Defining the word values and identifying my own personal values has brought me hours of anquish and I still do not believe I have an absolute handle on it.
Values are things in our lives that excite us, that identify us, that make us feel good, brings contentment to us, are natural tendencies, are important to us, essentially are the core of who we are. In other words, the word values could be defined as the beliefs, attitudes, and principles that drive our natural behaviour.
Our instructor conducted an exercise to help us define our values. He had us start with a list of 25 descriptors of possible values. Words like courage, health, power, loyalty, learn, service, looks, expertness, faith, communication, wealth, security.
We then began to widdle this list down. Remove four that we could do without. Ok, now another four we could do without. On and on until we only had five left. These five remaining should give us an idea of who we really are, what drives us.
When the top 3 for almost everyone was similar; faith, love, family, it made me think of a concept I had learned years ago in Psych 101 called Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs. Were these top three values actually needs instead of values since they were so important to most everyone?
My top two were Faith and Family. I didn’t list Love seperately because for me love is what faith and family are all about.
My next three, I am already questioning. I combined Health & Fitness as my third value, Adventure as my fourth value, and Acheivement as my fifth value. My question is: Is health & fitness actually only interests of mine and possibly not an actual value?
I am wondering this because values probably should not change over time. Once upon a time health & fitness was not important to me. Do I satisfy my values of adventure and acheivement through my interest in health & fitness?
Now that I’ve decided Health & Fitness doesn’t truly belong as a value, then Adventure moves to #3 and Acheivement moves to #4. I’m good with that! Now I need to figure out what #5 is! I’m going back to my original list of 25 and start widdling again. I’ll let you know what I come up with.
A Journey in Leadership 