One of the things I have come to learn/understand is that if I don't define these values someone else will for me. Case in point: my job requires that I work long hours in the summer when the kids are here for camp. One of my responsibilities is to see that everyone is safe and order is kept at camp.....mind you this is while we have upwards of 250 people at a time here. It can be a tall order and a great and rewarding challenge. One of my core values (more about this later) is my family. I want to be able to know my family and for them to know me. This require time spent. This summer I let someone else define how that core value would look for me and my family. Not by my action, but by my lack of action. Mind you, my job is important and I am needed at this place, but I am not the only one to handle every situation.....I am not irreplaceable. I let my employer contradict that very statement this summer. I allowed myself to be worked for an average of close to 100 hours a week. How does that allow me any time to see my family? How does that allow me to be true to my core value of family time? You see my lack of action or in this case my lack of saying no and standing up for myself, allowed my core value to be changed without me doing a thing about it. I let someone else define what was important to me. I don't want to be that kind of person. My core values need to shaped and molded by my faith, my future and myself.
Here are some of my core values.
-Faith: Those of you who know me well, know that my faith is of the utmost importance in my life. I value that more than any other thing. It completely shapes who I am and what I am doing. It is my most important core value. Picture a dart board......faith would be the bulls eye of my dart board.
-Family: I grew up in a great family. We are much like any other family and we have our struggles and challenges. I want the best life for my family that I can possibly have. I believe that only comes through time spent and life lived together. My kids/wife might love that I worked and bought them nice things, but they will remember with vivid memory the time we spent together. Time is a gift that you can't get any more of. You can't buy any more time. You can't get it back either. Once you spent it, it is gone. I want to spend the resources of my time with my family and make memories.
-Hard work: This may sound incredibly contrary to what I just wrote, but I believe they go hand in hand. Again, those that know me know that I work hard at whatever I do. I believe in doing it well and many times that takes hard work. I believe that hard work pays off in the long run. I believe this is one of the best lessons I can leave my family. Work hard at the things that matter the most. This means I work hard at not only my job, but my faith, my family time etc. I work hard at my core values.
-Community: This is an idea that is central to who my wife and I are. We thrive in true community. I am not talking about some David Koresh type of thing, but a community of like minded people who are pursuing some common goal. That can be very simple or very complex. I like to think of life as a sandbox. At the end of my life who and how many people do I want "playing" in my sandbox? This is my defined community. People that value me and I value them. People that are willing to give as much as they take. People that need me as much as I need them. People that are willing to pour into me and I into them.
-Being debt free: This is not some manage your money plug or anything.....I see great value in living your life, as much as possible, without debt. It allows me the great freedom to do the things I want to do. If I have it then I can do it, if not I can't. It works really well for our family. There are often great freedom in boundaries and living debt free is one of those boundaries for me.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a starting point. A place to work from. A place to start to define and shape.
So, how about you, what are your core values? What things do you model your life around? What have you found that is central to who you are and what you want to be?
What lessons can we teach each other?
