How to Choose the Values that Will Help You Create the Life You Want

Summary

The article emphasizes the importance of choosing core values to guide life decisions, relationships, and personal growth, leading to happiness and success.

Abstract

The article "How to Choose the Values that Will Help You Create the Life You Want" discusses the significance of core values in shaping one's life. It suggests that a thoughtful selection of values such as faith, hard work, courage, confidence, and perseverance can provide direction and purpose. The author, Chris D'Connors, draws parallels to successful individuals like LeBron James, Beyonce, and Lynda Weinman, who have attributed their achievements to their deeply held values. The article argues that values serve as a foundation, much like a physical core, for personal development and decision-making, influencing thoughts, words, and actions. It encourages readers to look beyond luck and formulate a strategy based on values to avoid mediocrity and live life on their own terms.

Opinions

The author believes that life-changing events or gradual lessons from adversity can lead to personal refinement and dramatic life changes.
Core values are seen as essential for making informed decisions, building meaningful relationships, and identifying opportunities.
Success is not solely the result of luck but also stems from a disciplined life guided by core values.
Values are described as a source of encouragement, structure, and renewal, providing a framework for self-improvement.
The article suggests that a life without a value-based plan is likely to result in mediocrity.
It is emphasized that values impact thoughts and, consequently, shape words and actions.
The author advocates for the study of great historical figures and modern success stories to understand the role of values in achieving greatness.
The article criticizes contemporary society's focus on mindless digital content as a distraction from what is truly important for personal success and fulfillment.
Chris D'Connors, the author, promotes his book on values and invites readers to join him on a journey of living by core values through his website.

Choose your values wisely — they will shape your life happiness and success.

What will it take you to make a dramatic change in your life?

Will it be an event — a person who affects you in such way that you’ll never be the same? Or will you get there through lessons learned, mistakes, adversity and challenges that slowly help your refine your approach?

Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned professional, I encourage you to think deeper about what you want the structure for your life to be.

Maybe a better question to ask is, what is it right now? Seriously — how are you making decisions, building relationships and identifying new opportunities? Are you flying by the seat of your pants or do you have some kind of plan? Luck can only get you so far. Eventually, you have to formulate a strategy and you need to think about why you’re doing, what you’re doing.

As I’ve found in my own personal journey, when you build the foundation of your life on time-tested core values, you gain greater direction and a firm purpose for living life on your terms. But don’t just take my word for it. Look around at successful people throughout history.

You’ll find the common thread is that great athletes like LeBron James or singers like Beyonce, or tech innovators like Lynda Weinman thought deeply and passionately about the values that mean the most to them.

Values like faith, hard work, courage, confidence and perseverance have come to define the lives of these two superstars. The same can be said for that successful friend or mentor that you admire. They probably didn’t get to where they are purely by chance. They likely kept an open mind, prioritized a disciplined life over one of frivolous pursuits. And it’s likely made all the difference.

Your Foundation

Values are to our foundation as our core (abdomen) is to our physical movement. The more we exercise and build up our core, the more dexterous we become for forward motion and direction. In a similar way, our values become our core, the launching pad for the way we progress and behave in social interactions, and on our own, when only we know the truth.

Our values are the eternal spring we can turn to for life-giving purpose, re-assessment, evaluation, encouragement, structure and renewal. Values, when chosen properly, are of immeasurable meaning to your life and all of whom you encounter. They form the backbone for a constantly self-improving mindset which will only sharpen with time, of course when you put your wisely chosen values into practice.

Values impact our thoughts, which influence our words and actions. Values serve as the driving force behind the decisions we make and relationships we aim to build! Think about any accomplishment of feeling of self-satisfaction that you’ve experienced. What were the key ingredients that laid the foundation for that to happen?

I’m the proud author of a successful book on values and I believe in the cause so much, I continue to talk about the need for living by values. I used to just jump into things without a whole lot of thought or reason. It always led to frustration. Trust me — the path to mediocrity is trodden by those who never had a plan. The way to start your plan is with core values.

Follow the Examples of Those Who Came Before

You come to find that when you study the lives of great people throughout history like Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, to modern-day successes like J.K. Rowling and Serena Williams, there are common threads. Values like hard work, honesty, hope, integrity and respect are all sewn into the fabric of the lives of these people of incredible achievement.

Values will be there as the foundation of your life when everything around you continues to change. Here’s the trouble with values in the abstract — it’s not a sexy topic! We live in a fast-paced, hyper-consumption world of all kinds of digital content like social media, video and audio. So much of the content that exists today is meant to occupy our attention span by draining us on mindless things.

E-games. Reality television. Drama. Comedy that puts someone else down. These are time-wasters that give us a terrible perception of what is necessary to get ahead in the world and live life on our terms.

The way to live life on your terms is to start with rock-solid foundation of core values. From there, you can put together a personal game plan that allows you to live the life you want. There are few shortcuts in life. If you want to succeed and be happy enough, you’ll find the way. The way to begin is to start with core values.

Follow along on your journey with me: http://chrisdconnors.com