 Dear Why Team member, I hope this message finds you well and encouraged. This week we consider how our values determine our value. - Why? - Because we humans value that in which we invest our thoughts, time and money. Our values are our attachments. We attach to that which we value because we find our value in our attachments. Hmm... Cause to pause?
There is an old saying, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." The more temporal our values, the more vulnerable our lives. Why? Because it hurts to lose what we value. Loss of something we value makes us feel worth less. Depending on how significant the loss, we can come to feel so worthless that we believe we our selves have no value. Through this lens we can see why people emotionally behave the way they do after a significant loss, often seeking to regain quickly their sense of self worth. A common example is what often happens soon after the loss of romantic love, the rebounding into a new relationship. Evaluate your values. Why? Because they determine your sense of self worth and value to others. It makes sense that we would grow attached, coming to value that in which we have invested our time and energy. Will that which you have invested be there for you through thick and thin? Let us consider our exposure when we find more of our worth from without than from within. Our values are our attachments - they have value to us and make up our collective value - when we break our values, behave outside of our values, we feel worth less and it hurts. Adhering to our values feels right, behaving outside of our values gives us concern, as it should, because our sense of self worth is at risk. A marriage, for example, in which we invest little, will come to be of little value. It is in moments like these, that people are most vulnerable to their emotions driving their behavior, rather than their values driving their behavior. Recently, I had the great pleasure of hearing psychologist Dr. Jeffery Baker, an expert in neurology, speak on the functioning of the human brain. He spoke of the importance of one's values driving their bus, not their emotions. He said that while emotions are very important and necessary for protecting and serving us, they should be on the bus, but just not driving the bus. If we allow our emotions to drive our bus, we will likely run our lives into a ditch. Evaluate your values. Write them down. Establish and/or recommit to those disciplines that keep your values in the drivers seat. When your values drive your bus, notice how you will more easily stay on the optimal road of life, developing a more secure sense of self worth, for you and those you seek to serve. Make it a great week, Steve Luckenbach ** If you arrived here via Facebook or Twitter and would like to sign up to receive each blog post as it is announced, along with future news about upcoming books and other projects I am working on please sign up here. Comments are closed.
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