February 2025: Values

In this post:

Another look at improving self-awareness with a focus on personal values.

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I was reviewing old notebooks – you review things now and then, right? – and came across a couple of index cards.

On them were penciled things about being more self-aware. As I read them, I thought ‘these cards might be good topics for some future blog posts!’ Then, I thought ‘maybe I’ve already written a blog post on these topics?’

While I wrote about Self Awareness three years ago (time flies, wow!), the index cards list some features along with several questions. 

The features are:

Values

Passions

Aspirations

Fit

Patterns

Reactions

This post will focus on Values and the following questions from my index card:

1 What key values were you raised with?

2 Does your current belief system reflect these values, or do you see the world differently than how you were brought up to see it?

3 When it comes to raising a family or mentoring others, what behaviors would you MOST and LEAST want to model and teach them?

Before we get into the questions above, let’s make sure we’re working from a definition of “values.”

A Value is a fundamental belief that guides feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

Americans in general tend to value Individualism, which can be reflected in various ways. One of the obvious behaviors that follow individualism include an emphasis on competition at younger ages. The substantial supply of unique but similar products on the market also comes to mind.

A second example of this value in Individualism is the frequent demonstration of disinterest in getting help of any kind.

Germans value Efficiency, which is easily reflected through their stereotypes of punctuality, blunt and matter-of-fact speech, and emphasis on correctness. That includes not only their own, but also that of nearly anyone around them.

Back to the questions for this post:

1. What key values were you raised with?

Since I don’t want this post to go on forever, I was raised to value honesty and education.

Keeping my word felt extremely important to me. Failing to do so meant owing up to it and trying better. I emphasized honesty not only for myself but also expected it from others.

Doing well in school was a step on the ladder to gaining rewarding employment. Valuing education also translated to wanting things to be right all of the time. …yes, there are still elements I’m unlearning as I learn, but it isn’t called continuous improvement for nothing…

Basically, my parents raised me to be an engineer, what with all the building, breaking down, and building up again. In fact, I have an engineering degree. Seems to me that even this minimal reflection on my past ties together who I was to who I became over time…

2. Does your current belief system reflect these values, or do you see the world differently than how you were brought up to see it?

A lot has changed since the early 90s. While I definitely see the world differently, I think those values remain intact. That said, the emphasis I put on education and honesty has been balanced with a few different factors.

You see, being honest was taken to its extreme: if I observed something, I was rarely considerate of how expressing an observation might be taken. Being right was more important than being graceful or helpful.

Insisting on being right translated into paralyzing perfectionism. If I didn’t have all the facts, I couldn’t make the best decisions. If I couldn’t make the best decisions, sometimes good decisions would suffice, but procrastination reigned because of that mindset.

I still believe honesty and education are important, but the world is an inherently chaotic place. Being honest must be balanced with recognizing the self as a fallible, often ignorant human. Education recognizes that facts can become obsolete or depend on fickle nuances. Life happens at one second-per-second, and the risk of delaying a good decision for hope of a perfect decision can become critical.

While my examples are adjustments to how I perceived the values themselves, it might be the case that you completely prioritize a new value. 

3. When it comes to raising a family or mentoring others, what behaviors would you MOST and LEAST want to model and teach them?

I hope to be an educator or instructor in the future.

What I would most like is for people to pause.

Why go through nearly two decades of education to rush decisions with minimal considerations for what each action means? I don’t want to discourage action, but planning a little – even with plenty of uncertainties – saves time. Pause. Deliberate.

Consider the potential impacts of your actions.

What I would least like is for people to assume things when the opportunity to ask questions exists. Worse would be ‘taking actions based on verifiable assumptions when you could have just checked.’

Maybe you can’t see the impacts of your actions, but perhaps you could have just asked someone else what they thought.

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Anyway, I offer to you that you should consider these questions about Values. Hopefully, they lead to some deeper reflection about your beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.