Recently I was on a date with my wife, when she brought up the concept of values by which to live life. She mentioned that she noticed in her growing experience as a counselor, than many individuals she gets the opportunity to work with often profess to have minimal place for values and principles in their life. It got us talking about the role that principles and values have played in shaping my own life (and hers) in our own unique ways.
The belief I hold is that principles and values are at the core of who we are and who we are becoming. If you do not choose for yourself what an acceptable, honorable and worthy way of living life will look like, who will choose for you? The world is a harsh teacher and even more, culture doesn’t care about you. It will chew you up and spit out, while taking from you your decency, honor and joy.
To rise above, one must have principles and values by which to live. I find it interesting that the greatest characters throughout history, from all cultures, nations and tribes, all profess an eerily similar profession of values and principles.
I may have written these words below, but I admit that in my observation, none of them are uniquely mine. Rather, I hope the principles I choose to live by may one day make me worthy to be an ambassador of them, admitted to the halls of a life well lived, full of meaning and purpose.
The Values I Apsire to Live By:
- Show up fully, be present and outwork everyone.
- The respect you give others is a reflection of the respect you have for yourself.
- Speak the least, but say the most.
- Leave people, places and things better than you found them.
- Reputation is everything.
- Who you are when no one is watching is the person you are becoming.
- A lesson learned is only failure when you repeat the mistake.
- If something is worth doing, then it is worth doing right.
- The true cost of things is measured in what you can’t not afford to do (optionality).
- Leadership is serving others and drawing out the greatness within.
Everyone’s life and the vision for their life are different. There’s unique beauty in the many different paths that we may take to complete the journey that we are on. I hope that the values and principles that I talk about here inspire you to consider and think about your own set of values and principles by which you aim to live. If you think I’ve missed something very important, or want to have a conversation about values and principles, then don’t hesitate to reach out.