Defining Your Values Leads to Personal Growth

Your personal values are those things that guide you through life and give you the motivation to try harder, work more, or be a better person. Living in accordance with your values brings happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment in your life.

Personal values can include such things as integrity, professionalism, loyalty, honesty, fairness, or thoughtfulness. These things can relate to your job, your spouse, or your family.

Values should not be confused with morals. Our values are what personally motivate us, and define the manner in which we want to live our lives. Morals are a societal gauge of right and wrong, and while most of us want to be moral people, the morals of society are not what push us to succeed. Morals tend to remain very much the same throughout time, while values can change throughout the course of your life, depending upon what is important to you at the time.

1.    Define Your Personal Values

Many people have difficulty finding fulfillment or satisfaction in their lives because they are not even aware what their values are. Uncertainty about personal values leaves us without a compass to help us find direction in our lives and leaves us very much so like a lost ship adrift at sea. We become subject to the whims and needs of the moment, but make no progress toward a larger or more important goal.

Think about the things in your life that are important to you, and where you would like to be in a year, in 10 years, and in 20 years. Ponder the values that are in alignment with your dreams, desires, and goals, and the ones that make you feel worthy and fulfilled. Write them down.

Now write down the values you feel others expect of you.

Whether you feel pressure from society to behave in a certain manner, from your parents, from your spouse, or from your friends, consider what values you tend to live by that are expected by outside sources. Write those down as well.

Compare your lists to determine if you are living life by your own set of values, or if you are ignoring what is important to you in order to live up to society's expectations.

2.    Chart Your Path to Greater Fulfillment

Now that you have defined your personal values, and compared them with what you believe others expect of you, look at the direction of your life and decide if the path you are on will lead you towards your own personal values. If it does not, look at those things in your life that lead you away from your values and try to find ways to change them.

Leading a life that is fulfilling and happy can only occur when our actions are congruent with our personal values. Personal growth occurs when you reach the realization that you need to make positive changes in your life to bring your existence into alignment with your values.

3.    Continue the Process of Monitoring Your Values

As time goes on and the circumstances of your life change, so do your values. What was important to you as a teenager will not be the same as what is important to you when you are in your 30's, or in your 50's. Periodically review your values and compare them to the manner in which you are living your life. This is an excellent way to make sure you do not stray too far from the path of fulfillment. When you find yourself going astray, determine how to change your behaviors and actions so you move back in alignment with your values.

It takes a lot of strength and courage to break from the expectations of society in order to be entirely true to your own needs and desires. Some people are able to completely separate themselves from societal pressure and live life entirely on their own terms. If your values are morally sound and do not cause harm to others, and you can find the inner strength to live your life entirely based upon your own expectations and no one else's, you are to be applauded. You are well on your way to a life of great fulfillment.

If you find you are not comfortable breaking entirely away from society's standards, then change the areas of your life that you can, piece by piece. Do not expect to make sweeping changes overnight. Instead, look at your life as a work in progress, and you are painting that canvas one brush stroke at a time.