what they are gives you a strong tool to move toward inner peace and peace within your relationships. The more you know your values and know what they are on a visceral level, the easier you will find it to build relationships that bring satisfaction and fulfillment.

Photo credit: Shawn Duex
Photo note: Statue of Liberty, NYC

Originally published at https://philandmaude.com on January 21, 2024.