Values, Purpose, Vision

Posted on Posted in Education, Personal Development

As part of my school project to develop a 5 year plan, we are working through our personal values, purpose and vision as a way to lead up to developing a 5 year professional plan that fits who we are. This past week the task was values.

I cannot express how challenging I found this task. In general, I know exactly what my values are. However, one of the major goals of this first task was to narrow them down to just three to five core values. I started with Steve Pavlina’s  articles entitled “Living your Values, Part 1” and “Living your Values, Part 2“. I then worked through a self-test  which helps you to weight 373 distinct values using two by two comparisons. Using this, I was able to narrow my list to just 14 values (Honesty, Fairness, Honor, Intelligence, Courage, Dependability, Friendliness, Compassion, Open-Mindedness, Self-reliance, Resilience, Perseverance, Health & Beauty). The real goal is to get to fewer than five. For the last week I have been pondering whether with appropriate word choices I could “bin” several of these into just one term without losing anything that is important to me. With extensive thesaurus use, I believe that I have.

My new and improved list, with qualifiers:

  1. Honor–as embodied by: integrity, courage, decency, fairness, honesty, incorruptibility, trustworthiness, truthfulness
  2. Acumen – as embodied by: intelligence, brilliance, perception, wisdom, competence
  3. Tenacity – as embodied by: perseverance, courage, dedication, heart, independence, indomitability, resoluteness, resolve, self-confidence, steadfastness, valor, willpower
  4. Kindness—as embodied by: compassion, decency, graciousness, helpfulness, patience, philanthropy, thoughtfulness, tolerance, understanding

On a related note, Mel posted a interesting link to something called a Johari Window. Following her lead, I have created my own which allows other people to make their own assessments. It seems like a creative tool for personal development to allow you to see yourself as others do. My only complaint is that there are so few starting values.

Next week: Purpose