Have Principles Based on Core Personal Values

Consciously Live According To Your Values and Principles

Personal Values define your character and are critical keys to Living A Determined Life.

As we wrote previously on Living Up To Personal Values, the actions and decisions of people who are in tune with their core personal values usually fall within their own comfort zones, mostly because of the alignment of their actions and decisions with their personal values.

This is why those who are in close touch with their own personal values tend not to have major catastrophes and calamities in their lives, at least not until they engage in actions or activities that are not congruent with their personal values.

A core aspect of your personal values are your principles. Principles are the foundation for a meaningful and worthwhile life.

A person who has principles and displays these will be respected and liked by the people most important in their life. More important, such a person will be respected and liked by himself or herself as well.

There will be times in your life when you are called upon to stand up for your principles, especially if you have principles based on your core personal values.

These moments need not be major, life-defining incidents. Rather, they often crop up during mundane day-to-day activities. When you take action in accordance with your principles, often called living up to your principles, the glow of self satisfaction can be immense and is reward enough in itself.

However, when you do not act in harmony with your principles, a little piece of you dies inside and your soul becomes uncomfortable and agitated.

A lot of the literature we read and the stories we hear while growing up feature characters struggling or learning to formulate their principles and act accordingly. One common lesson in most of these stories is that principles are not situational, something many people forget when becoming adults and entering "the real world."

Principles are the rocks upon which your decisions for action should be made. Your principles help ensure that you live up to your personal values, and thus need to be solidly entrenched in your psyche and persona. As Edward R. Lyman wrote:

Principle ─ particularly moral principle ─ can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true.

Today is a good day to pause and reflect upon your principles. How would you list and define your principles? How do you want to live in tune with these in the coming year? How can you use these to make better decisions in your personal and professional life?

And most important: how are you ensuring that you consciously live according to your values and principles? 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in eBook and paperback at Amazon.