In the prior post I talked about how your values define your course, or the path you walk down in life. You follow your values and are uncomfortable or feel off kilter when you don’t. In this post, I want to point out how your values also will tell you what your destination is. We are all traveling in life. We move. We move toward something or away from another. When we move toward something, that is generally a positive mindset, while moving away is generally a negative mindset.
That thing, destination, lifestyle or event that we are traveling to will be something we can get to know by looking at our values and how well we live them. It’s another way of saying that we get what we focus on. When we focus on what we aspire to in life, which is the ideals that our values represent, our destination begins to take shape. It starts to gain substance and definition. Its form becomes more solid and real to us. It simply become more real and tangible in our minds. This is a result of our focus on our values.
To the extent that we don’t live out our values, our destination becomes more murky and far off. It loses shape and becomes less and less defined and real. This is where our discomfort comes in when our actions are not in line with our values in my opinion. We know there’s something wrong and we know that things should be different, but because we don’t see what we should in front of us our vision of the future is unclear and dark. It causes us to move about as if in a dream or even worse, a nightmare.
Evreryone has values. No exceptions. Some people of selfish values, others selfless. The selfless values are the ones that create good things in our lives. Selfish values may have pleasure associated with them, but the pleasure is fleeting at best. It’s something you enjoy alone, because by definition selfish values and actions can’t be shared with others. They are automatically in opposition to one another. Selfish and selfless values both define a destination. The question for each of us is which destination is the one we want.
