ARE you living your life in accordance with your values?
Your values form the foundation of your life.
They dictate the choices you make and determine the direction that your life takes.
Your values will influence your decisions related to your relationships, career, and other activities you engage in.
Despite this importance, few people choose their values.
Instead, they simply adopt the values of their parents and the dominant values of society.
In all likelihood, the values that you internalized as a child remain with you through adulthood (yes, in some cases, people reject the values of their upbringings).
Unfortunately, these values may also have created a life that is carrying you down a path that is not the direction you want to go at this point in your life.
What were the values you were raised with?
What values are you presently living in accordance with?
Are they the same or different?
Do your values bring you happiness?
These are essential questions that you must ask if you are to find meaning, happiness, success, and connection in your life.
Yet, finding the answers to these questions is a challenge, and then changing them in a way that will lead to fulfillment is an even greater challenge.
What did your parents value and what values did they impress upon you -- achievement, wealth, education, religion, status, independence, appearance?
Think back to your childhood and ask yourself several questions.
What values were emphasized in the way your parents lived their lives?
What values were stressed in your family?
What values were reflected in the way you were rewarded or punished?
What do you do for a living?
Are you a corporate employee, a business owner, a teacher, salesperson, caterer, or social worker?
A common question that people in social gathering ask is, "What do you do for a living?"
Periodically, I have seen people get rather defensive in response to this question.
They say, "Who cares what I do.
What I do is not who I am."
Assuming people have choices in the career paths they take, which they choose, reflects of who they are and what they value.
For example, though a bit of a generalization, it is probably safe to say that someone who becomes an investment banker has different values than someone who becomes an elementary school teacher.
What those underlying values might be may vary, but one might assume that the investment banker values money, while the teacher values education and helping children.
Where do you live -- do you live in a high-rise apartment in a city, in the suburbs, or in the country -- and what values led you there?
What activities do you engage in most -- cultural, physical, religious, political, social -- and what values are reflected in those activities?
What do you talk about mostly -- politics, religion, the economy, other people -- and what does that tell you about your values?
Finally, perhaps the most telling question reflecting what you value is: What do you spend your money on -- a home, cars, travel, clothing, education, art, charity?
Because money is a limited resource for most people, they will use their money in ways that they value most.
Over and above what people say and other indicators in their life, where they spend their hard-earned money says the most about their values.
You can then ask yourself whether your current values are the same as those you grew up with.
Have you gone through a period of examination and reconsideration?
Have you consciously chosen to discard some values from your upbringing and adopt new ones?
You can see whether those values contribute to your dissatisfaction or bring you happiness.
Look at which aspects of your life contribute to your unhappiness -- your career, marriage, lifestyle -- and ask yourself what values underlie those parts of your life.
One of the most powerful ways in which this "value" was impressed on you was in how you learned to define success.
Popular culture typically defines success as winning, wealth, status, physical appearance, and popularity -- the more money and power you have and the more attractive and popular you are, the more successful you would be.
Growing up with these definitions, success was largely unattainable for most people.
At the same time, our culture made losing even more intolerable to contemplate -- being poor, powerless, unattractive, and unpopular is simply unacceptable.
With these restrictive definitions, you may have believed, like so many others, that you were caught in the untenable situation of having little opportunity for success and great chance for failure.
Some of life's decisions are really about determining what you value most.
When many options seem reasonable, it's helpful and comforting to rely on your values and use them as a strong guiding force to point you in the right direction.
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