Values & Ethics | The Making of a Character

What do you truly value?

For leading a meaningful and fulfilling life on what you find important; but also for having a sense of purpose that can help you cope in times of doubt it is essential to know your values.

Each of our daily decisions is guided by them and yet most of us know very little about our core values. Identifying our values is a great personal exercise and maybe the most important one, that each individual should take the time to reflect upon. Our values are where we draw strength, motivation, and drive. The clearer our values are the better the decisions we make. Decisions that resonate with our beliefs and what we feel is right and important.

How to get to know your values

Getting to know your values requires some effort and reflection. As the values drive our decisions every day, observing what makes us happy or sad, feeling motivated or drained of energy is a useful method to help us identify them. By observing our own behavior and reaction more carefully we can pinpoint better our internal motives.

Then, to capture what we observe we should try to place some words behind each behavior. Noting down and keeping track of our behavior will help us identify which pattern of actions and decisions makes us feel good, more productive, and fulfilled. These actions are what could be closer to what we feel at ease and what we consider close to what we value.

If doing this observation is something we find difficulty introducing as part of our ongoing behavior,  it might be a good idea to force such exercise of value identification by setting actual behavioral experiments and observe the output afterward. That will help us reflect easier as it is easier to frame and understand the initial point of how we thought our behavior will be.

Why is it important?

Overall, when you think about core values, think of what you find motivating and what you find important. Above all think about the impact you would like to have on this world and others, as well as what you would like to be remembered for. It is our values that keep each of us authentic and guide us in life.

It is important while on this self-discovery journey to reflect and look at the big picture of things. You would often find that living constantly by our values although the ideal is not possible. Life brings us more often than not to situations where hard choices need to be made. Knowing well our values, thus, knowing our true selves, allows us to know how to handle especially these challenging moments.

How we define Ethics?

The word ethics originates from the ancient Greek word êthos (ἦθος) which means "moral nature".  Ethics are the set of rules established by a group or culture that govern the behavior of a person. Consider ethics as the “code of contact”, the guidelines for how our moral behavior should be in different situations. As ethics are a set of rules that are formed under the same culture, organization, or group, these rules are universal to everyone that belongs to that group.

Having this in mind we can understand that ethics is something that anyone can learn. By studying and following the principles and rules that define morality according to a specific group in a given situation we can be perceived as ethical or not. In this sense, being ethical or how to become ethical is a more straightforward approach than the discovery of values.

In a sense, this seems a bit like a paradox as what is of external nature and impose on us by others,  as the set of rules and constraints for having an ethical behavior, is somehow easier for most of us to be identified comparing to our own personal values. It is probably exactly this; the fact that the values are different from person to person and deeply personal, that makes it harder for someone to directly "see" them. Somehow you should place yourself in a different situation for your true nature to emerge but once it is done, what you value will appear more real and closer to your heart.