Principles Create A Meaningful Life

Your Conscience has a Full Understanding of Your True Principles. 

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. 

Principles are the foundation for a meaningful and worthwhile life.

No one can teach you which principles to inculcate within yourself, for the simple reason that what works for some may not work for you. Always remember that you are absolutely unique, just like everybody else is absolutely unique. 

Your principles and values are what create your authentic self. 

There is no magic formula for always living up to your personal values, though this advice from philanthropist W. Clement Stone comes close:

Have the courage to say no.

Have the courage to face the truth.

Do the right thing because it is right.

These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

The importance of knowing and understanding your principles cannot be over emphasized. As William F. Scolavino said, "The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions."

Your inner spirit, usually speaking to you via your conscience, will always have a full understanding of your true principles. 

Listen to and obey your conscience. It speaks to you through an inner voice telling you things that we often refer to as hunches or gut feelings. Trust your hunches and gut feelings, for these are based on facts, principles and values that are coded and ingrained at your unconscious, spiritual level.

In other words: trust yourself. It's the best way to Live A Determined Life. 

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

Your Conscience and Self Awareness

Create a Strong Belief in Yourself and What You Want. Live in Harmony with the Universe. 

Your conscience plays a key role in your quest for self awareness. Some might equate the conscience to one's self awareness, but in fact they are two separate aspects of the inner self.

Self awareness is being conscious of your feelings, emotions and thoughts; whereas your conscience evaluates your feelings, emotions and thoughts and assigns judgmental scores or values to them.

For example, you may want to cry about something that has happened. Your self-awareness abilities will help you identify all the emotions, thoughts and feelings that are combining to cause the tears that are about to burst forth (a physical response to your mental, emotional and spiritual components). 

Your conscience, on the other hand, will judgmentally tell you whether crying in this instance is right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, if the crying should take place in public or privately, and the "correct" length of time allowed for the shedding of your tears.

In many ways, strong self awareness (and strong self understanding) requires an ability to keep one's conscience in check so that your true feelings, emotions and thoughts are allowed to surface unhindered. After all, if you want to cry, go ahead and cry. Why should your conscience prevent you from experiencing an innermost feeling? In fact, such inhibitions may be detrimental to the full development of your spirit (i.e. the real you).

Stephen R. Covey, the legendary author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote in his later work First Things First, "One of the most powerful uses of self-awareness is to become aware of conscience and how it works within us."

As the Polish proverb goes, "Conscience is the voice of the soul." And in most cases you will want to listen to that voice.

But your conscience is, unfortunately, also formed by the lessons taught to you by your parents, teachers, societal rules, and the cultural customs, norms and practices in which you were raised.

As a result, your true conscience (that true voice of your soul) will at times be in conflict with the one shaped and formed by these other outside influences. This is when you know (instinctively and deep down) that something is not right, but that you cannot prevent or change it.

The more in tune you are with your inner self, and the closer you are to being driven by self actualization (refer to Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs), the less likely you are to compromise your principles or trample on your values.

Shame, one of the worst personal feelings one can have, arises from the fear or realization that one's actions have not been in accordance with one's true inner self. 

Do not be afraid to not live up to the expectations (or rules) of others. The rules and expectations of others are unlikely to power your dreams and desires. Instead, be afraid of failing to live up to your own expectations and to your own principles, values, morals, rules, and ethics.

Here are two quotes from Marcus Aurelius, the 2nd Century Roman Emperor, that reinforce these last two points:

You can change your beliefs so they empower your dreams and desires. Create a strong belief in yourself and what you want.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

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

Be True To Your Values

Principles and Values Require 100% Commitment and Dedication

One of the most important things about principles is to understand that you cannot impose your values on others.

For instance, suppose you place a high value on punctuality, but your partner does not. Any efforts you make to impose your value of punctuality on your partner will undoubtedly lead to numerous spats followed by many moments of anguish and despair.

When you make judgments of others based on your principles, friction ensues.

One aspect of emotional maturity is the ability to leverage your values with courage in your decisions and actions, combined with the ability to do so in consideration of the feelings and convictions of others.

Another aspect of emotional maturity is the ability to understand how the values of others form a foundation for their own decisions and actions, even when these are not acceptable to you or are in direct opposition to your own views and convictions.

When you are emotionally mature you can have a great deal of ego strength, while maintaining respect and empathy for others.

Your principles require 100% commitment and dedication. They are not something to be pulled out of your wallet or purse and used to pay for your experiences in life like some kind of values credit card.

Be unflinching in your commitment to your principles. As Denis Waitley has written, "Moderation in temper is always a virtue. Moderation in principle is always a vice."

And lastly, by all means stick to your principles through hardships, turmoil, disappointments, heartaches, and in those moments when it seems like life would be easier if you just made a little compromise here or there. When it comes to your principles, there is no such thing as a "little" compromise.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

One of the best ways to live a Project You Life will be, to paraphrase Shakespeare's famous line, to thine own values be true. 

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

Knowing and Understanding Your Principles

Your Inner Spirit Will Guide You

No one can teach you which principles to inculcate within yourself, for the simple reason that what works for some may not work for you. Always remember that you are absolutely unique, just like everybody else is absolutely unique.

There is no magic formula for always living up to your personal values, though this advice from philanthropist W. Clement Stone comes close:

Have the courage to say no.

Have the courage to face the truth.

Do the right thing because it is right.

These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

The importance of knowing and understanding your principles cannot be over emphasized. As William F. Scolavino said, "The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions."

Your inner spirit, usually speaking to you via your conscience, will always have a full understanding of your true principles. Listen and obey your conscience. It speaks to you through an inner voice telling you things that we often refer to as hunches or gut feelings. 

Trust your hunches and gut feelings, for these are based on facts, principles and values that are coded and ingrained at your unconscious, spiritual level.

In other words: trust yourself. 

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

Principles are the Foundation for a Meaningful and Worthwhile Life

Consciously Live According To Your Values and Principles

Values form your principles.

For instance, having a core value for integrity results in a principle never to tell a lie or hide the whole truth from someone.

Like values, principles should be put into a hierarchical structure, as at times two or more of your principles may be in conflict. It is important that you organize your principles by priority, based on which is most important to you.

For example, how would you handle a situation where a friend or colleague is about to drive off from a party in an inebriated state? He says he's fine to drive, but you think he should not be driving.

Does your principle of not interfering in other people's personal decisions overrule your principle of believing that drunk driving is wrong? Or vice versa? Will you be willing to risk the friendship or workplace relationship to prevent a possible tragedy?

If you respond with "it depends on who the person is" or "it depends on how high he appears to be," you are taking a situational approach and not a principled one.

If you decide that you place a higher value on not interfering in someone's personal decisions over the principle that drunk driving is wrong, then that is your hierarchical ranking for these two principles.

Your individual principles need to be formed around the great values of life, things like truth, love, the sanctity of life, integrity, being a person of your word, justice, fairness, friendship, spirituality, etc.

Despite the current trend of modern humanity to focus on happiness and pleasure as the cornerstones of life, do not think that matters of principle are old fashioned or past their use-by date. They are not and deep down they never will be.

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.

The bottom line is simple: principles are the foundation for a meaningful and worthwhile life.

No one can teach you which principles to inculcate within yourself, for the simple reason that what works for some may not work for you. Always remember that you are absolutely unique, just like everybody else is absolutely unique.

This also means that you are responsible for living a principle-centered life. You, and only you, know how to consciously live according to your values and principles.

Thus, always keep asking yourself: “what am I doing to ensure that I am consciously living according to my values and principles?”

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.

Consciously Living Your Values

Your Inner Spirit Will Let You Know When You Act Against Your Values

Whenever you take action or make decisions that are not in alignment with your values, three things happen almost automatically:

                  1)            Your self-doubt escalates.

                 2)            Your confidence level drops.

                 3)            The criticisms of others have an air of truth about them.

In fact, the criticisms of others will sting sharply, because deep inside your spirit is being pinged by the error of your ways. 

Even though the "mental you" and the "emotional you" may not admit or accept your spiritual reaction, your body will receive signals from your soul that something is not right (often a gut feeling, clammy hands, or a sense of anxiety). 

Unfortunately, due to ego-led stubbornness or a false sense of self confidence created by talking to yourself, you may try to override your spiritual sensations by trying to rationalize or justify your misguided action or decision. 

Trying to convince yourself to ignore the signals of your spirit is most assuredly a sign that you actions or decisions are not in alignment with your core values.

Consciously living your values, on the other hand, will result in a more rewarding life. 

As author Ayn Rand said, "Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." 

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

Your Personal Core Values Steer Your Future

Being Congruent With Your Core Values

The actions and decisions of people in tune with their core personal values almost always fall within their own comfort zones because of the alignment with those personal values.

It is interesting that some people's values are formed in their early years, while for others these become cemented later in life, either through experiences or education. 

Also, for some people recognition of their core values comes only through facing hardships, heartaches and difficult challenges, while for others the formation of their personal values comes through contemplation, reflection and various other cognitive approaches.

Importantly, core values unconsciously, and sometimes even consciously, guide and govern our decisions, particularly our major decisions. Hence, they help determine and steer us toward our futures.

When we know what is important to us ── when we know what our values are ── making decisions and taking action is so much easier and comfortable. 

When decisions and actions are taken with the perspective, understanding and congruence of your values in mind, your confidence in these decisions and actions is increased. This applies both in your personal life as well as your professional life. 

Additionally, you are more readily able to put self-doubt aside and cast off the criticisms of others.  As Roy Disney, brother of Walt, pointed out, "It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are."

Adds novelist William Faulkner, "I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from." 

Action: put some time aside today to write down your core personal values, so you know where you yourself stand. This will help you make future decisions more consciously in line with your own values. 

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

Living Up To Your Personal Values

Be True To Your Own Values

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 once made of his 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 their personal values 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." 

As we near the end of 2014 and another new year approaches, now is a good time to start reflecting (and writing down) your personal values, then designing actions for next year that are harmonious with and reflective of your core personal values.

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

Your Conscience and Self Awareness

Your conscience plays a key role in your quest for self awareness. Some might equate the conscience to one's self awareness, but in fact they are two separate aspects of the inner self.

Self awareness is being conscious of your feelings, emotions and thoughts; whereas your conscience evaluates your feelings, emotions and thoughts and assigns judgmental scores or values to them.

For example, you may want to cry about something that has happened. Your self-awareness abilities will help you identify all the emotions, thoughts and feelings that are combining to cause the tears that are about to burst forth (a physical response to your mental, emotional and spiritual components). Your conscience, on the other hand, will judgmentally tell you whether crying in this instance is right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, if the crying should take place in public or privately, and the "correct" length of time allowed for the shedding of your tears.

In many ways, strong self awareness (and strong self understanding) requires an ability to keep one's conscience in check so that your true feelings, emotions and thoughts are allowed to surface unhindered. After all, if you want to cry, go ahead and cry. Why should your conscience prevent you from experiencing an innermost feeling? In fact, such inhibitions may be detrimental to the full development of your spirit (i.e. the real you).

Stephen R. Covey, the legendary author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote in his later work First Things First, "One of the most powerful uses of self-awareness is to become aware of conscience and how it works within us."

As the Polish proverb goes, "Conscience is the voice of the soul." And in most cases you will want to listen to that voice.

But your conscience is, unfortunately, also formed by the lessons taught to you by your parents, teachers, societal rules, and the cultural customs, norms and practices in which you were raised.

As a result, your true conscience (that true voice of your soul) will at times be in conflict with the one shaped and formed by these other outside influences. This is when you know (instinctively and deep down) that something is not right, but that you cannot prevent or change it.

The more in tune you are with your inner self, and the closer you are to being driven by self actualization (refer to Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs), the less likely you are to compromise your principles or trample on your values.

Shame, one of the worst personal feelings one can have, arises from the fear or realization that one's actions have not been in accordance with one's true inner self. Do not be afraid to not live up to the expectations (or rules) of others. The rules and expectations of others are unlikely to power your dreams and desires. Instead, be afraid of failing to live up to your own expectations and to your own principles, values, morals, rules, and ethics.

Here are two quotes from Marcus Aurelius, the 2nd Century Roman Emperor, that reinforce these last two points:

You can change your beliefs so they empower your dreams and desires. Create a strong belief in yourself and what you want.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

 

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