Living Your Values
“I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.” – Horton Cooley
I recently read Jay Shetty’s Think Like a Monk, and it had so many golden nuggets, I’m going back through the book and taking notes! Shetty spent three years living the monastic life and coming to understand the best parts of where the monks get their inner joy, and over the next few weeks, I will share some of the gems that helped my brain enlarge and my heart expand.
The first chapter is about identity. Just as we got curious about ourselves to discover our dharma, it’s important to know what we value to see if we live out our own priorities. A quick exercise in listing out your values, and an audit of how you are spending your time and your money, will show you if your values are in alignment with how you are living out your life.
Try it! Take 5 minutes, and list out your top 5-10 values. Mine include: kindness, knowledge, family, health, hard work, wealth, faith, and appearance. I’m being brutally honest about my values, as should you, not just listing the ones that make me look and feel good. When you look at how I spend my time (reading and taking courses), it would be obvious I value knowledge. If you look at how much I spent on skincare in the last six months, you’d know I value my appearance. When it comes to the less tangible values, such as kindness, you’d have to ask my family and friends or people who connect with me often. I hope they would say that I indeed value kindness! Take a PAUSE this week. Every time you are about you make a purchase, or put something in your calendar, ask yourself this: Does this choice align with my values? What value am I honoring with this choice of time and/or money? These questions should help to make decisions easier.
Next, take a look at the people you spend the most time with and ask, do my values align with their values? It is important to spend time with people who are helping you become the type of person you want to be. I’ve read that you can estimate your income by averaging together the income of your 5 best friends. Who you spend time with has an incredible amount of influence on our choices and behaviors. Surrounding yourself with people whose habits are ones you’re trying to quit, is like swimming upstream. Finding your people who share and live out the values you hope to cultivate will help you get in the flow of living the values you desire! You may put some relationships in jeopardy, but if you don’t risk losing people who are holding you back, how can you live a life that is authentic to who you are and who you want to become?
Go get out your journal if it’s not out already. Shetty also recommends to take a moment to ponder the following question:
What are the three BEST and the three WORST decisions I’ve ever made?
Take it a bit deeper.
Why did I make that decision?
What did I learn from it?
If I were given the chance to make a different decision, what would I do differently?
When we take the time to reflect on where we have been, it makes it easier to get on a clear path to where we hope to go. Give yourself the time and space to take a look within. Do you like what you see? Do you want to change something? What would you change? Every day is the opportunity to move a step closer to the person you want to become. Gain clarity around who she is, and start heading in that direction. Let your values be your guide.
“Your identity is a mirror covered with dust. When you first look in the mirror, the truth of who you are is obscured. Clearing it may not be pleasant, but only when that dust is gone can you see your true reflection.” -Chaitanya
