Values beliefs declining or not??

Are belief and core values declining? My statement relates to some people that have no idea where they are in their own personal values. With this in mind it could be hard to compare their personal values to one another or even to today’s society.

How does a person know they have compromised values if we do not understand what they are? Choices freely made in our society because we have the freedom. A quick decision when with our peers or due to time deadlines openly shows others our belief system. Each choice is the foundation for future choices.

An Example of Compromising Important Values

People most often get into trouble with their values when they compromise their most important values for values that are lower-ranking values on their list. To see how this works, consider the following example:

A person is a free-lance artist and has list his top four values in order, freedom, passion, accomplishment and security.

Passion and determination motivates him to sacrifice his income for the love of the career. The challenge is the ability to survive from a financial perspective. At one point he decides to give up some of his values working with tourists and grab on to his fourth value Security.

He enthusiastically accepted and soon found himself painting murals for a new client and his client’s friends. He was extremely happy. After several months, however, he began feeling depressed and resentful of his new job.

Through close examination of his values and feelings, he discovered that he had “sold out” his highest values (freedom, passion, and accomplishment) for one of his lower ranking values (security).

He missed the freedom he had to make his own choices about his art. Although his new customers were enthusiastic and exceptionally pleased with his work, he didn’t have the same sense of passion about creating them, and this diminished his sense of accomplishment as well. He also missed interacting with fellow artists and especially the tourists!

My question to you is, what are your top 4 values?

Do your values match your life at home, work etc?

Originally posted Aug 10, 2009
Updated July 21, 2010