What Do You Value?

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, 
Your thoughts become your words, 
Your words become your actions, 
Your actions become your habits, 
Your habits become your values, 
Your values become your destiny.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

 

It is an interesting thing to start really thinking about what you value.  If you think about valuing something for a minute...if something is valuable to you, typically one would care for it, keep it safe, cherish it, perhaps display it in a prominent place, take pride in it, maybe even show off a little because you are so proud to have it.  

How do you "show off" your personal (or family) values?  How do the things you believe, think, say and do come together as a representation of what you value?  

Defining your personal values was the Week 2 task for the Simplify Your Life challenge. And it was hard!  For me, it was a chance to think about closing the gap between the type of person I want to be and the type of person I am.  I have days where my thoughts and words and actions might lead some to believe that I am someone who values conflict or covets disharmony.  Not really words that I want to "become my destiny".  

By figuring out what it really is that I value - and not what my friends value or what I think I should value, but what really speaks to me as important enough to play a starring role in my life - I feel that I have a good foundation to almost work my way backwards through Ghandi's words to some extent. 

Values and Beliefs are somewhat connected in my mind and once these are clarified, shaping your thoughts and words and actions and habits in order to reflect these has the potential to bring about huge change - for the better - in your life.  

So where to begin?  Deb, from Home Life Simplified, offered this graphic as a starting point for narrowing down your values.  (Click on image for PDF version from HLS website).

 

The words that stood out to me: 

 

 

So, from Deb's big list, I "narrowed" it down to a list of 17.  The task, however, was to FOCUS on five. Five! Yes, harder than you might think!   So, after some thought and inner discussion, here are the five value words that I choose to represent who I am and who I want to be this year:

 

My five words:

 

Intentional: I want to make sure that I am doing things 'on purpose' or 'with a purpose' rather than because I have always done things one way or because I am bored or tired.  I think that when you set out to intentially do something, it is much more likely to happen. 

Happiness: I want to focus on bringing more happiness into my life.  Don't expect me to skip to work or spout sunshine when I open my mouth, but I am going to intentionally choose happiness over anger or frustration or moodiness. 

Gratitude: I have been reading a lot about the power of gratitude and of intentionally looking for ways to be thankful and to show your appreciation of others.  I want to see what happens when I choose to focus on this - and I have a great new book to do it in! 

Devotion: To God, my husband, my dog, my job, my household chores, my exercise routine, this challenge, eating healthy food, sleeping well, drinking water, staying on top of school work, updating my blog....

Patience: This is my biggie (save the best to last, right?).  There are times when everything I just wrote will fly out the window and all because I lose patience - inanimate objects or people - and become overly frustrated, usually disproportionate to the lack of patience one might expect in that moment.  Additionally, I often want things to happen when I want them to happen and yet, the world does not operate on my time schedule but its own good time.  And I need to accept that and be patient. 

 

What do you value?

 

Comments

[Squid Mom]

I always loved that Mahatma Gandhi quote and your post made me think on it. I guess we do have the power to chose what we want to place importance on. I enjoyed reading this a lot.

[Kim Liebich]

You go girl! You inspire us all.

[Lyndaal]

ohhhi really enjoyed this post - i love the quote you started with and the pics you used :) intentional really struck a chord with me - it is something that has been on my mind the past few weeks