What Do You Value?

Do you ever stop and evaluate your values?

Your values are those relationships and things that are most important to you. Values are not accomplishments to be scratched off a bucket list but instead they are those people or things in your life that you want to maintain as priorities in your life.

Your values are constant. They are not to be sacrificed for any dream, goal, or action step. Your values are the things that keep you grounded. They are the foundation of who you are.

To serve as an example, here are the 9 values in my life that I wrote down on December 11, 1995:

1. Maintain a close relationship with God
2. Maintain a close relationship with my wife
3. Maintain a close relationship with my kids
4. Maintain a close relationship with my family
5. Have close friends
6. Enjoy good health
7. Enjoy financial security
8. Contribute time, knowledge, and money to others
9. Control my own business affairs
10. Travel

Your values may be completely different. Obviously, relationships are most valuable to me. The first five values on my list include relationships in my life. They have been prioritized in a specific order. The values at the top are more valuable than those at the bottom. God, family, and friends are more important to me than financial concerns. Some people want to get rich at any cost but what is it to get rich with no close friends or family? I think it's useless and meaningless.

The purpose of this list is to give you a foundation for the rest of your life. Your values may not be sacrificed for your dreams. For example, many of my dreams involve travel. Travel is also one of the things I value. But I will not travel without my wife or my wife's blessing. If I chose to take off on trips by myself or without her approval, my relationship with my wife would be jeopardized. In fact, I would travel by myself a LOT if I were to do it without her involvement! My marriage is more important than my dreams. In addition, because financial security is important, I will not compromise my finances for the sake of travel. I could easily travel the world and accumulate thousands of dollars in credit card debt but I will not do that because I value financial security over travel.

Your values keep you grounded. Writing down your values keeps you focused. Consider the things that are most important to you, prioritize them, document them, then put them in a safe place and revisit them every once in a while.

It will be a "valuable" experience.