Martin Lecter

Your values are the foundation of your character. When you have clearly identified your core values you will find it a lot easier to make your decisions and you will also be far more content with the choices that you make.

Clarifying your values is the first step towards building your character and in this article I’m going to share with you some of the ways through which you can clarify your values and gain a better understanding of your true nature.

What Are Core Values

Your values are the foundation of your life purpose. Your values determine the ideal that you will strive to realize. Ideally your life should always be built around the things that you love doing most. When you are living in alignment with your passion and the things that fulfil you the most, you will also feel happier, more motivated, more inspired and more content with your life and with whatever it is that you are doing.

Your values form the foundation of what I call your life pyramid. Your life purpose is located at the top of this pyramid where your values converge into a single point. Everything you do in your life is a step towards the top. While you may never reach the top of this pyramid, you will still be better off if you take steps towards the top and give it a go. Your core values are there to support your actions and make sure that you are always on track towards the realization of your natural potential here on earth as a fully self-actualizing human being.

Many people talk about goals. While goals are important, I would say that your values are even more important because they actually determine the type of goals that you set for yourself in the first place. Goals are your means towards the realization of your values. If your values form the staircase then your goals represent the steps that you take towards the top of your value pyramid – and the size of your goals is the number of steps that you decide to climb during a fixed amount of time. Your goals are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time based – while your purpose and values are more of an ideal that is hard to measure – it just is.

You should know very clearly what your values and you should therefore take the time required to properly clarify your values. They are the foundation upon which you will be building everything else. They define the direction in which you will develop on your journey of personal development; the skills that you will learn; the people that you will choose to meet and the experiences that you will put yourself through. They are like your sail on the ocean of life.

People Who Lived Their Values

All great people throughout history have taken the time to properly clarify their values. That’s exactly what allowed these people to dedicate tens of years towards becoming all that they could become and to live up to the ideals that they have set for themselves. There is something in this world that you can do better than anybody else and your values will typically point you in the right direction towards that something that you are naturally good at.

I have studied many people whom I have truly admired and what I found is that all of them have clearly identified core principles which they have then based their life around. Identifying your core principles is in fact an essential step towards greater self-knowledge and self-knowledge is priceless.

Douglas MacArthur

MacArthur was one of the greatest field marshals in the history of the United States. He was one the the very few people to ever receive five starts and rise to the position of being the General Of The Army – which is the highest position any army official can reach.

Throughout his life MacArthur lived his values of Duty, Honor and Country. Being true to his duty in the service to his country, while executing his duty in the spirit of honor. As you will later see, your values must support each other in much the same way as the above values worked together to make MacArthur one of the greatest field marshals of the 20th century.

Here is how MacArthur describes these values in his own words while giving his fairwell speech to the cadets of the west point military academy in 1962.

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

Everything that you ever become, everything that you create in this world will be to a large degree determined by your core values. Your values give you clarity. They create a framework, a system that you can use for your personal development. You will feel less stress, you will have peace of mind and “a sense of wonder” of what next will come your way.

It is reasonable to think that MacArthur’s values have been largely influenced by his army training and his family – yet it is also reasonable to believe that he would have never ended up within the structure of the army if he did not value what the army stood for.

Mohandas Gandhi

Another example that is worth mentioning is Gandhi. During his life Gandhi believed in three main values of Truth, Nonviolence and Love. This was precisely what made Gandhi the leader and the person that he was. He was a perfect fit for the times during which Indian people have been so oppressed by the British. The Indian people could identify with his values and so they followed him.

The reason I want to mention Gandhi here is because he represents a contrast to what  MacArthur stood for. Even though his values were quite different and his application of the values was entirely opposite to MacArthur’s, he still reached a similar level of success in his leaderships and the realization of his purpose.

Here is how Gandhi described his core values in his own words:

I am but a seeker after Truth. I claim to have found a way to it. I claim to be making a ceaseless effort to find it. But I admit that I have not yet found it. To find Truth completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, to become perfect. I am painfully conscious of my imperfections, and therein lies all the strength I posses, because it is a rare thing for a man to know his own limitations.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Nonviolence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could. In doing so I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life and its problems have thus become to me so many experiments in the practice of truth and non-violence. I was capable of sacrificing non-violence for the sake of Truth. In fact it was in the course of my pursuit of truth that I discovered nonviolence.

Love wrestles with the world as with the self and ultimately gains mastery over all other feelings. Fear and love are contradictory terms. Love is reckless in giving away, oblivious as to what it gets in return.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

To see the universal and all-pervading spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification.

Gandhi believed in non-violence and truth most of all and he realized that love was the basis of non-violence and that truth was only possible in the spirit of love. His list of values was far greater than these three main principles. I think his list of values was about 96 elements long, but these tree main principles epitomize Gandhi’s life and are clearly expressed in everything that he did.

It is important to realize that core values are virtues that have been in existence for thousands of years. What matters is how you can relate to the values that you choose for yourself. Two people can have the same values, but relate to their values differently and so they will produce different results. A value is a physically defined representation of something that is almost immeasurable.

Steve Pavlina

A more recent example of a person who is living his principles is Steve Pavlina, who runs a popular personal development website called Personal Development For Smart People where he expresses his own philosophy of living. Steve has also written a book with the same title in which he talks about his core values of Truth, Love and Power. Steve takes this concept of three core values even further using four composite values of Oneness, Authority, Courage and Intelligence, that he derives from his three core values.

Everything that Steve does is guided by these seven main values. Steve is in the occupation that he loves with all his heart, he is connecting with people all over the world, he is on a constant pursuit of truth, he shares his truth with feelings of love towards the people who benefit from his work. Steve uses his power and self-determination to express his true nature in a spirit of love and by doing so he gains the power to influence others.

These three main values are the guiding principles that Steve uses to shape his life into the masterpiece that he wants it to be – just like any other human being can do who realizes the truth that each and every one of us has absolute power to do whatever we choose to do with our lives.

Here is how Steve describes his core principles in his own words:

Seek truth with open eyes. Courageously accept your discoveries and their consequences. Rid your life of falsehood, denial, and fear of what is. Make truth your ally, not your enemy. This isn’t easy, but it is correct.

Share your love openly. Connect with yourself and others by tuning in to the connection that already exists. The risk of rejection is overshadowed by the rewards of loving connections. Whenever you feel disconnected, reach out and connect with another human being. Remember that you’re always loved.

Fully develop your human abilities, and use your power in honorable service for the highest good of all. False power corrupts, but true power elevates. The more you resonate with truth and love, the greater your ability to wield power wisely. No one is served by your refusal to shine.

Embrace your unique path of growth. Use your intellect and emotions to guide you in the conscious pursuit of truth, love, and power. Invest in creative self-expression, service, and contribution, and you will suffer no scarcity. Your greatest gift to the world is to share who you really are.

Enjoy your incredible human journey. Accept the highs and the lows as equally valuable. Recognize that your deepest sorrows reveal your greatest joys. Share your stories with others, and know that you’re not alone. Be grateful for your time on earth.

Live consciously.

The key in living the life of your own choosing is to first clarify exactly what values it is that you stand for. There is nothing more liberating than to define your core principles to yourself. It frees you from doubts that you may feel towards yourself. Everything that aligns with your principles becomes the right thing to do and everything that misaligns with them becomes the wrong thing to do.

You should study people who have attained this state of stable and conscious living and then form your own philosophy of living that fits your own personality in the best way possible based on their teachings. Your spirit and your core values must fit together like the hand fits the glove.

Clarifying Your Values

The easiest way to clarify your own values is to begin by looking at the activities that you truly enjoy doing most. Look also at the qualities that you truly admire in other people. These ideals that you look for in other people along with your choice of means towards self-expression will define your core values. Do you like to be alone or be around many people? Do you prefer to be in a task oriented environment or a more human one?

Next you would want to align your values with the principle of service. I have always been fascinated with our capitalistic economical system where anyone can start with nothing and build a fortune through hard work and diligent effort. There is an equal opportunity for each and every one of us to become great if only we can answer the all important question of “How can I apply my values, talents and inborn abilities in a way that would serve as many people as possible with what they truly want?” It’s indeed not an easy question to answer… I think Steve Jobs did the job quite well.

When you find the answer to that question, the sky is the limit to what you can achieve. One of the core values of capitalism is success – which you attain by giving many people what they want. This success can be anything from financial rewards to relational success that gives you many connections. It’s still a basic value of our capitalistic, creativity and achievement based world economy where the only thing that matters is your ability to perform and improve your performance over time.

Your values should therefore be such that you can apply them towards the goal of serving many. That way everybody wins – you get to do what you love and other people can enjoy the output of your production. And there is nothing better than being able to do what you love and loose yourself in the rhythm of your productive activities.

Personal Values

The values I have chosen for myself neatly fit into this model of doing what I love doing most while creating something that will be useful to others. In case you still haven’t figured it out, my values are centred around knowledge – gathering, digesting and sharing knowledge. Although I prefer to refer to them as studying, practising and sharing what I have learned with others.

Over the years I have realized that a lot of the things that I have ever done were centred around these three core principles. When I was around 12, I would spend countless hours at the library reading magazines about microprocessor technology. I remember trying to figure out how the different parts of a microprocessor worked together and how they benefited from each other. I spent my time reading data sheets and manuals and writing programs on sheets of paper using hexadecimal op-codes which I would then manually input to the pins of the microprocessor chip. Then I would observe how my programs performed by using a few LED lamps attached to various pins of the chip. That was really fun experience.

When I got my first computer, I spent countless hours learning C++ and experimenting with various game development libraries that allowed me to draw 3D objects on the screen and to create simple 3D simulations using various free tools that were available on-line. Most of these games were learning experiences for me so I quickly jumped from one project to the next. When I was in my early teens, I could spend 12 hours in a row sitting locked up in my room experimenting with the latest game creation library such as the well known Ogre 3D. I would then move on to experimenting with the latest physics library to create cool real time physics simulations.

Learning has always been an underlying reason behind many of my experiences, so it makes sense to include it as one of my core values. I also realize that complete learning can not take place without applying the principles that we learn and experimenting with the world around us. I also realize that if learning and applying what I learn are two of my basic interests, then what naturally follows is sharing what I learn with others.

In much the same way as I was able to distil the basic guiding principles, you should be able to distil your guiding principles as well. What this gives you is a sense of certainty and direction. I know that I’m here to learn and grow. I’m not interested in singing in a rock band, I’m not interested in being a journalist – I’m interested in knowledge and the abstract principles that govern our world – and writing stories about it. Regardless of where you come from or what you background is, you will benefit a great deal from clarifying your own basic principles.

When you choose your values, make sure that they support each other in the same way as the values described in the examples above. Although you will naturally find a way to derive your core values from each other if you simply focus on better understanding yourself and the way your mental system works.

The values that you derive will be merely words that describe parts of your core being. It’s hard to package your core being into a set of words and simply stop there. Rather, the words are labels for the deep meanings that you assign to them within yourself – they are a way for you to untangle what you otherwise may find hard to grasp.