Living into my Values
As you live your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control, and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by people's opinions or by comparisons to others. Stephen Covey
Gregg’s Reflection
In 1995, as I plotted my exit from the family business, one of the pinch points in my career was how little overlap there was between my life and my values. So, I set about writing down my values, and action steps for each to help me increase the overlap.
Values & Goals Circa 1995
1. Love my Family: Love Unconditionally, Do what they want to do, value differences
2. Grow in Spirituality: Grow my relationship with God, Worship in a Community Church: Demonstrate Leadership, Create a Learning Organization
3. Maintain my Health: Exercise 3 times a weMe, Weigh 220
4. Honesty: Give honest feedback, develop trust
5. Empathy: Listen and Understand, See both sides of an issue
6. Learning: Value Lifelong Learning: Gain an Executive MBA
7. Teaching: Develop People, Clarify goals and purpose, Create a motivational work environment. Lead Learning Organization: Create Learning Laboratory
8. Coaching: Encourage Self-Actualization, Build Self-Esteem
9. Self-Esteem: Doing the above will provide
10. Grow in Stewardship: Use my talents for a purpose, Support community outreach
11. Letting Go: Recruit the best and brightest, Give Authority: Recruit leaders and let them lead, Delegate, Joy is the success of others
12. Humility: Exhibit pride in others
13. Silence: Listen and learn, Cannot listen without silence, Learn and lead
14. Show Determination: Complete the task well, Give the desired results
15. Self-Actualization: Develop Sense of Purpose, Pursue Dreams, Help others find their dreams
Sum it up in two words: Wise Leader
As I look back at this list 30 years later, I find I have learned to live out the values I articulated. Here is how I see it today:
- Love my Family: These last 25 years, we have put family at the center of our lives. We built our cabin so friends and family could gather in. We have developed wonderful relationships with our children and grandchildren. We take family trips every year to deepen our relationships. We took 10-year-old trips with our four grandkids to develop relationships with each.
- Grow in Spirituality: My faith has deepened, and my spiritual journey has led me to find my calling, and live it out. Spiritual Direction for 15 years has guided me. Reading Scripture and wisdom books have awakened me.
- Maintain my Health: I exercise five days a week, and weigh 225 30 years later
- Honesty: I live with integrity, and have developed trusting relationships across generations
- Empathy: My spiritual journey has opened me deeply to empathy.
- Learning: Lifelong learning continues as a core value. Completing an EMBA, three years studying structure with Robert Fritz, spending two years in the Living School, and continuing to develop my structural understanding of the world are the fruit.
- Teaching: My teaching unfolds in my coaching sessions.
- Coaching: The core of my calling is equipping next generation leaders for the Kingdom, and most of this unfolds in my coaching work.
- Self-Esteem: I have tended to think that self-esteem is a function of ego, but it is more complex than that. When I google the relationship between self-esteem and humility, here is the AI description: While humility involves recognizing your limitations and acknowledging the value of others, a healthy self-esteem stems from recognizing your strengths and worth. Authentic humility is rooted in a secure sense of self and a willingness to learn and grow.
- Grow in Stewardship: As I have organized my life around my calling, it has become more of a stewardship of life than just of money.
- Letting Go: letting go is the primary gesture of the spiritual life. As I age, I have let go of climbing 14er’s, hiking to back country fishing spots, and much more. We are in the process of letting go of our off grid log home as we realize the need to be closer to civilization and health care as we age.
- Humility: The dawning of humility was a painful journey that emerged some years after I left the business.
- Silence: Living off grid surrounded by National Forest, I have learned to incorporate at least an hour of silence into each day.
- Show determination: Perseverance was a trait I learned working for my father and it has flourished in my second career.
- Self-Actualization: Self-actualization is the process of reaching one's full potential and achieving self-fulfillment. In my spiritual journey, self-actualization is the letting go of self, and living into the mind of Christ, seeking union with the divine. St Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.“ And Carl McColman said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
For two decades after articulating these values, I pursued becoming a wise leader, the two words that summarized my values and goals. God confronted me one day, as I wrote about in this post, and I realized that aspiration was still feeding ego. Now, I am living into the season of being the fool.
In a spiritual direction session, I asked Mark Ritchie what values he saw in this season of my life. He told me when we are rightly aligned, the fruit of the Spirit shows up. Moving into spirituality beyond religion allowed these to show up. By valuing alignment, fruit spills out.
He described several Buckets of values.
Relationships: Family, friends, community, spiritual family
Awe and Wonder: Time in nature, fly fishing, the experiential side of presence, moving from head to heart, the embodiment side, watching puppies and toddlers play
Freedom: Pursuing wealth in my career to give me freedom.
Wisdom: Lifelong Learning, Spiritual disciplines, spiritual reading, silence, solitude, Offering fatherly love, coaching and mentoring that was missing in my life
Justice: loving kindness towards the other, speaking truth to power, calling out systemic injustice, strength
Caretaking: Nurturing, compassionate, and focused on providing care and support to others. Shows up in family, coaching, teaching, leadership in community
He then asked me to consider what motivations are for these values, why do they matter? For example: Power is fear based, proving myself was rooted in fear. Motivation shifted from fear to love.
Read on and contemplate how much overlap there is between your life and your values. Blessings
Journaling Prompts
As you look at this image, and consider how you spend your time and money, what is in the center of the target? What is missing? We all have values, either implicit or explicit. Have you articulated your values in this season of life? What are the values that will ground and deepen your spiritual journey, and how will you make those values a priority? Here is a great tool for clarifying values:
Scripture
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Proverbs 4:23 This verse highlights the importance of keeping your values and intentions in check, as they guide your actions.
The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.
Proverbs 11:3 This verse underscores how living according to one's values offers guidance in life.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:16 This verse encourages believers to live in a way that reflects their values, thus serving as an example to others.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace….But you are not in the flesh you are in the Spirit since the Spirit of God dwells within you.
Romans 8:5-6, 9.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
James 1:22 Here, the emphasis is on acting upon one's beliefs and values rather than just acknowledging them.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23 Living out your values as a Christian involves embodying the qualities of the Spirit.
Ancient Writings
You are what you think. All that you are arises from your thoughts. With your thoughts, you make the world.
Buddha. Dhammapada, Verse 1. This expresses the concept that living by one's values begins with the thoughts we cultivate.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates. Socrates, quoted in Plato’s Apology, 38a. This quote highlights the importance of self-reflection and aligning one's life with personal values.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations, p. 173. This quote encourages action and integrity, rather than mere discussion about values.
Listen, look, suffer and be still. Release yourself into the light. See with intellect. Learn with discretion. Suffer with joy. Rejoice with longing. Have desire with forbearance. Complain to no one. My child, be patient and release yourself, because no one can dig God out from the ground of your heart.
The Silent Outcry, anonymous 4th Century letter. McGinn, Essentials of Christian Mysticism p. 141
A good character, like good money, is never a burden.
Seneca, Moral Letters, Letter 98
Modern Writings
Living with integrity means… behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values.
Barbara De Angelis, Real Moments, p. 73
Success: He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.
Bessie Anderson Stanley. Success was the winning entry in a contest run by Brown Book Magazine in 1904. Bessie won a cash prize of $250, which paid off the mortgage on the house. I stumbled upon around the time I articulated my values, and began to think of this as a wonderful eulogy for a life well lived. At the end of his life, Saint Francis said, “I have done what is mine to do, Pray to God to show you yours.” As I reach the end of my life, I am doing what is mine to do. May God show you yours.
I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be. But, but the grace of God, I am not what I was.
John Newton, author of Amazing Grace
Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.
True humility isn’t feeling worthless. What it does mean is that I place all my confidence in God and His abilities, instead of being limited by blind belief in my own abilities or disabilities.
Heather Crawford, Humility vs. low self-esteem: What is the difference?,
When your soul and your life are in harmony, you glow and live into the flow.
Ned Breslin, quoting Aramaic thought
Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick.
Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, p. 262
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, p. 193
As you live your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control, and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by people's opinions or by comparisons to others.
Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit 2