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Our values are whatever is important to us, and whatever
has meaning to us. We may value freedom, wealth, security, love, happiness,
vitality, friendship, pleasure, success, excitement, family, power, health, fun,
knowledge, or another aspect of life. We all have values. If we say that someone
has no values, the person simply has values that differ from ours.
 | Values provide a default during our development of
intuition. In any situation, the mind must decide what to do, and so it
employs various systems to make that decision. Those systems include logic,
intuition, emotion, habit, charged elements in our designs, lessons from
past experience, and values. Our value system is one of the defaults that
the mind uses when we are not aware of messages from intuition. The value
system gives standardized guidance such as "I value my health,
therefore, I will order a low calorie dessert." When we are guided by
values, our decisions are simple, consistent, and directed toward a
meaningful goal. Without the integrating theme of values, our lives become a
potpourri of unrelated actions leading in one direction and then another,
and we are unduly influenced by other people's values, either defying them
or conforming to them, rather than being firm and secure in our own values. |
| Values provide a default during our general
psychological growth particularly in
childhood. Psychologists have mapped the developmental process by which
children become capable of understanding morality and ethics. Some
psychologists and parents reject value free education as an inappropriate type
of freedom that is offered when children's minds are not yet ready for this
responsibility. Instead, the children need to learn traditional values such as
honesty, kindness, and contribution to society. As children wrestle with
society's demanding values, they learn about the challenges, rewards, and
rationale related to those values. In contrast, they also examine their own
values, and they explore their innate wisdom and intuition by which they can
create better values. Through the stages of psychological development,
children gain the experience and maturity by which they can make values that
allow both their individuality and a productive place in the world. |
| Values provide the basis for healthy guilt. |
Techniques for discovering and selecting our values
| Design-work. With
design-work, we can affirm productive values. We generate the energy tones
that correspond to the new values such as friendliness or happiness.
 | Affirmations. "My family is important to
me." "I care about my health". |
| Directed imagination. We can visualize
scenarios in which we are enacting our new values. |
| Modeling |
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| We can enhance our awareness of intuition.
Intuition can guide us in our selection of values. Intuition is based on the
dynamics of spirit thus, the values that we discern via intuition will always
enhance life, prosperity, joy, and other favorable conditions for everyone who
is involved in the situation. |
| We can discover our values by making lists
of things that are important to us and things that we like to do. These things
are our values. |
| We can examine the effectiveness of our values.
If our life is not moving in a productive direction, we may discover that the
problem lies in our values. If we value impulsiveness, this trait can be causing
problems in areas such as our relationships or job. |
| We explore the origin of our values. As children, we generally accepted our parents' values. If they placed a value
on success, so did we. We have adopted values from others such as peers, clergy,
or the media. In our process of individuation, we develop our own system of
values. |
| We examine our hierarchy of values.
We rank our values so that one value prevails over another in a situation where
there is a choice. We may have to choose between our values of freedom and
pleasure, if we enjoy the pleasure of a friend's company but the person
restricts our freedom. This type of value ranking is depicted in Maslow's
Hierarchy. |
Next topic: Desire |
