I think a lot of people freak out over not having direction in life.
See, when you’re hungry, you know exactly what you need to do to not be hungry anymore. When you’re tired, you know exactly what you need to do to not be tired because those are things necessary for our survival. But how about when you’re feeling directionless?
There is no biological map telling you exactly what you need to do—but that’s when you can turn to your values and principles in life. See, your values and principles are essentially what guides you through life—and if you follow them, it’s what going to dictate your behavior and the decisions you make. It’s what decides what kind of person you are and what kind of people you decide to keep around you. It’s what you accept and what you do not accept. It helps you with your priorities, how you treat yourself and how you treat others. It might help you with your academic and professional decisions or help you pick a partner. Even smaller things like whether you should take the bus or walk or thrift instead of shop.
As you can hear it’s pretty powerful. And it’s not exactly anything profound. Human beings have always sought out guidance—whether it be through religion and gurus or parents and teachers—some kind of higher power or figure which in turn help shape our values and principles.
Your faith may teach you about compassion and service; your parents may teach you about honesty and respect—and as a kid, all you know is what’s being passed on to you by someone who got it passed on to them. So, essentially, you could be living a life lead by the values and principles of your great, great, great, grandmother’s kindergarten teacher, and although that might be great and all—we’re all different, and times are different—life is different. What’s been passed on to you hasn’t been customized for you; your wants and your needs in life.
And sometimes it doesn’t need to be. Compassion doesn’t need to be customized. Kindness doesn’t need to be customized. But some things do. Like, I sometimes receive messages from people saying things like “I want to focus on my art, but my parents don’t support it”. And sure, partly it might have to do with the parental instinct of looking after their child, but part of their reaction is based on both what got passed on to them and what they have experienced in their lives. Perhaps they grew up struggling financially so money was tight, so being financially secure is extremely important to them.
Meanwhile, you haven’t had that experience, and what matters to you more than anything is fulfillment through work. This is why it’s so important to have our own set of values and principles based on who you are and what you want to achieve in life. Simply accepting someone else’s as being your own is like grabbing someone else’s map to their house, hoping it will somehow lead to your house. It won’t, and you’ll just end up lost when the whole point of this is to find direction.
Now, how you develop your own set of values and principles, besides having it being passed on to you and other external factors, is through life experience.
We meet people, we go through things, we fail, we succeed, we go to school, we travel, we get hurt, we start looking up to other people, we read books, listen to music, and so on. Through these experiences, we learn what’s important to us and what’s not. We learn what we value and what we don’t value, what we want and what we don’t want.
And although a lot of those core values and principles that we grew up with may remain with us, we’ll also form our ones—and that’s what’s going to act as our compass in life because ideally, you’ll be living a life that aligns with your values and principles, where every decision you make is following that.
Let’s say you want to become more aware of your values and principles and live a life that aligns with them, where do you start?
I want to start by saying that there are no rules. As long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else, no one can tell you that your values and principles are wrong or that they don’t matter. And also, this is just what works for me. There are tons of books and other resources you can turn to if you want to learn more about this topic.
With that being said, I think a good place to start is to list the things that are non-negatable to you. Not to society, not to your family, not to anyone—just you. As Dr. Stephen Covey wrote in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” a principle is a natural law like gravity. Principles, like gravity, are in control.
The way I interpret that is that it’s the things that are as true as the fact that a runner needs to run. When you list these things, ask yourself what you’re seeking and why.
Like, to me, loyalty is one of those things. The reason why is because I’m seeking commitment and trust in any relationship that I have, it’s very important to me, whether it be romantic or friends, and anything other than that isn’t something I want in my life. Because it’s my natural law, I distance myself or let go of anyone who goes against that. It doesn’t “depend”, there is no “what if”, it just is—like gravity.
Now, once you’ve listed your natural laws, continue by listing things that perhaps aren’t as evident to you, but that you still live by, or at least try to live by. So, one of those things for me is to “always give credit where credit is due.” I don’t have a 100 % success rate at this, but I always try. The reason I’m seeking to do that is that it’s nice. It’s encouraging. The same way you light up when getting recognized or accredited for something good you’ve done; others light up as well.
If someone cooked a good meal, I make sure they know that. If someone said something that sparked an idea in my mind, I make sure they know it. We need more appreciation in this world.
Now, not only is doing this “exercise” really helpful, but it’s also really fun, because there are no rules. You can have as many values and principles as you want or as few as you want. You can have something like “if it’s a 30-minute walk or less, I will walk”. That way, next time you’re going somewhere, you’ll already know you’ll be walking if it’s less than 30 minutes. And now you might think, well that’s a silly thing to put on my list. Yeah, well, if you only knew how much time we spend contemplating silly things like that you’d be surprised.
Now, at the end of the day, it’s about identifying your truths and letting those truths guide you through life. Are there ever going to be exceptions, even to the natural laws? Perhaps. Will your values and principles ever change? Of course. Because you change. You grow.
What’s important to you now may not be important to you in 5 years. What you value in a partner today may not be something you value in the future. What you think you want from life now may not align with what you’ll want for yourself next year. I mean, just look back on your own life and you’ll find that to be true. And that’s okay, but that’s also why I think it’s important to re-visit and re-evaluate our list from time to time. That way, you won’t lose sight of where you’re heading in life.
I’ll be sharing a few more of my values and principles on my Patreon if you’re interested in checking that out.