Having Core Values Will Help You Find And Show Who You Are
What are your core values?
Behind closed doors, no one sees what you see. No one knows how you operate. The only person that understands you best is yourself, and it is the perfect person to start with. How you live is one of the most important questions and goals for a person. Plenty of avenues come our way, but the one path you cannot find on a GPS is the path you pave for yourself. All it takes is a few bricks.
Each brick is a foundation for the next brick, and even though they all look the same, they all take different positions to support your travels. Your goal is to create a smooth way to walk on. Let each brick you lay represent a core value.
Core values are the standards you expect from yourself that become innate to who you are, not what you are. For example, it is easy to say that Mike is a business analyst, that is what he does. No one knows who he is beyond the position he holds, that he is a mentor, a father, a considerate, responsible, and temperate individual.
The more specific you are with who you want to become, the less difficulty you will have with obtaining personal success.
To discover what your core values are, start by observing yourself from a comfortable bird's eye view. Notice the things you like about yourself and do not like about yourself. Whether it takes place over the course of a day, a week, or a year, simply mark the facts about yourself you know to be true in as much detail as you like.
Now that you have made your entries, review them and ask yourself, how am I living? How would I like to live?
Is there somewhere you can strike a balance to make a difference in your life? Of course, there is. The room for improvement always has walls that grow higher and wider every day. How you see yourself and how you act must harmonize. If they do not, this creates cognitive dissonance, which leads to doubts, fears, inaction, and worst of all, the wrong actions.
Take your observations and situations you find yourself in and simplify them to a single word. These words will become your core values that you assign your definition to. It may help if your core values are verbs or adjectives; use words that call you to actions you are going to take.
My core values are validation, authenticity, love, originality, and routine. Here is how I define them.
Validation
I am living proof that life in me and through me will carry purpose without the approval of others; unless it should make them better to have been inspired or advisory as my witness. How I approach my happenings and callings will be discerned by my character and by those who know my character. I choose myself not over another, but in the hope that I can become selfless. To the point of precipitation, may I cast rains of my good fortunes, whether it be a downpour or a drop, so that it may be absorbed again and be shed once more for the people with and without clouds over their heads. Knowing the backs of my hands as well as the bottoms of my feet is my journey. Moving forward while standing still is my destination. Validation begins and ends always with the self.
Authenticity
The true self presents itself through concrete changes in that my aims are not self-defeating. Self-discovery and self-awareness are the pours on the skin of authenticity. Being born anew is a constant exercise of the soul embedded in the words and actions closely woven and to be worn as a diligent wardrobe. I will not only dress the part but will become the part I was made for. However, like a wardrobe, authenticity is not without divergence. There are many accessories that on the surface seem disingenuous and gaudy to the beholder, but as the wearer, it is a statement more than fashion only I can wear. Authenticity is the magician without his magic; the trick is to tell and to live the truth.
Love
The matters of the heart think with a self-respecting emotional intelligence. It does not project selfish indulgence or pump empty promises that can only lead to bad blood. True love is a love of the self which translates to a common love for others. I hold a caring disposition in fear that no one cares at all and in strength that I still care despite being my own or part of the minority. It is a dangerous thing not to care, for there is no love where there is no care. The true exception revolves around self-love, where care must be placed on not only the little things but on the larger than life concerns set out for myself. Loving myself will find love in new places and faces who double the love to be had.
Originality
Inspiration and aspiration, invention and reinvention, are distinct equals in the case of creation. As a creator, I will not rely on derivative platitudes or cluttering cliches as adequate expressions or explanations. Rather, the moments where I find lacking will force my unconscious feelings to become conscious thoughts and words for memories in the making. My ideas will be my own while accepting their close inspirations and far aspirations. To be original, I must practice while not succumbing to perfection and focus on fulfilling my good intentions and turn them into good actions.
Routine
I will not have my hands be made idle. My work will become my play and when need be I will find the necessary separation of the two. I will shape a world of stagnation into one of dedication. Time will not be determined by the clock's hands but by the willingness of mine. Seconds or a century, my goals will not bend unlike my mode of operation. How I reach my successes wanes in the shadow of my reach still being done. I have a diligent and flexible work ethic that does not fall into mundanity but rises through creativity. I will meet every day with sights on the next day so that I may say the days before me meant well and the days ahead of me mean better. On my last day, if I should have the company of one, it will have meant my trials and errors amounted to the continuous power of a hopeful routine.
Make your standards and live by them.
Don't Be Fooled, Social Media Isn't An Accurate Depiction Of ANY Person's Life
When the snapshots we upload to our Instagram become the placeholder for the everyday interactions in our daily lives and are our only version of reality, then that's when we've hit the depths of just existing.
There is a difference between living and existing. That, I'm sure we all know in theory. Yet, I wish we talked more about how to distinguish between the two, because sometimes you slip from the buzzing, radiant precipice of living, into the mind-numbing, worthless depths of existing without knowing how you ended up there.
I guess we should start with the fundamentals.
How I've always seen it, to live is to experience, to exist is to be experienced. You would think that in your own life, you'd be forced to be an active participant; except, I know first hand that it's one of the easiest things in the world to walk around on autopilot, moving from mundane task to mundane task without a single care for why you're doing it, other than because it fits into the narrow confines of what society has already decided is expected of you. Boredom, disillusionment, and dissociation ensue, and you fade into the background, becoming part of the canvas that those who are actually living paint into the fabric of their lives.
It's empty and apathy becomes routine.
This image of existing is probably the one we're all most familiar with, but it feels too easy. What has been on my mind lately is another form of worthless existence, one even worse yet. The kind where you're alive alright, but immersed in a world far removed from your actual reality. Can we call it living if it's not real?
Essentially, it's like being in the matrix.
Since I've discovered social media, I feel like that's where I've been. I don't mean this in an angsty, "I hate my life so I'd rather live in delusion online," type of way. I mean that I've been fooled into distorting my own reality to fit the ideals of a social media world. I mean that I've been chasing behind likes, comments, and followers as if that somehow equates to tangible success in the real world. I mean that I've been experiencing the world through the pixels of a 6.1 in. screen. The saddest part is that I didn't even know I was doing it, and how far it had gotten out of hand, until yesterday.
I watched an excellent video by Tiffany Ferg where she explains how the normalization of Facetune is contributing to not only unrealistic beauty standards but tricking people into distorting the polished, impeccable bodies and images that they see online for reality. Ferg makes it easy for us to infer how Facetune is contributing to a larger problem with social media: the disillusionment and shame that comes with not 'measuring up' to the standards set online by influencers (not just beauty standards, but ideals of how you should live your life in general), as well as the incessant need to alter your reality in order to live up to these standards.
People think altering your reality is only related to circumstances like taking drugs, but it very well can apply to instances like using Facetune to give yourself "five-minute plastic surgery" or conflating your social media profile and presence with your actual, physical being. When the snapshots we upload to our Instagram — the smiles in every photo, the tiny waist and wide hips we photoshop onto ourselves, the trips that we take twice a year, yet upload to our account as if we vacation every other month, the flawless makeup and perfect skin, the effortless, endless, and constant adventure — become the placeholder for the everyday interactions in our daily lives and are our only version of reality, then that's when we've hit the depths of just existing.
And that's what frightens, disgusts, and angers me the most because everything on social media is fucking fake.
It is a culmination of the most idealized version of our world. It's unattainable. It's perfect. It's empty. I've spent so long trying to make my actual life match my Instagram profile that I've forgotten to live. Social media should be a reflection of our reality, not the basis for it. Trying to craft the perfect outfits, trying to feel excited and happy every second, trying to create a perfect image will get you nowhere expect caught in the storm of confusion and disappointment.
I don't say this in opposition to social media. I love Twitter and Instagram because it's a great source of news and entertainment and it helps us connect with each other, as well as express ourselves.
I say this in favor of waking up.
Waking up to savoring each moment in your actual reality. Waking up to realizing that nothing is perfect and that we should be thankful that it's not. Waking up to chasing fulfillment in real life and not just for a great picture on Instagram.