You may think you have deeply held values however if you don’t spend time thinking about them, naming them, listing them, turning them over in your mind, and pondering how they might apply in your day to day, how you can bring them more fully to life in your life… then in the inevitable time of testing you will not be as deeply anchored to them as you could be and the temptation to waiver, dither, equivocate, and vacillate will be all the harder to resist. First, we form our habits, then they form us; thus living our values requires effort and conscious cultivation.
Ethical drift occurs gradually rather than dramatically. Often the invitations to stray are not clearcut or dramatic; frequently the enticements are subtle bends in the straight and narrow, occurring when we are stressed, pressured, weary and tired, and the appealing whisper of rationalization is “Aw, come on, it’s such a little thing, does it really matter?”
None of us are perfect and even saints must sleep and priests must play so the timing and spacing of the allotted amount of rest and recreation ‘down time’ is very much a personal choice deeply grounded in self-awareness. I do know that there are moral absolutes, that there is a world of difference between strictly hewing the line in ethical matters (never, ever take that which is not yours) and granting yourself an ‘off day’ on your workouts.
I have journaled faithfully for over 30 years and on the front page of every journal (roughly one year) I paste my values, my self-concept, the principles, the North Star, that I will live my life by and it is the first thing I see every time I journal. I know others who create a ‘values card’ they carry with them to ground themselves, to hold themselves accountable. Find your North Star, pick your method to keep your focus constantly thereto.
Closing Quotes:
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” – Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784
“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave them all over everything you do.” – Elvis Presley, 1935-1977
“Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible.” – Oprah Winfrey, b.1954
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
PS: I borrowed the title for this blog from a book by Paul Ingram: ‘What Do You Really Stand For?: The One Question That Will Transform Your Work and Life’
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832
