A few months after college I started seeing a therapist. While many of the exercises I did with her were eye-opening, the most important one was figuring out what my values are. Interestingly, this is a question people would ask of someone they’re considering to be their life partner, yet it’s something I never thought to ask myself.
In my life up through college, I was wrapped up in external perceptions of success. These dictated my life. I’m not sure why I cared about them so much. This need to be respected just seemed to be an instinct that was always there.
This vain sense of ambition lead me into a classic period of reading self-help books, the first of which was Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It talks about how the most satisfying experiences in life are ones that are autotelic, done for their own sake and not for some external purpose.
While this may sound basic to a lot of people, it was somewhat groundbreaking to me since everything I had accomplished in life up to that point was driven by external purposes, such as getting into a good college and getting a good job post-graduation so that others would respect me. While others may have spent time pursuing their genuine interest in playing guitar after school or doing crosswords on Sunday mornings, I probably would have dismissed such interests as a waste of time since they are not traditional things that look good on a resume.
I definitely wasn’t spending all my free time curing cancer either. When I was in school, I spent a shocking amount of my time after school watching random YouTube videos and just generally being absorbed by the digital attention economy. I had a big procrastination problem for the work I should have been doing because I was scared I would not live up to the lofty standards I always set for myself. Due to this tendency, I often wouldn’t live up to those perfectionistic standards. All the traditional measures of success I’ve been able to attain in my life have been due to bold sprints I’d taken at crucial times rather than continually pacing myself in a speed walk.
During this time, I certainly was not fulfilled since I barely knew what that meant or why that mattered. I just kept senselessly chasing carrots in hopes of being seen as worthy in others’ eyes without thinking about where they would lead me.
Clearly, external values were never a sustainable motivator or satisfying for me, but I was too wrapped up in them to even think about what I actually cared about. So, when my therapist asked me to pick out 5-7 values I prioritized in my life from a list of values, I was at a loss at first. But, ultimately, I picked out:
- Personal development
- Altruism
- Meaning
- Wisdom
- Relationships
- Adventure
- Education
As you can tell, I’m a softie. Even when I was pining for conventional success, I was still often sensitive to injustice around the world and thought that there had to be a more meaningful way to live life than just doing what everyone else in society said I should be doing.
But, I understand that my privileged background undoubtedly played a part in me valuing such grandiose concepts as altruism and meaning. I was an only child who wasn’t denied most things I wanted and was able to graduate from college with all expenses paid. Besides, when I asked my friends to pick out their values, many of them chose security (often financial) as one of their values regardless of their background. So, I understand that my list may be more pretentious than average.
Nevertheless, my point is that after I started orienting my life according to my values, I have become a lot more fulfilled and have been able to enjoy things for their own sake. For example, after understanding that one of my core values is relationships, I can spend the whole weekend spending time with my friends and family without worrying that I’m wasting time not building the next billion-dollar start-up (yes, I was this obnoxious).
Even if you anticipate that your core values will incorporate ones correlated with external measures like success and finances, it may still be helpful to review the values list to either confirm that hypothesis and feel good that you’re pursuing things you really care about or realize that there are other things you care more about and begin your journey with those values.
All this is not to say that I don’t still struggle with worrying about others not respecting me. In fact, after I recently quit my corporate job to work for a non-profit, it was definitely something I thought about and is probably something I will always think about at some level. After all, it’s an instinct of mine that’s always been there.
However, discovering what I really cared about with the values list has definitely quelled the distressing emotions associated with that instinct, and I’m much more confident in the way I’m living my life. Hopefully, it can help guide you too in one way or another.