Core Values

Having a small core of key values is beneficial for you in all circumstances. They are critical ideas that you can hold in mind whenever you have a decision to make. You can use your values as measures and place weights on your choices to determine the most favourable option.

Keeping your core values in mind at all times gives your thinking and your actions a distinct focus and purpose. If you have no core values, or they are poorly defined, your actions become more instinctual and have less impact. It becomes very easy to go with the flow and end up somewhere you may find out later wasn’t where you wanted to be.

Core values give your actions a starting point and a firm basis for decisions.

Five Core values is an excellent amount to hold close, as you can fairly easily commit a list of 5 values to memory and can choose values that are broad enough to cover all aspects of your character.

Over time you will gain new experiences and change your way of thinking about various aspects of your life and so it will be necessary to alter the core values from time to time. I tend to think about these things in my life monthly (because I’m slightly overcritical), but I would recommend revisiting your core values at least every 6 months, just to stay on top of it.

It can be quite difficult to really narrow down your values to only five, especially when you consider all of the things that you are already excellent at and the things you wish to become, so I’ve provided my core values and the logic I used to determine them below as a guide for your own value selection process.

My Current Core Values

1. Learning

Everyone learns. It happens every day no matter what, but without careful and concerted effort, learning becomes less and less powerful. Learning declines in value when it is no longer a primary focus in your life and actions. Learning allows you to be inventive. It allows you to understand the functions of nature and other people’s inventions. It provides you with a base of knowledge to make informed and intelligent decisions. It provides you with understanding of human nature. The value of learning is beyond measure. Learning includes:

• attentiveness
• curiosity
• wonder
• awe
• Inquisitiveness

2. Creativity

Creativity is a core value because it is such a highly enjoyable character trait. As is true with all character aspects, creativity can be fostered and strengthened as well, so it is good to give creativity proper mental effort by placing it high in the core values list. Creativity allows for new ideas to spring to mind by combining knowledge in unique and interesting ways. Creativity also provides a very powerful avenue for communicating those aspects of life that are impossible or very difficult to explain to others in everyday communication. Creativity connects you with other people and most importantly connects you more fully to yourself and your character. Creativity includes:

• critical thinking
• a sense of humor
• mindfulness
• awareness
• attentiveness
• patience
• dedication
• love
• emotional intelligence
• confidence
• appreciation for beauty
• subtlety

3. Hard Work

In order for anything to be accomplished, work must be put in. Hard work cannot be undervalued because in the end after all ideas, planning, excitement, and discussion are complete, real action must take place to generate a result and to create value. Hard work is the value that transforms all other values and gives them substance. To work hard is to appreciate difficulty and thrive in adverse or unknown conditions. To work hard is to do the best job that you can, where ‘best’ is defined based on your current understandings and moral compass averaged against the values of those people you are working with and working for. Finally, working hard means doing a job thoroughly and doing it right without complaint. If there is something to complain about, there is opportunity to change either the situation or your attitude. Hard work encompasses:

• grit
• determination
• motivation
• physical strength
• mental strength
• dedication

4. Health

The need for healthy living is not a hard thing to argue. A healthy body creates a healthy mind, provides you with energy, and allows you to pursue whatever interests you wish without having to worry (as much) about physical limitations. The reason it becomes a core value here is because healthy choices are so easy to forgo in favour of immediate satisfaction. Making health a core value puts it in the forefront of thought and affords healthy decisions the proper conscious effort they need. Values that fall under the health core value:

• fitness
• mindful eating
• mental health habits
• proper sleep
• relationships

5. Self-Reliance

This core value arises out of the need to show respect towards other people. This can be done in part by not overburdening anyone with your own struggles and needs. It is also a fundamental aspect of life. Everyone experiences the world and their lives differently and cannot experience life from another person’s perspective aside from imagining it and empathizing with another person. As such, it becomes critical to rely on your own rationale and emotional stability to provide comfort when you need it, discipline when you should have some, and praise when it is due. Some values encompassed by self-reliance are:

• self control
• self respect
• self evaluation
• confidence
• humility
• mental toughness

Prioritization of Core Values

Determining which values take priority over your other values is necessary for when you need to choose between options that conflict between 2 of your core values. A simple example may be if I cannot understand a difficult concept (learning), I might keep powering through other examples (self-reliance) or ask for assistance, which would in my mind at the time count against self-reliance (albeit only mildly). Priority ranking between learning and self-reliance would make this choice simple.

Above I presented my core values in order of how I prioritize. Below I’ve written out briefly the logic I have used to determine the priority of my values.

• You spend the bulk of your young life learning, and it is absolutely necessary for growing up and functioning in your family, then at school, and then in the workplace and beyond. You cannot live without learning.
• Creativity can come from learning directly by critically thinking about the knowledge you accrue and using it to generate novel ideas, solutions, and thoughts.
• Learning and creativity are necessary, but require vast amounts of hard work, determination, and discipline, and so hard work is next in priority so that learning and creativity can provide focus to the hard work.
• No one is a mind without a body, and the health of one affects the other. To be able to continue hard work, a strong and healthy body (and thus mind) is critical.
• Only you can move yourself both mentally and physically to maintain health, hard work, creative thinking, and a love of learning. At the same time, you don’t have to and should not go through life alone, thus making Self-reliance the lowest priority core value.

Using these core values, I am able to regularly review my actions in a day and determine if I have made good choices. If I feel bad about a day, I can evaluate my activity with the core 5 values to establish a plan for better use of my time and energy in the future. As well, following my values makes many decisions far easier and quicker since I have essentially made the decision earlier by prioritizing the value that best corresponds with a particular choice.

I urge everyone to spend some time in thought over what they value. Write down whatever core values you feel are necessary to follow, and remember to keep them fresh in your mind.