Core values and beliefs
Examining long-held assumptions can offer insight and growth
HOW well do you know yourself? How well do you know what drives your choices and decisions?
I was in conversation with a friend and we were discussing how challenging the business environment had been over the past six months for many. She described clients she had known for many years and the rather strange and often poor decisions they seemed to be making as the pressure of the economy and business impacted on them.
This led us to an interesting conversation about why this might be so and ultimately led to insights around values, vision, purpose and beliefs.
What’s the difference between values and beliefs and what’s the impact on our behaviour? Jeff Rasley perhaps offers us clarity when he wrote, “beliefs divide us, values unite us” in Godless – Living a Valuable Life Beyond Beliefs.
So, thinking about these clients, the insight was they were making decisions based on instinct, attributing the situation they were dealing with currently to one they had experienced previously and responding in the same way.
In another view, stepping away from their values, vision and purpose to seek a short-term solution. Unfortunately when we get put under pressure we will often want to “think” our way through to solutions, which then anchors us in our conscious or subconscious beliefs.
As Richard Barrett writes, “beliefs are assumptions we hold to be true. Complexity is increasing day by day. Using information from the past to make decisions about the future may not be the best way to support us in meeting our needs”. To change this requires a conscious self-awareness, a willingness and a desire to develop, which means work at a deep and personal level.
There is genuine power living to a set of clear personal values and certainly when making decisions. Defining our own values enables us to move beyond the conditioning of our early environment and the beliefs our parents held. They challenge us to transcend cultural, ethnic and societal references, develop our personal identity and a set of behaviours that are not compromised by circumstance.
When we use our values to make decisions we are upholding what is important to us and we have the foundation for consistency as we demonstrate our principles.
You can acknowledge that in the world, in global politics particularly, there are plenty of examples that highlight the opposite. What are your values and how does that play out for you?