I believe learning how to develop core values are what allow you to accomplish very challenging goals while experiencing real character growth.
What Are Core Values?
In many ways, what most are really searching for is actual character sculpting that increases the quality of their lives.
We want to:
- be able to take more risks so they can make new social connections.
- sharpen our thinking or refine our skills so we can make more money.
- achieve more clarity about our path so we feel more confident about our near future.
One way we can guarantee steady progress is by aligning our goals with core values.
I can think of four core values that will help facilitate these basic humans needs to help propel us past common pitfalls and resistance. They won’t solve all of your problems. They’re like muscles, they need to be trained and maintained to function efficiently.
When they’re no longer a priority, they fall towards entropy just like anything else in nature.
4 basic core values consist of:
- Embracing the unknown
- Learning how to thrive
- Establishing intrinsic motivations
- Thinking long term
Embracing The Unknown With Negative Capability
In a world of uncertainty, our ability to find certainty is a superpower – John Keats coined the term “Negative Capability”. The act of surrendering to uncertainty or the unknown.
There’s a certain sense of freedom that we can achieve when we decide that we don’t need all the answers to take a step forward. In fact, it’s better to not have the answers because we tend to value most of the solutions we’ve discovered from our own personal experience.
When the things we have are hard-fought, we value them more. We can only be truly grateful when the things that give us gratitude were at one point absent in our lives.
Not knowing is a good thing. It’s exciting. It holds the potential for unlimited possibilities.
Not knowing elevates you above the pitfalls of cognitive biases. When we admit to ourselves that we don’t have the answers, we become less susceptible to confirmation bias.
We can only innovate when we are aware of the known unknowns.
Learning To Thrive: Survival vs Thriving
One powerful core value is pursuing what is difficult, or one that scares you. As humans, we’ve evolved relying on the survival instinct which avoids pain and pursues pleasure.
The survival instinct is great from avoiding poisonous, venomous snakes, and foreign invaders, but there is a diminishing of returns with pain avoidance when it comes to personal growth and fulfillment.
Eventually, you will have to turn the survival instinct on its head. See pleasure as some sort of distraction and pain as an opportunity for growth, and progress.
Replace the survival-instinct with the thrival-instinct.
Intrinsic Motivations: Subjective Goals
Society has many ways of teaching you that you’re not enough. It’s no secret that social media takes a toll.
In a world where the outside narrative is to achieve, hustle, and outwork your way to success, and fulfillment, it’s hard to understand why when the cautionary tails of this pursuit have become cliche.
Money has never cured depression. Being an iconoclast in a particular field has never guaranteed inner-fulfillment. Putting everything you have into your life’s work doesn’t mean you get to neglect your health or relationship needs.
The Benefits of Thinking Long Term
It’s tempting to opt for the microwave instead of the oven. When you’ve overvalued the objective, and have overlooked the benefits of the long path towards your objective.
When you learn to use a mental-model that encourages you to look at how the behaviors you do today will affect your life experience tomorrow, and the next, it’ll be just another advantage for you.
Most achievements are placed in the hands of those who were able to continue cutting at the base of the tree long after others have quit.
The reward is the resolve. The benefit is that you can apply the resolve to anything and everything else in your life. That’s always a good thing.
Patience is a cure-all when you’ve identified the work that’s worth doing. It’s about showing up each day, ready to put the work long enough or the Muse to arrive, which is ultimately what we want. To be inspired, and that takes time.
A common cautionary tail is an artist or business owner who lost everything after an early rise to the top or who achieved fame and notoriety early in life without the foundation of experiencing the long trek to the top.
Long term thinking keeps you humble & hungry.
Refining the core value of being patient means starts with committing to the process.
You see the work as a reward. Positive outcomes are a welcomed by product.
Use Human Drives To Identify Core Values
The trick is to position goals that inspire intrinsic motivations that align with basic needs.
As humans we are primed with the need to have:
- A certain sense of security
- Love & connection
- A sense of contribution
- Significance
- Occasional novelty
Oftentimes, the ones that seem to have tapped into a well of unlimited motivations or who are able to influence others with the conviction of their message, it’s usually because they’ve achieved an alignment.
They are secure with themselves so they speak with conviction.
They draw courage from a loved one.
Their sense of contributing to something bigger than themselves gets them out of their own head.
Their mission gives them a true identity.
Their work makes each day feel new and exciting.
Learn how to position your goals with your basic human needs, and you may find that you have all that you need to continue moving forward in the direction that you’ve intended to go.
Be Willing To Go In The Opposite Direction
It’s hard to not get carried off by the current of the newest social trend, interesting app, business idea, or strategy that everyone else seems to be leveraging.
It feels like a lot is on the line if we don’t ride participate in the wave. The FOMO is real.
Take a moment and think about what may happen if instead, you don’t give in.
As an alternative, you go the other direction, or you simply stay where you are.
This is the path less traveled.
Sure, you may be missing out, but in turn, you’ll have the benefit of being heart-centered. Making a decision based on a conscious choice. Your compass isn’t fear-based. Your compass is your curiosity.
Now you’re free to be curious which will allow you to make all the mistakes there is to make in a narrow field. This is the path of expertise. This is the path of Mastery.
Eventually, your FOMO will become JOMO (joy of missing out).
Let Go of Outcome
It’s hard to achieve deep work and to truly be present in the moment if we’re unable to enjoy the process.
A key component is your level of attatchment to end results.
The trick is to overcome your neediness.
To let go of how you want things to turn out.
Neediness is a “progress repellent”.
Here are some ways you can do that.
- Identify a goal or target that you can be heart-centered in your choosing it.
- Create a plan or course of action to get from where you are, to someplace better.
- Execute the plan. Put things in motion.
- Experience progress.
- Cultivate gratitude for the progress you’ve made so far.
- Cultivate gratitude for the process, milestones & big wins you see in the near future.
- Commit to this process by showing up every day to execute the plan or course of action.
You can’t skip any of these steps.
A question worth asking is “what is your relationship to the thing you want?”.
Do you see it as the thing that holds the key to your life finally being where you want it to be? Red flag.
Your life can be what you want it to be right now. In this moment.
It’s a choice you make. The power is at your disposal. It’s located within you. It never moves. It’s always there.
It’s a treasure chest waiting to be opened.
Inside the treasure chest is:
- Self-actualization that grants you the ability to be independent of the good or bad opinions of others.
- The self-belief that says “Hey, why not you? Why not today?”
- A general sense of well-being tat allows you to enjoy the moment.
- Compassion that allows you to look past the shortcoming of – seeing the imperfect humanity.
- It’s the answer to the call to adventure that reminds you, you’re still the hero in this story.
The hidden treasure is buried within.
When it’s discovered, there’s nothing that the world can give you that you can’t already give yourself
Learn To Be Your Own Mentor
You’re not going to be able to live your days with your guru in your back pocket or in your ear.
Throughout the day, you will need to learn to be your own guru.
It starts with the self-awareness that is observant of the mental chatter & self-talk as well as the lens through which you see the world.
Is the self-talk judgmental or harsh? Does your perspective see scarcity? Does the world seem zero-sum?
If so – you need a reframe because what your focus on expands.
The world will reflect the story you keep telling yourself.
If you want to live a better story, choose better words to tell it.
Self-awareness is a habit. You get better at it the more you access it.
Positive thinking is a muscle, it gets stronger the more you exercise it.
Defeating Overwhelm
“What should I do with my life?” Is a dangerous question.
It risks becoming overwhelmed by the macro.
“What can I do with clear execution in the next 5 minutes?” Is a better question. This is where excellence & purpose lives.
- How can I best respond to this traffic jam?
- How can I hit the reset button in the midst of overwhelm or a lack of focus?
- How can I stay in “process” so I can still enjoy today’s journey?
- How can I create a resolution with this argument?
- What needs to be created with broad strokes?
Instead of building the most impressive wall – we strive to lay one brick down, and perfectly and mindfully as possible.We want Flow, in the moment.
Planning is important but the ambitious goals need to be deconstructed in it’s smallest parts so that the micro-pieces are addressed.
The angels are in the details too.
Improvising and experimenting is welcomed. Especially as you soon find out that no single misstep as the power to destroy you.
Get Over Your FOMO
How much of our priorities would you say are shaped by what you’ve been told will make you happy. How about because it seems other peopl are enjoying it?
Theres a big assumption, and it’s that what makes others happy will make us happy too. Or what the world seems to value is what we should focus on as well.
Social exceptance and security drives much of our behaviour.
So we fear missing out (FOMO) on any opportunity that gives us an advantage in this area of our lives, and as we pursue it, we wonder why there still seems to be something still missing in our lives.
Often times it the compulsive goals that keep us from getting what we need, and by “need” I mean our real “wants”.
The wants that are sustainable and provide fulfillment. The wants that we’re truly willing to fight and die for.
The wants that keep us working late into the night. The wants that lift us out of the bed.
Not the “wants” that “group think” or the media says we need.
Not the “wants” that promise “happiness”.
We don’t want happiness really. We want “meaning”. We want that sensation that makes us feel alive.
Sometimes, we need life to save us from what we think we want, so we can finally get what we need.
When we learn how to discover the joy of missing out (JOMO) on the things society says will make you happy, we create space for finding the unique things that actually will.