Saturday, March 5, 2022

Cultivating a not-so valued treasure


Talking about values is an interesting topic. After all we all love to have cheerful friends, peaceful parents and honest co-workers. But there is little thought on how that come to be…

Why is Richard so happy? Is that something happened in his life and so this is why he is like that? Gens?
Why are your parents so peaceful? Anne’s parents are always restless or angry… Does that have something to do with their beliefs?
And what about Joanna? I have never heard a lie coming out her mouth during all the time I’ve been working with her and I don’t understand how that is even possible!

But when values are under threat – and crises particularly create an interesting environment that threatens our deepest values – it is time to rethink them, revise them and reinforce them.

Richard has lost his mother and is in profound depression.
One of your parents had had an affair and that is affecting their lives a lot.
And Joanna finally lied to me!! All because she wanted my position in the company.

This is part of self-care: to treasure your values. Even though you often don’t notice their importance, the reality is they affect your relationships and the way you relate to your environment.

The first thing you should do is to rethink them in relation to the present situation. For instance, how can Richard be happy now that his mother has left? A good answer could be she would like him to keep on being happy after her departure. The difficult and deepest answer is to find the roots of happiness and work on them.

The second thing is to revise the values. For instance, maybe your parents can’t be peaceful anymore, but why not being stable or assertive? Values can be exchangeable and if one value does not work in that situation anymore, another one may replace them. If you want to go even deeper you could think about peace, where peace comes from and how to being peaceful even in awful circumstances.

Last thing is to develop the capacity of the values, that is, to reinforce them. So, Joanna was attacked by greed or need and she decided to leave aside her value of honesty; maybe if she took a course of assertiveness or if she would learn a mediation process, we could talk and find a solution. You could go even deeper and try to understand where honesty comes and reinforce that part.

As part of your self-care, I would like to share an easy homework: create a list of values, rethink them in relation to the present environment, revise them and apply certain techniques to adjust them, and reinforce them.


This is part of a series of posts on self-care.

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