The Value of Core Values

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The sec­ond key ele­ment of the eight key life ele­ments to con­sider when design­ing a new authen­tic lifestyle is Val­ues.

Val­ues guide us. They help deter­mine what is impor­tant to us in our lives and the full com­pli­ment of our val­ues is unique to each and every indi­vid­ual. They estab­lish the degree of impor­tance we place on peo­ple, behav­iors, objects, loca­tions, beliefs, etc.

Iden­ti­fy­ing your val­ues pro­vides you with impor­tant infor­ma­tion that you can use to help design your authen­tic life.

There are any num­ber of things that you could iden­tify as hav­ing value to you. For exam­ple, how impor­tant are the fol­low­ing to you. Are they only slightly impor­tant? Fairly impor­tant? or Very important?:

• enjoy­ment (How impor­tant is hav­ing fun at what you do?)
• help­ing other peo­ple; chil­dren; ani­mals; the environment
• friend­ships
• pro­tect­ing her­itage buildings
• free­dom
• recog­ni­tion
• cre­ativ­ity
• loca­tion
• achieve­ment
• power and authority
• vari­ety
• risk
• intel­lec­tual stimulation
• pub­lic contact
• secu­rity
• etc.

These are just a hand­ful of the issues that could have great value to you. Using the above list as a start­ing point, take some quiet time when you can be undis­turbed by other peo­ple, pets, phones, etc. Relax and iden­tify your core or crit­i­cal val­ues. When you feel that you have iden­ti­fied all of your core or crit­i­cal val­ues, cre­ate the fol­low­ing three lists for yourself:

• I want the fol­low­ing out of life:
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• The most impor­tant cri­te­ria or stan­dards for my rela­tion­ships and activ­i­ties are:
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• Your five most impor­tant crit­i­cal or core val­ues are:
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Keep this list handy, there are six more key ele­ments to explore. In the next post, I will be pro­vid­ing some infor­ma­tion on the third key ele­ment in design­ing an authen­tic life — Your Moti­va­tors and Inter­ests.

Return to the begin­ning of the 8 Key Ele­ments That Make Up An Authen­tic Life series.