Living Up To Personal Values

Living Your Values Is Not Always Easy 

Your values define your character. Living your values means having character.

At the end of the day, what you are ─ your character ─ is vastly more important than what you do, especially in terms of your vocation, career or chosen lifestyle. What you do  for a living is not truly who you are, although this concept has been greatly misplaced in the materialistic, economy-driven focus of the past few decades.

J. C. Watts, an American football player and politician, has one of the best definitions of character: "Character is doing the right thing when nobody is looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that is right is to get by, and the only thing that is wrong is to get caught."

Living your values is not always easy. As the old saying goes, temptation is always just around the corner. It is often far too easy to pursue short-term amusement or glee that is in conflict with your true values. When you don't live your values, however, trouble inevitably crops up (witness the disaster that Tiger Woods made of his once seemingly perfect life).

One of the causes of such problems is that too many people do not give enough thought to their values. They know they have values, deep down, but they fail to take the time to reflect upon them and use these to guide their decision-making processes (especially once under the influence of alcohol, drugs or peer pressure).

Those who are in close touch with their own personal values tend not to have major catastrophes and calamities in their lives, unless of course they engage in actions or activities that are not congruent with their personal values. Such people tend to be very comfortable with their own actions, even when others around them get enraged when they cannot understand the decisions made or actions taken.

As Stephen R. Covey wrote in First Things First, "The essence of principle-centered living is to create an open channel with that deep inner knowing, and acting with integrity to it. It is having the character and competence to listen to and live by our conscience."

The bottom line is that the actions and decisions of people in tune with their core personal values fall within their own comfort zones because of the alignment with those personal values. 

This article is excerpted from the best-selling personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.