A handy definition of values is the answer to the question: “Why should I care about this?”
You know how you feel. You have an opinion. Being aware of feelings, sensations, thoughts, realities and potentials are critical if you want to do what will make you feel good about yourself. But if you stop there it doesn’t go deep enough.
What do you think about your feelings, sensations, thoughts, the reality confronting you and the possibilities of what you can create from this reality? Why are these feelings so important to you? What does it matter? So you’re frustrated. So you’re sorry. So you’re touched. So what?
You can even imagine (and sometimes you don’t have to imagine it) someone saying to you “I really don’t care what you think!” What would you answer this real or imaginary person?
Your answer will be about your values. Values are the ‘north’ on your compass. They give you a sense of direction in everything you do. They are the reason why it makes a difference in the first place how you’re feeling and why you should bother asking the question. Not only that. Values motivate you to act.
Synchronistically (as usual) a client called my home phone just now. She was unable to reach me on my cell phone. I apologized for not having it turned on. I felt badly about it. It’s not so fixed in my routine and I forget to turn it on.
So I can ask: What do I care that my phone was turned off? What does it matter that someone could not reach me? What do I think about my feelings about this? I felt the way I did because I want to be reachable. I don’t want to put even a small extra impediment in someone’s way where she doesn’t get through and then she has to try me on my home phone. It’s a value to me to ease someone’s way in getting help. This will motivate me to remember to turn my phone on. In fact I’m going to do it right now after I finish this post.
Frankl made a quadrant consisting of four possible experiences in life. A person can feel successful and have a sense of purpose and meaning in life, a person can feel he’s failed in some way yet still have a sense of purpose and meaning in life, a person can feel successful and have no sense of purpose and meaning and a person can feel a failure and have no sense of purpose and meaning. Values connect both success and failure to meaning.
Clearly when there is success and meaning the person feels good about life and when there is failure and no meaning the person feels despair. But the feeling of success or failure is not the barometer for happiness that it would appear to be. A person who is successful but has no sense of purpose feels a gnawing emptiness: What’s it all for? On the other hand a person who feels he’s failed in some way yet has a sense of purpose believes there is a meaning to his situation and although he is frustrated or in pain he feels positively challenged by his situation and actively seeks out a way to create something good from it. He can always find the hidden value.
Unless of course you’ve lost your will to meaning