Your values are the unifying principles and core beliefs of your personality and your character; your values reflect what it is you believe in and stand for, and they lie at the very heart of everything you are as a human being.
The virtues you believe in and the qualities that you stand for are what constitute the person you have become from the beginning of your life to this moment. Your values, virtues and inner beliefs are the axle around which turns the wheel if your life. All improvements in your life begins with your clarifying your values and then committing yourself to live a life consistent with reasonable and respectable values.
Your Self-Ideal is composed of the values you hold most dear and the qualities you most admire in yourself and others. Successful people are successful because they are clear about their values and act consistent with their values; complete failures have no real values at all.
Value clarification is the starting point of building greater self-confidence, self-esteem and personal character.
What are your values? What are the organizing principles of your life? What will you not stand for? What would you sacrifice for, suffer or and even die for? – These are extremely important questions that are only asked by a very few people, and these few tend to be the most important and influential people in every society.
Every choice or decision you make is based on your values. Whenever you decide between alternatives, you invariably choose the alternative that you value the most. A higher order value always takes precedence over a lower-order value.
How can you determine what your values really are today? Just observe your behaviours, especially the things you do when you are under pressure. Your values are always expressed in your actions. It is not what you say, or wish, or hope, or intend that expresses your true values. It is only what you do.
Your character is the degree to which you live your life consistent with positive, life-enhancing values. A person who lacks character is one who compromises on higher order values, in favour of short-term advantages or benefits.
When you achieve complete congruence
between your values and your goals,
you feel strong, happy healthy and
a fully integrated person.
