A couple years ago, I took the time to think about and explicitly define my personal values. Not other people's values, or what society as a whole seems to value, or even what I wanted to value - but the things I naturally, innately valued: the things I've been prioritizing and living my life according to all along (or trying to prioritize and live my life according to), without even realizing it.
Now, "innate" doesn't mean these things are easy for me to prioritize - on the contrary, there were many times in my life when these values were incredibly difficult to believe in at all, let alone base my behaviors on. But it is precisely this - that these beliefs and behaviors would persist even when it would've been easier to forget them or change - that helped convince me they were my core values after all. These are things that some part of me has always believed, even when other parts of me were actively resisting and trying not to.
Now, "innate" doesn't mean these things are easy for me to prioritize - on the contrary, there were many times in my life when these values were incredibly difficult to believe in at all, let alone base my behaviors on. But it is precisely this - that these beliefs and behaviors would persist even when it would've been easier to forget them or change - that helped convince me they were my core values after all. These are things that some part of me has always believed, even when other parts of me were actively resisting and trying not to.
Maybe it seems odd to put in the effort of putting my values into words, when on some subconscious level I already knew what they were. I find it helpful, though - not only for my personal edification and trying to better understand myself, but also to use as a tool in times of stress. So often when I feel stressed, it's because I've started listening to other people instead of myself. I've forgotten what I usually or innately prioritize, or even somehow talked myself into trying to change those priorities to look like something else - something decidedly not me. Referring to my list of personal values in these moments can help me identify which of my values I've been neglecting and help me refocus my priorities. Other times, I'm stressed because my current situation is making it difficult for me to live according to my values, which is upsetting and frustrating. In this case, too, referring to my list of personal values is helpful, because it illuminates which of my values are currently threatened, which in turn helps me figure out how to find another way to fulfill those values despite my circumstances.
Today I'd like to share my list of values with you. Some may look familiar, being values you also have; others might be completely foreign and not something you'd at all agree with. I'm not passing judgment on these values as inherently superior to anyone else's - these just happen to be the values I've inherited or cultivated over the years and which now truly feel like a part of me, woven into my very essence. It took lots of self-reflection, recalling countless memories, and going through old journals, researching and collecting evidence from my own life, to come up with this list - and I still occasionally revise it from time to time. It's not set it stone; it's a living document, and it changes as I continue living.
There are seven values altogether, divided into two broader categories. Under each value, I've also written "I will" statements, to give myself examples and encouragement for how I can live my life according to that particular value. These statements are meant as inspiration, and are not indicative of how I always think or behave... but I do have several examples of times in my life where I have done those things, which I read both to remind myself what I'm capable of, and to remind myself that these really are my values, and have always, on some level, been my values. (After all, if they weren't my values, I wouldn't have this pattern of past behaviors which seems to reflect them.) I've also included some of those examples here, underneath the main list of values - quotes from my private journals and private/public blogs.
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My values:
A. I am self-sufficient and I have self-worth.
1. I know what I want, and recognize if I'm not getting it. If I am not provided with what I want, I work toward it by myself, for myself.
- I will allow myself to need things, want things, and hope for things, and I will practice recognizing what I need, want, and hope.
- If I need something from someone else, I will speak up and fight for what I need.
- If I want to learn something or do something or have something or participate in something, I will find a way to do it or ask for it (in the best way I know how at the time).
- I will continue to set personal, creative, intellectual, emotional, and physical goals, which represent accomplishments that are personal priorities for me; and I will continue to pursue these goals, for myself.
2. I believe I am worthy and deserving of being treated with respect and kindness. I put a lot of energy into empathizing and trying to understand others, and I get upset when I don't get this kindness and understanding in return that I know I deserve.
- I will choose to surround myself with people who give me that kindness and respect.
- If someone repeatedly denies me the respect and kindness I deserve, I will not allow them to play a significant role in my life.
B. I cherish the things that make me human and I value the time nurturing these pursuits.
3. I value my intellect and stretching and nurturing my knowledge and understanding of the world.
- I will continue to take classes, learn new things, read books, do research, flex my "insight" muscles, make connections, and develop my own way of understanding the world.
- I will immerse myself in these intellectual pursuits for myself, researching and exploring the topics that are interesting or meaningful to me.
- I will take pride in the personal language and metaphors I create and use to describe my unique understanding of the world.
4. I like trying to understand myself and trying to understand other people. I practice compassion, kindness, and empathy towards others. I like connecting with others (especially on a deeper, emotional level) and feeling like a part of the web of humanity.
- I will prioritize tending my emotions, journaling, chronicling and revisiting my memories, writing and rewriting my life's narrative, defining my personal values, and establishing my self-identity.
- I will seek out and experience others' creative outputs/understandings of humanity by reading fiction and nonfiction, listening to music, watching television shows or movies, attending theater productions, visiting museums, and contemplating visual artwork.
- I will strengthen the relationships I have with the kind, respectful people in my life by initiating or participating in heartfelt, honest conversations.
- I will pursue friendships and find meaningful ways of connecting with new people.
5. I am emotional - and I value my emotions and my ability to demonstrate them. I use multiple different avenues to feel, and to express and share my feelings and opinions with others. I believe that my feelings and opinions are worth sharing with others, because I have a unique voice and insights to offer the world.
- I will acknowledge the emotions I have, and not shame myself for feeling or expressing them.
- I will allow myself to cry, and to stop crying, to feel emotion every day, and revisit the same emotions over and over.
- I will listen to or watch media that encourage me to feel.
- I will allow myself to express my emotions in front of the trustworthy people closest to me.
- I will write, draw, and paint with the specific intent to share my thoughts or feelings with others. I will craft my message carefully and pointedly, with honesty, heartfelt emotion, and eager vulnerability. And I will work to share these insightful creations with others.
6. I value my creativity and exploring artistic pursuits.
- I will create spontaneous art and writing for myself, giving myself permission to use art and creative writing as a personal relaxation or therapeutic technique, or to simply enjoy the aspects of creation, making a mess, and working intuitively without forethought or concern with the art/writing's marketability or message.
- I will learn new artistic or writing techniques and familiarize myself with new artistic materials, both on my own as a method of play and in a more formal classroom/group setting, to expand my horizons, embrace the process of art-making and writing, connect with others who have similar interests, and have fun.
7. I am independent, inquisitive, adventurous, and brave. I like trying new things and forging my own path. I like exploring my environment and exploring new places. I want to experience everything. I want to take advantage of opportunities, and to be able to say I really lived my life.
- I will prioritize traveling, exposing myself to new environments and new opportunities to see and experience the world.
- I will chronicle my experiences through photography and journaling to remind myself of all the place I've been/things I've done.
- I will strike out on my own to try new and potentially scary things.
- If there is something I want to try, I will not let being alone in this desire, fear of what others might think of me, or others' risk aversion hold me back.
- If there is something I want to do that is not organically presented to me, I will seek out and cultivate these opportunities myself.
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Category B was easier for me to pinpoint - they are characteristics about myself I have been more likely to embrace throughout my life, values that were less "hidden" from me. I wanted to take as many classes as I could, in high school and college both, trying to balance my love of learning about a wide range of topics with my specific passions of art and writing. When time or scheduling restraints preventing me from doing everything I wanted to, I prioritized learning, writing, or creating art in my spare time as well. And even when my emotions and experiences were invalidated or written off by others, I persisted over the years in writing on Livejournal, Facebook, and various blogs, because I believed my feelings and opinions were worth sharing with others (whether a select group of trustworthy friends, strangers, or some combination thereof). I've always loved making deep, emotional connections with others - whether in person or online or with fictional characters - and feeling like a part of the web of humanity.
- From 11/18/2005: "I'm disappointed already because our high school has some really cool classes that I never had time to take... just wait until I graduate college. I want to take ALL the classes!"
- From 4/2/2006: "There's something almost cathartic about hanging out backstage with theater people. All that energy and excitement. Now that the show is over, I'll miss the sense of community. It never ceases to amaze me how everyone can bond so quickly in just a couple of weeks. I love it."
- From 6/29/2006: "Even if not professionally, I hope to always draw and write, just for my own benefit. Art is something to look forward to, something to work at, something to accomplish, something to be proud of. Honestly, I can't imagine my life without drawing of some sort, even if it's just doodling cartoons, because drawing has been a part of me for so long."
- From 8/15/2006: "Things that make me smile: crazy dreams, writing something good, drawing something good, buying school supplies, and embarking on new academic adventures."
- From 1/5/2007: "It makes me a little sad, to lose something that was such a large part of my life, but in the end I think it tore me away from people more than it brought me closer to them. It kept me from understanding certain things or empathizing with people by hardening my heart to those who were different from me, and that's not something I'm okay with."
- From 9/15/2007: "I want to witness stories and empathize with people. But I can't be that kind of person easily - because I've conditioned myself to often be emotionally detached, telling myself that emotion is weakness. So just because connecting with other people is something I genuinely want to do does not mean it's something I'm always able to do - and knowing that, admitting that, makes me feel so sad and overwhelmed."
- From 12/5/2007: "My art history paper had to be 15 pages long; mine is 28. I just got so excited to do the research and got really interested in it!"
- From 3/14/2008: "Oh well. It doesn't mean I won't read and write in my spare time, even if I can't fit English and Creative Writing classes into my schedule."
- From 9/3/2008: "I want art to just take me in any and every direction it can; I don't want to limit myself to one thing. I want to have a concentration in everything."
- From 11/1/2010: "I really don't want to settle for a job I don't want, when I believe I'm capable of better things and know how important growing and challenging myself are to me."
- From 5/9/2011: "I want to nurture my authenticity - that is, being true to myself and doing what I really want to do. I want to do at least one authentic thing a day - one thing I do just for myself, just because I want to, because it's who I am."
Category A, however, was not something I initially included in my list of values at all. I knew that I wanted to believe I was self-sufficient and had self-worth - but I didn't think that I already believed those things, just that they were beliefs I was trying to acquire, in order to raise my low self-esteem. If you've ever tried to convince yourself to believe something, you know that it's a daunting task - raising my low self-esteem therefore seemed to require Herculean effort. How was I supposed to convince myself to believe I was capable of seeing myself as worthy and deserving of kindness and respect, or practice recognizing what I wanted and working toward such goals, if I'd spent so many years doing exactly the opposite?
But then I noticed something, reading through old journals. Whenever I wasn't treated with respect and kindness, I got angry and upset. I wouldn't have felt that way if I truly believed I didn't deserve those things.
- From 9/26/2005: "What about me? Can't I be happy too? I deserve more than what I've been getting lately."
- From 5/17/2006: "I'm trying not to be bitter, I really am. But I guess I still can't help but feel that all my hard work has gone unnoticed or unacknowledged."
- From 10/1/2006: "I would never have said that to them, because I would never want to hurt them. Did they not even think about how this might make me feel?"
- From 7/16/2007: "I don't think you realize how much it hurts when you treat me this way - or else why would you continue, if you knew how much it kills me? What do you hope to gain? There is only so much I can take before I just can't bottle up my feelings anymore."
What's more - when I understood (even on a subconscious level) that I was lacking something important, I tried to do something about it. Even if it turned out to be a dysfunctional coping mechanism in the end, it was still an attempt to provide myself with what I needed, with whatever resources I had to work with or understanding I had about the situation at the time.
This went for showing myself respect and kindness, too. I wanted to be nicer to myself, to stop self-abusing, and learn how to have better self-esteem. It was a cycle I got stuck in often in middle school, high school, college, and even after - being critical and awful to myself, and then vowing to be better.
- From 2003: "I guess I'm stuck being me. Maybe one day that'll make me happy. Maybe one day I'll be proud of myself. But for now I guess I'm here, hoping that maybe that 'one day' is near."
- From 2004: "I'm sick of beating myself up. I'm tired of being a perfectionist. I try too hard. I care too much. Enough is enough."
- From 12/31/2005: "I will work on being happier, especially with myself. I need more self-confidence."
- From 11/7/2006: "I am too critical of myself. I want to be nicer to myself."
- From 12/27/2008: "I wish I'd done less over-analyzing things, disliking myself, and stressing out in 2008. I'm still learning how to stop judging myself so harshly, but I'll get there."
- From 1/8/2011: "I love the rare times I believe in myself (though I bet I'd like them even more if they were less rare)."
It was eye-opening to discover how many of those entries there were in my journals over the years - and a relief. It meant that, while a part of me had spent years (decades) being overly critical and abusive to myself, there was always some part of me who stubbornly persisted on seeing my self-worth. It meant that I didn't have to teach myself from scratch how to value myself after all - just that I had to cultivate that part of me that already existed. It felt like less of a Sisyphean struggle after that; it felt like a cycle I could actually escape.
And so I included those Category A statements in my list of personal values as well - and it was those more than the ones about creating art or writing blog posts or learning new things that I'm really talking about when I said earlier that it was important and helpful to me to take the time to put those values down into words. Those are the values I haven't always let myself believe in, the values that haven't come easily to me - but things I kept trying to believe anyway, even while other parts of me were actively resisting.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, it's been a couple years now since writing these values down and firmly asserting to myself, without a shadow of a doubt, that these are statements I actually believe, and have always believed. I'd been slowly growing more comfortable with myself and allowing myself to cultivate my self-esteem anyway, but writing down this list made those pursuits even easier. I can honestly say that I've never felt more content with and proud of myself than I have in recent years. I've had moments of pride before, of course - but they often grew from someone else being proud of me for something I'd accomplished. They were moments of external validation that I'd internalized, rather than internal validation that persisted no matter what tangible things I was accomplishing, what goals I was seeing to completion, or what others might be thinking of me.
It has been a profound help, and a great relief, to discover my authentic self and allow myself to value what I innately want to value. This doesn't mean that I never care what others think of me - but it does mean I can more easily find my sense of self-worth again anytime I temporarily lose it.
