Core Values
How your family can live with purpose and intention.
Having a Life Purpose
Having a life purpose is like a lighthouse. Whenever we get lost in the fog, we can look to the lighthouse for guidance. When we get off the path, a life-purpose can center us and bring us back on the journey we have decided that we want to take. Many people walk through life allowing circumstances to blow them around like a ship buffeted by the wind on a rough sea. Having a life-purpose allows us to pursue an intentional direction. It brings us back when we get off course. It keeps us grounded when life bounces us through the highs and lows that inevitably come. To define my life-purpose I created a “Core Values” system.
Having a Family Purpose
My husband and I thought it was really important to have a unified value system for our family on top of our individual value system. This way we can all feel united and pull together towards a common goal.
Just like a business has a purpose and set of goals so should a family. If everyone isn’t on board and doesn’t pull in the same direction then the company won’t be very successful. It is the same with our families. The family is a special unit for growth and development.
If we want our children to be successful in life and in their vocations, where better to learn to do it? What a great way to teach your children that we can achieve our goals when we help each other and work together instead of against each other.
“The more successful the group is the more successful we to will be individually.”
Your kids can either learn this when they become adults and are forced to or they can learn it now while they’re young and use these skills to help develop them throughout their whole lives. Imagine what rock stars they’ll be having learned and implemented them at such a young age. It’ll be second nature to them.
We started by asking our kids a few questions:
What’s important to you?
What do you do that makes you feel good about yourself, makes you feel proud?
What characteristics in a person make you feel love?
What kind of person do you want to become when you’re older?
What kind of life do you want to have?
How do you want to be “seen” by the people you love, that matter most to you?
I told them to write down all the words that come to mind. It was so cool to see what unique needs and goals they each have. Some of the kids were more focused on fairness and being seen. Some kids were focused on how they can develop their talents and looked to the future. I was so excited to see them chart their path and see their little lives start to develop through this exercise.
After they had their big list of all their values I had them pick ten or so that are the most important to them, the ones that will really help them to define who they are and the life they want to live.
Next we talked about the importance of family and that home is a special place where we should all feel loved, safe, and a sense of belonging. When life gets hard, home should be the place where you retire to each day for relief from that hard day. It’s a place where you can re-fuel and be buoyed up so you can go out and tackle the next day. So we went around the table and asked them to say what they think our family should be about. What’s our purpose? What do we stand for? I wrote down all of our ideas and then we narrowed it down to our favorites.
Teaching with Core Values
This is really important because when my husband and I are faced with a teaching moment with one of our kids we often ask them “What core value does this affect?” If your core value is Education or college then not spending enough time on homework is going to detract from that. I tell them that I’m not always going to be around to help you make the right choice. You have to know for yourself what’s important to YOU. I’ve made my choices and I have to live with them, bad or good. You will too. I tell them that pretty soon they’ll be in high school and their friends will want you to hang out with them and try to convince you to blow off studying. “This is where you stop and weigh your options”. If you have a huge test the next day then hopefully you’ll think about your core value of getting into college and say “I can’t tonight. Let’s hang out this weekend after my test”.
“When you have a why you will plan for the how.”
Really re-iterate those core values. Talk about them a lot. Your kids will start to associate their values with who they are, they will start to become their identity. We revisit these values and have a “meeting” a few times a year. I want them to change them if they want. When they learn new things and find that new or different things are important to them then they should pivot and make adjustments.
PLEASE SHARE! “When you learn, teach when you get, give.” Words have power and make change only when they’re shared:)
