What Do You Value?
We are mortals, with limited time on this planet. We have to sleep at night and most of us have to work to live. We have limited hours left in each day after taking care of our basic survival needs. That makes it absolutely vital to know what your priorities are. The more clear you are on what is truly important to you, the more persistently you can pursue those activities and defend against distractions that aim to steal your focus.
A friend of mine was in training to become a counselor. He needed “practice clients” and he asked me to be one of them. What he had me do first was send him a list of my top 5 values. It surprised me how long it took me to come up with my top 5 values, and when I did, I realized there were only really 3, because one of them I’d written 3 different ways (Freedom, Adventure, Wildness). From doing this exercise I could see that my values were the driving force of my life. I travel and make music videos around the world, and I teach business where I talk about creating the financial freedom to pursue your own great adventure.
When you look at your own values, how are they present in your life? Have they directly guided you to where you are now, or do you feel you’ve strayed from your core values?
One of my core values was Original Creativity. As a musician, writer, and teacher this is the value that guides every song, article, and lesson. Is this original? Are these my own thoughts and feelings? Is this unique and new to the world? That’s the primary criteria I use to judge my music, writing and teaching because that is my core artistic value.
In a world with so much noise and so many people imposing their views on you, (including me right now) it is vital for you to create your own value structure, and live by it. Nobody can tell you what should be important to you, except for you.
I got a birthday card from a friend on my 30th birthday, in which they used my buzzwords: Freedom, Adventure, Wildness. It meant the most to me, because it was an indication that I was living by my values.
Once you know what your values are, you want to live by them, so that other people notice them, and know what you’re about. If you highly value Kindness, and you live your life with that as a guiding virtue, you can become an icon of kindness in your family and community. When people think of kindness, they’ll think of you.
The same can be said for activities that you participate in. The activity is the outlet for the value. An artist values Self-Expression and they live that value by creating. A hard working father values Family and they live that value by providing. A personal trainer values Health and they live that value by spending time at the gym. When someone sees the activities you are engaged in, they pick up on what your values are.
The reason I believe this is so important is because when you know what you want to be doing with your time, you can see the values behind that and better understand yourself. If you want to spend your time fishing on a lake by yourself, you probably value Peace. If you want to spend your time decorating your home, you probably value Beauty.
Knowing what you value helps you zoom in on what your great adventure could be, if you had the freedom to pursue it. You need freedom to pursue your own great adventure, and when you know what you value, you know why you want freedom. Having the value as the goal creates the motivation for you to seek freedom. To make it plain using the examples I’ve made so far, knowing you will have more time for Family, Health, Peace, Beauty, or Self-Expression drives you to seek freedom.
Working an office job that bores me to death with a boss that orders me around is my absolute worst nightmare. I know there are lots of other people that share that nightmare. The fear of doing something meaningless and pointless for someone else, with no control over my own life, motivates me to stubbornly refuse to accept anything less than a life filled with adventure and freedom, traveling and filming music videos around the world.
Not everyone’s adventure is like mine, but everyone has an epic adventure to live in their life. For some, playing basketball is an adventure. For others, raising a family is an adventure. For some people, underwater basket weaving is an adventure. There are an infinite number of unique adventures that people are driven to live in our world, which is what makes it such an interesting and unique place. Just when you think you’ve seen all there is to see, you meet someone who is absolutely unlike anyone you’ve ever met.
I believe that the world could be even more unique, even more interesting, if fewer people were stuffed into boring jobs that they do not find fulfilling, and were instead able to pursue their own epic adventure, bring their ideas to life, and stamp their brand on the world. My task is to encourage and inspire people to live authentically and have the courage to live by their values and bring who they are to life through the activities they participate in. There are an infinite number of ways to do this, but all of them require freedom. Freedom to pursue your own great adventure, and do it your way, so that the world has even more diversity and wildness.
