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Values Overview The definition of a value is anything that someone values, except objects. Values are standards, principles, feelings or inner states that guide our behavior. Examples are:
Values help us determine what's right or wrong, good or bad, and what is and is not worthwhile for us. They guide our decisions and life directions, yet very few people are aware of their most important values. Life is wonderful when our most important values are getting satisfied. Life is likely to be awful when our values are not getting satisfied. Every individual has many values and those values have different levels of importance in different contexts. Examples of contexts are: Life In General, Work and Career, Family and Relationships. You can probably imagine how Love is more likely to be a high level value in the context of Family, but rarely show up in the context of Work. Our values come from our life experiences in our family, schools, social relationships, religion, work and other contexts. Values and their importance often change over time as a result of significant emotional experiences and life transitions. A person can have values that are in conflict with each other. The abstract values tend to be more important. Most values provide the necessary conditions that lead to the presence of other values. For example: Imagine a person who values efficiency and they operate very efficiently. Efficiency may lead to the presence of recognition for that person because they hear expressions of appreciation or they see a pay raise. Recognition in turn may lead to the presence of a feeling of accomplishment. Accomplishment may in turn lead to happiness. Let's imagine we give that person 2 choices:
That person would most likely choose happiness, because they'd realize that it doesn't make sense to work for efficiency and recognition if they can't get happiness. What this suggests is that this person is going for efficiency and recognition primarily to get the happiness. If they somehow weren't getting happiness from being efficient, it's likely over time they would become less motivated to be efficient. So motivation is often connected to the expectation that the higher or most important personal values will be satisfied. The most important values stand on their own and are valued for their own sake. They tend not to lead to something more important. In this example it was happiness. All paths lead to happiness. Happiness is highly valued for its own sake. It leads nowhere else, except that when it's satisfied it will nourish, stimulate, and motivate the person to continue to perform with high efficiency. Unfortunately, it's not unusual to hear some people say, "Look, we're not here to make people happy, we're here to get things done and increase our profits." Values often cited in the workplace are integrity, accomplishment and teamwork. Values rarely mentioned are happiness, inner peace and feeling good. Many people are surprised to discover that one or more of these last three are most important to them.
Beliefs Beliefs are different than values. They are our perceptions of how the world is right now. For example: Imagine one person who believes that it's extremely difficult to navigate the Internet and another person who believes it's easy and fun. The person who believes it's extremely difficult is more likely to avoid navigating the Internet. Now consider two people who have relationships as one of their most important values. One of them believes they are great at developing new relationships and the other believes they do that poorly. The person who believes they do that poorly has a limiting belief that is getting in the way of them satisfying one of their most important values. We all have limiting beliefs, to one degree or another, that affect our behavior and make it more difficult for us to get our values satisfied. Significant emotional experiences will often cause us to shed limiting beliefs. As mentioned before, some values are more important than other values for a specific person in specific contexts. The level of importance can be just as important as the values themselves in the way decision-making and behavior are affected. Here's an example: Imagine two people with a hierarchy of values shown below where the most important value is at the top and the least important is at the bottom. The second, third and fourth values for each person are the same. Who is more likely to lie to help a friend? The answer is the person with Relationships at the top. The person with Honesty at the top may not trust this person, might accuse him or her of a terrible deed. The one who lied might be incredulous and insist that it was the right thing to do - and they'd do it again. They might have all those disagreements even though they have the same values.
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