For the last few years, I've had an thought for a satirical self-help commodity called, "The Productivity Secrets of Adolf Hitler." The article would feature all the popular self-assistance tropes—goals, visualizations, morn routines—except expressed through the exploits of Hitler.

"Hitler starts his twenty-four hours at 5 AM each forenoon with a quick round of yoga and five minutes of journaling. With these strategies, he's able to focus his mind on his highly ambitious goals."

"Hitler discovered his life purpose in a beer hall in his 20s and has since followed it relentlessly, thus infusing his life with passion and inspiring millions of others similar himself."

"Adolf is a strict vegetarian, and makes sure to find time in his busy schedule of genocide and globe domination to explore his creative side: he sets aside a few hours each week to listen to opera and paint his favorite landscapes."

I know that I would observe the commodity hilarious. But that's because I'm a sick, twisted fuck. Merely in the terminate, I've never quite worked upwards the courage to write the matter, for articulate and obvious reasons.

I've been doing this long enough to know that a) a bunch of people would get offended and devote themselves entirely to ruining my week with annoying emails and social media screeds, b) the satire would become over a agglomeration of people's heads and they'd think that I was actually a Nazi, and c) some atrocious publication somewhere would run the headline, "Bestselling author outs himself every bit alt-right neo-Nazi" or some shit and my career would exist over.

So, I've never written the article. Call me a coward. Only it remains unwritten.

This bugs me a little bit because I think satirizing Hitler's incredible productivity and influence perfectly embodies a indicate I've long made about the self-help globe: achieving success in life is not nearly every bit of import as our definition of success. If our definition of success is horrific—similar, say, world domination and slaughtering millions—then working harder, setting and achieving goals, and disciplining our minds all become a bad thing.

If you lot remove the moral horrors from Hitler, on paper, he'southward i of the nearly successful self-made people in world history. He went from being a broke, failed artist, to commandeering an entire state and the most powerful war machine in the world in a matter of two decades. He mobilized and inspired millions. He was tireless and shrewd and intensely focused on his goals. He arguably influenced globe history every bit much as anyone who has ever lived.

But all of that work went toward demented, destructive aims. And tens of millions of people died horrifically due to his twisted, misguided values.

When somebody says, "I want to be proficient," that definition of what is "expert" is a reflection of what they value. Some volition meet "being good" equally attaining money. Others volition see it equally edifice a family unit. Others will see information technology as having a lot of exciting experiences. Whatever it is, it is adamant by our personal values.

Therefore, you lot cannot talk about self-comeback without also talking about values. It's not plenty to simply "grow" and become a "ameliorate person." You must define what a amend person is. Yous must decide in which direction y'all wish to grow. Because if you don't, well, nosotros might all be screwed.

A lot of people don't realize this. A lot of people obsessively focus on being happy and feeling expert all the time—non realizing that if their values suck, feeling good will hurt them more than help them. If your biggest value in the globe is snorting Vicodin through a swirly straw, well, and then feeling better is simply going to make your life worse.

When I wrote my volume, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, pretty much the entire book was really but a sneaky way to become people to call back about their values more clearly. There are a million self-help books out there that teach you how to better achieve your goals, but few actually question what goals y'all should have in the start identify. My aim was to write a book that did just that.

In the book, I intentionally avoided getting too deep into what practiced/bad values are—what they expect like, and why they piece of work or don't piece of work—partly because I didn't want to push my own values onto the reader. Subsequently all, the whole point of your values is that you prefer them yourself, non because some dude with an obnoxious orange book cover told you lot to. But if I'm being honest, I likewise didn't get too deep into defining values considering it's an incredibly hard topic to write almost well.

So, this article is my attempt to finally practise that. To talk about values. And not just what they are but why they are. Why we find sure things important, what the consequences of that importance are, and how we can get most finding and irresolute what we find important. It'southward not a unproblematic subject. And the commodity is quite long. So enough of me blabbing, permit's get on with it.

Every moment of every twenty-four hours, whether yous realize it or not, you are making a decision of how to spend your time, of what to pay attention to, of where to straight your energy.

Right now, you are choosing to read this article. There are an infinite number of things y'all could exist doing, simply right now, you are choosing to be here. Peradventure in a infinitesimal, y'all decide you need to pee. Or maybe someone texts yous and you end reading. When those things happen, you are making a simple, value-laden decision: your phone (or your toilet) is more valuable to you than this article. And your behavior follows that valuation accordingly.

This is critically important—because we all have a few things that nosotros think and say we value, merely we never back them up with our actions. I can tell people (and myself) until I'm blue in the face that I care about climate change or the dangers of social media, merely if I spend my days driving around in a gas-guzzling SUV, constantly refreshing my newsfeeds, then my behaviors, my actions tell a different story.

Personal Values - people walking

Deportment don't lie. We believe we desire to get that job, but when push comes to shove, we're always kind of relieved that no one chosen u.s.a. dorsum so we can retreat to our video games over again. We tell our girlfriend nosotros really want to see her, simply the infinitesimal our guy friends phone call, our schedule magically seems to open up like fucking Moses parting the Blood-red Sea.

The Great Value Disconnect

Many of us state values nosotros wish we had as a way to cover up the values we really have. In this way, aspiration can oftentimes become another form of abstention. Instead of facing who we really are, nosotros lose ourselves in who we wish to become.

Put another manner: we prevarication to ourselves considering we don't like some of our own values, and we, therefore, don't like a part of ourselves. Nosotros don't want to admit nosotros have certain values and that we wish we had other values, and information technology's this discrepancy between cocky-perception and reality that usually gets u.s. into all sorts of trouble.

That's because our values are extensions of ourselves. They are what define us. When something skilful happens to something or someone you value, you lot feel good. When your mom gets a new automobile or your husband gets a enhance or your favorite sports team wins a championship, y'all feel good—as though these things happened to yourself.

The opposite is true every bit well. If you don't value something, you will feel good when something bad happens to it. People took to the streets auspicious when Osama Bin Laden was killed. People threw a party outside the prison where the serial killer Ted Bundy was executed. The devastation of someone perceived as evil felt similar some great moral victory in the hearts of millions.ane

And so, when we are disconnected from our own values—we value playing video games all day withal believe we value ambition and hard work—our beliefs and ideas get asunder from our actions and emotions. And to span that disconnect, we must go delusional, almost both ourselves and about the globe.ii , 3

Optional Gray Box of Doom: Why People Who Hate Themselves Hurt Themselves

Just as we either value or cheapen annihilation in our lives, we tin can value or devalue ourselves. And much like people celebrating when Ted Bundy got fried, if we hate ourselves every bit much as people hated Ted Bundy, then nosotros volition celebrate our own destruction.

This is what people who don't loathe themselves don't empathise nigh people who do: that self-destruction feels good in some deep, dark way. The person who loathes themselves feels that they are morally inferior, that they deserve some atrocious matter to recoup for their own wretchedness. And whether it'southward through drugs or alcohol or cocky-harm or even harming others, there's an ugly function of themselves that seeks out this destruction to justify all of the pain and misery they have felt.

Much of the work of the cocky-esteem movement in the 70s and 80s was to take people from self-loathing to self-loving. People who dearest themselves don't go any satisfaction from harming themselves. Rather, they get satisfaction from taking care of themselves and improving themselves.

This love for self is crucially important.4 Merely it is also not sufficient in and of itself. Because if we only love ourselves, and then we get cocky-absorbed twats and indifferent to the suffering or issues of others.

Ultimately, we all need to value ourselves just besides something to a higher place ourselves.v Whether information technology'south God or Allah or some moral code or cause, we need to value something higher up ourselves to brand our lives experience every bit though they accept significant.

Considering if you make yourself the highest value in your life, then yous will never feel the desire to sacrifice for annihilation, and life will feel purposeless and just chasing i high later some other.6 , 7 In other words, you lot simply become a egotistic assface… and so get elected president.

And no one wants that…

We all know that story of the heart-course, educated person with a decent job who has a mini "freak out" and decides to take a week or ten days (or 10 months) and cut all contact with the outside world, run to some remote and obscure part of the world, and proceed to "find themselves."
Hell, maybe this has been yous at some signal. I know it'southward been me in the past.

Here's what people mean when they say they need to "find themselves": they're finding new values. Our identity—that is, the thing that we perceive and understand equally the "self"—is the aggregation of everything we value. So when yous run abroad to be lonely somewhere, what yous're really doing is running away somewhere to re-evaluate your values.

Hither's how it usually plays out:

  • You are experiencing a large corporeality of pressure and/or stress in your twenty-four hours-to-day life.
  • Due to said pressure and/or stress, you feel as though yous are losing control of the management of your own life. Yous don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it. You lot brainstorm to experience as though your own desires or decisions no longer matter. Maybe y'all want to drink mojitos and play banjo—but the overwhelming demands of your school/chore/family/partner brand it and then that you feel as though you're not able to alive out those desires.
  • This is the "cocky" y'all feel yous have "lost"—a sense that you are no longer the ane navigating the send of your ain existence. Rather, you are diddled dorsum and forth across the sea of life by the winds of your responsibilities—or another deep-sounding metaphor.
  • Past removing yourself from these pressures and/or stressors, y'all are able to recover a sense of command over yourself. You are, one time again, in accuse of your ain day-to-24-hour interval beingness without the interference of a million external pressures.
  • Not only that, just by gaining separation from the turbulent forces of your day-to-day life, you lot are able to wait at those forces from afar and take perspective on whether y'all really want the life that you have. Is this who you are? Is this what you care about? Yous question your decisions and priorities.
  • Y'all decide that there are a few things y'all want to change. In that location are things y'all believe yous care about also much and you lot desire to stop. There are other things that you feel you should care about more and promise to prioritize them. You are now constructing the "new you."
  • You and then vow to return to the "real world" and live out your new priorities, to be your "new self"—specially because you now have a bitching tan.

This whole process—whether washed on a secluded island, a cruise ship, out in the forest somewhere, or at a raucous self-assistance seminar—is essentially just an escapade in adjusting one'due south values.

You leave, get perspective on what in your life matters to you, what should matter more, what should matter less, and then (ideally) return and get on with it. Past returning and irresolute your priorities, you lot change your values, and y'all come back "a new person."

Values are the central component of our psychological brand-up and our identity.8 We are defined by what we choose to find of import in our lives. We are divers past our prioritizations. If money matters more than anything, then that will come to define who we are. If getting laid and smoking J's is the most important affair in our life, that will come to define who we are. And if nosotros feel like shit about ourselves and believe we don't deserve beloved, success, or intimacy, then that will also come to define who we are—through our deportment, our words, and our decisions.

Any change in self is a change in the configuration of our values. When something tragic happens, it devastates united states because not only practise we feel sadness, but because we lose something we value. And when we lose enough of what nosotros value, we brainstorm to question the value of life itself. We valued our partner and now they're gone. And that crushes us. Information technology calls into question who nosotros are, our value every bit a human, and what we know virtually the world. It throws u.s.a. into an existential crisis, an identity crisis, considering nosotros don't know what to believe, feel, or do anymore. So, instead, nosotros sit at home with our new girlfriend, a.grand.a., a bag of Oreos.

This change in identity composition is truthful for positive events equally well though. When something incredible happens, we don't merely experience the joy of winning or achieving some goal, we besides get through a change in valuation for ourselves—we come up to see ourselves equally more valuable, as more deserving. Meaning is added to the world. Our life vibrates with increased intensity. And that is what is and then powerful.

Before nosotros get into exactly how to define and (if necessary) change our personal values, let's talk about which values are healthy and which values are harmful. In my book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, I divers skilful and bad values in the following manner:

Good values are:

  1. Prove-based
  2. Effective
  3. Controllable

Bad values are:

  1. Emotion-based
  2. Destructive
  3. Uncontrollable

Evidence-Based vs Emotion-Based Values

If you've paid any attention to this website over the past five years, yous've seen a constant theme: overly relying on our emotions is unreliable at best and damaging at worst.ix Unfortunately, most of u.s.a. rely too much on our emotions without even realizing it.

Psychological inquiry shows that most of usa, most of the time, brand decisions and are inspired to action via our feelings,x , 11 rather than based on cognition or information.12 Psychological research also shows us that our feelings are mostly self-centered,thirteen willing to give up long-term benefits for curt-term gainsxiv, and are frequently warped and/or delusional.fifteen

People who lead their lives based on how they feel will observe themselves perpetually on a treadmill, constantly needing more, more, more. And the only manner to footstep off that treadmill is to decide that something matters more than your own feelings—that some cause, some goal, some person, is worth occasionally getting hurt for.

That "cause" is oft what we refer to as our "purpose" and finding it is i of the most of import endeavors nosotros can have to enhance our wellness and well-beingness. But our purpose should be sought not merely through what feels good. It must be considered and reasoned. We must accumulate evidence supporting information technology. Otherwise, we'll spend our lives chasing a delusion.

Constructive vs Destructive Values

This one sounds simple, but volition commencement to scramble your brain if you retrieve about it enough.

We don't want to value things that harm ourselves or others. We practice want to value things that enhance ourselves and others.

Duh.

At present, determining what is actually spurring growth and what is actually harming us tin get complicated. Busting your ass at the gym technically damages your torso—but it as well causes you lot to abound. Taking MDMA can actually heighten your emotional growth in some circumstancessixteen , 17, but if you take it every weekend to numb yourself, and then you're probably causing more than emotional harm than adept. Having casual sex can be a means to enhance personal conviction, but also a means to avoid intimacy or emotional maturity.

There'due south a blurry line betwixt growth and damage. And they often appear equally two sides of the same money. This is why what you value is often not as of import as why you value it. If yous value martial arts because you savor hurting people, so that'southward a bad value. But if you value it because yous are in the military and want to learn to protect yourself and others—that'southward a expert value. Aforementioned practice, different values. Ultimately, information technology's the intention that matters most in deciding which way the calibration falls.

Controllable vs Uncontrollable Values

When you value things that are outside your command, you substantially surrender your life to that thing.

The most archetype example of this is money. Yes, you take some control over how much coin yous make, simply not total control. Economies collapse, companies go under, unabridged professions go automated away by engineering. If everything you practise is for the sake of money, and so tragedy strikes and all of that money is eaten upwardly by hospital bills, you will lose much more than a loved one—you will lose your perceived purpose for living as well.

Money is a bad value because you tin't e'er control it. Creativity or industriousness or a potent piece of work ethic are skillful values because yous Tin can control them—and doing them well volition ultimately generate money as a side outcome.

We need values we tin control, otherwise our values command us. And that's no bueno.

Some examples of expert, healthy values: honesty, building something new, vulnerability, continuing upwards for oneself, standing up for others, self-respect, marvel, charity, humility, creativity.

Some examples of bad, unhealthy values: dominating others through manipulation or violence, fucking more men/women, feeling skilful all the fourth dimension, e'er being the heart of attending, non being alone, existence liked by everybody, beingness rich for the sake of being rich, sacrificing minor animals to the infidel gods.

In the same style you don't notice your breathing until you're asked to focus on it, nosotros don't generally discover the values that guide our 24-hour interval-to-day actions until some jackass on the cyberspace starts yapping about how Hitler's got messed upward values and now y'all're wondering if you're besides headed downwards a path of mass devastation.

Some of the states may have run away and "found ourselves" in the remote corners of the world, literally and metaphorically. But most of us are likely notwithstanding caught in the hamster bicycle of life, forever running, as well busy to stop and wonder what the hell it's all for.

Well, now that I've got your attention, permit me enquire you a series of questions to aid yous define your values and "find yourself."

Commencement question: every bit our personal values are simply the measuring sticks by which we determine what is a successful and meaningful life, enquire yourself:

Did y'all grow up wanting to be a airplane pilot? Do you lot dream of having a family with five kids? When you close your eyes, practise y'all encounter yourself waltzing down the blood-red carpet in your designer gown, your path lit by a hundred camera flashes?

It's important at this stage to non approximate the vision you run across of yourself. (There will be a time for that.) Whatsoever it looks similar, accept information technology as it is. What's important is that it's the life you genuinely want for yourself.

In one case y'all're articulate on what that life looks like, ask yourself:

Practice you desire to be a pilot because it's cool? Or considering you want to be rich? To make the ladies go weak at the sight of your sexy captain's compatible? Or are you simply fascinated by the marvel of homo applied science and want to master the skill of flying an aircraft?

Asking yourself why you desire what you want will help you uncover the values that underlie the life you've imagined for yourself. Yeah, you want the life of a pilot. Merely is the value you're really after appearances, coin, sexual prowess, or mastery of skill?

At present is the time to judge and ask: "Are the values you just defined good or bad values?" Are they evidence-based or emotion-based? Effective or subversive? Controllable or uncontrollable? Are you happy to let those values guide your unabridged life? From at present to eternity?

If yes, and so good for you, y'all may proceed as you always have. If not, so it's time to reinvent yourself and find better values.

More on that later. But non nonetheless, I'grand not done with you here.

If y'all've been honest with yourself in answering the beginning two questions, you will have uncovered your truthful values. Simply as we have seen, well-nigh of us are incredibly adept at telling ourselves what nosotros wish to be true, rather than what is true.

Y'all may say y'all want to be a airplane pilot. You can vividly run across yourself in that uniform, nigh feel the weight of the cap on your crown. Just if y'all've spent the past fifteen years climbing the corporate ladder, and then your deportment contradict what you're maxim. There is a value disconnect.

Remember that one key affair nigh values? They are constantly reflected in the way nosotros cull to behave. When it comes to values, what you lot do matters a hell lot more than what you say.

You may say you lot want a family with five kids. Y'all tin shout from the rooftop until your voice goes hoarse that you lot value family and relationships above all else. But if you e'er observe an alibi to not go on a second date, and then it's very likely that's non what you value at all.

And then, enquire yourself those two questions, then do a reality check. Does the value you say you have match what you do? Is there a disconnect? And if there is, what is it that yous truly value?

If y'all've never washed such an exercise before, information technology may be difficult to define what values underlie your life vision or actions. So I've put together a list of personal values to help you lot, grouped by categories.18

A List of Personal Values

Our nearly basic, fundamental views of the globe.

  • Affection
  • Curiosity
  • Food and Shelter
  • Kindness
  • Maintenance
  • Obedience
  • Physical Functioning
  • Self-Restraint
  • Sensuality
  • Wonder
  • Prophylactic

Our fundamental relationships to ourselves and to others.

  • Belief
  • Belonging
  • Caretaking
  • Subject area
  • Duty
  • Economic Security
  • Fairness
  • Honesty
  • Legacy
  • Loyalty
  • Patience
  • Playfulness
  • Recognition
  • Respect
  • Self Cede
  • Self Worth
  • Stability
  • Tradition

Establishing and maintaining stability in our lives.

  • Achievement
  • Authority
  • Clemency
  • Competence
  • Competition
  • Decisiveness
  • Efficiency
  • Fiscal Success
  • Hierarchical Ability
  • Informing
  • Managing
  • Society
  • Patriotism
  • Predictability
  • Problem Solving
  • Productivity
  • Quality
  • Rationality
  • Recreation
  • Responsibility
  • Rule of Law
  • Self Confidence

Individual responsibleness for developing yourself and determining the quality of relationships with others.

  • Acceptance
  • Analogy
  • Residuum
  • Being Present
  • Selection
  • Commitment
  • Courage
  • Inventiveness
  • Diversity
  • Empathy
  • Independence
  • Intimacy
  • Learning
  • Listening
  • Openness
  • Personal Growth
  • Questioning
  • Reflection
  • Risk
  • Search For Meaning
  • Trust
  • Well Being

How you interact within the context of groups and society at large.

  • Beauty
  • Collaboration
  • Community
  • Development
  • Dialogue
  • Empowering Others
  • Equality
  • Exploration
  • Flexibility
  • Innovation
  • Integrity
  • Interdependence
  • Intuition
  • Partnership
  • Service
  • Simultaneity
  • Strategy
  • Sustainability

Future-oriented aspirations and goals.

  • Altruism
  • Detachment
  • Global Enfranchisement
  • Human Rights
  • Inspiring Others
  • Mind-Body Integration
  • Nonviolence
  • Planetary Environmental
  • Reconciliation
  • Simplification
  • Spirituality

Below is possibly one of the most inspiring TED Talks I've ever run into. It's not filled with listen-bravado ideas. Y'all're not going to get huge takeaways that you lot tin can immediately run off and implement in your own life. The guy isn't even that great of a speaker.

But what he describes is absolutely profound:

Daryl Davis is a blackness musician who has traveled and played blues shows all over the The states south. In his career, he'southward inevitably run into a number of white supremacists. And rather than fight them or debate with them, he chose to practice something unexpected: he befriended them.

This might sound insane. And mayhap it is. But hither's what's more than insane: he's convinced over 200 KKK members to surrender their robes.xix

Here's what virtually people don't get near value alter: you tin can't fence someone out of their values. You tin't shame them into valuing something different (shaming them actually oftentimes has the opposite effect—they double down).20

Nope, value change is far more subtle than that. And perchance without even realizing it, Daryl Davis appears to exist a primary at it.

Stride 1: The Value Must Fail

Davis intuitively understood something that almost all of the states practise not: values are based on experience. You cannot argue someone out of their values. Yous cannot threaten them to permit go of their almost deeply-held beliefs. That just makes them defensive and even more resistant to changing themselves. Instead, yous must arroyo them with empathy.

The only way to modify someone's values is by presenting them with an experience opposite to their value. The KKK members held deeply racist values and instead of attacking them and approaching them every bit an adversary—in a manner that would reflect their values back to them—Davis chose to approach them in the completely opposite manner: as a friend. And that friendliness and respect caused the KKK members to phone call everything they knew into question.

To let get of a value, it must be contradicted through experience. Sometimes this contradiction happens by taking the value to its logical conclusion. Too much partying ultimately makes life experience empty and meaningless. Pursuing too much money ultimately brings greater stress and alienation. Also much sex gives you lot chafed thighs and carpet burns on your knees.

Other times, a value is contradicted past the existent globe. Many KKK members that met Davis had never known a black person, much less one they respected. So, he just met them and then earned their respect.

Pace ii: Accept the Self-Awareness to Recognize That Our Values Have Failed

When our values neglect, it's terrifying. At that place'due south a grief process that takes place. Since our values constitute our identity and our understanding of who we are, losing a value feels as though we're losing a part of ourselves.

Therefore, nosotros resist that failure. We explicate it abroad and deny it. Nosotros come upwards with rationalizations.21 Davis said that for months, his KKK friends would struggle to justify their friendship with him. They would say things like, "Well, you're different Daryl," or create elaborate justifications for why they respected him.

When our values neglect, we accept two knee-jerk justifications: 1) the world sucks, or 2) we suck.

Permit's say you spend your entire life chasing coin. And and then, in your 40s, you accumulate a good amount. But instead of diving and swimming in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck, this money doesn't bring you happiness, it brings you more stress. You have to figure out how to invest it. You have to pay taxes on seemingly everything. Friends and family members continuously approach you looking for help or handouts.

But instead of considering that the value sucks, that maybe you should intendance nigh something more money, most people instead blame the world effectually them. It'due south the government'southward fault because they punish wealth and success. The globe is full of moochers and lazy people who simply desire a handout. The stock marketplace is a noise and incommunicable to win.

Personal Values - Scrooge McDuck

Others arraign themselves. They recall, "I should be able to handle this, therefore I just need to make even more than coin and everything will be alright." They become caught on a treadmill of constantly pursuing their value more and more than until they become a sort of extremist.

Few people stop to consider that the value itself is at fault. That valuing money got you lot into this state of affairs, therefore there's no way it can go you out.

Pace iii: Question the Value and Begin What Values Could Do a Better Job

In a previous postal service, I described how the process of maturity is replacing low-level, fabric values, with higher-level, abstract values. So instead of chasing coin all the time, you could chase liberty. Instead of trying to be liked by everyone, y'all could value developing intimacy with a few. Instead of trying to win everything, you could focus on merely giving your best effort.

These higher-level, abstruse values are ameliorate because they produce meliorate problems. If your master value in life is how much money you have, then you volition always need more than money. Merely if your principal value is personal freedom, and then you will demand more than money for a while, merely at that place might exist some situations where you need less coin. Or, where money is completely irrelevant. You'll still have issues, that's inevitable, but the insatiable need for more money won't be one of them.

Ultimately, abstruse values are values y'all can control. Y'all cannot control if people like you. But you lot tin always control whether you're being honest or non. You tin't e'er control if and when you win or not. You tin always control whether you're giving your all-time endeavor. In a career, yous can't always command how much you'll become paid. But you tin always command if you're doing something you find meaningful.

So, here'due south the grab: sitting effectually thinking about better values to have is prissy. But nada volition solidify until you become out and embody that new value. Values are won and lost through life experience. Not through logic or feelings or even behavior. They have to be lived and experienced to stick.

This often takes backbone. To go out and live a value contrary to your old values is fucking scary. I imagine the KKK guys were terrified to spend time with a black human being. It probably freaked them out when they realized they liked him and respected him. They probably avoided him and put upwardly walls between themselves and him.

We do the same thing in our own lives all the time. It'due south like shooting fish in a barrel to want authentic relationships. But it's difficult to live them. It's scary. We avoid it. We come up upwards with excuses for why nosotros have to wait, or nosotros'll practice it adjacent time. Just the "side by side fourth dimension" inevitably ends up being some other failure and another pain.

  1. Pick a value—this could be a value you lot constitute you already have, or a new i you lot've decided to embody.
  2. Prepare goals that are aligned with that value.
  3. Make decisions in such a fashion that it takes yous closer to those goals.
  4. Experience the emotional and physical benefits of that value—these will then inspire you to pursue information technology further.

Pick the adjacent value and repeat.

These four steps are simple, but they're not like shooting fish in a barrel. They'll likely require you to footstep out of your comfort zone, exercise something you've never washed before, maybe abandon a career you've spent half your life building or even piss off a few people you care almost.

But if you don't do them, at that place'due south simply no point finding or reinventing yourself. You might as well keep to live on autopilot, chasing that happiness that forever eludes you because you know what y'all should want but are as well scared to pursue it.

When you do summon the courage to live out your new values, something crazy happens: information technology feels skilful. Yous feel the benefits. And once you experience those benefits, not but does it become easier to continue living the new value, only information technology sounds insane that you lot didn't do this sooner.

It's like the loftier you get after a practiced run. Or the relief you lot feel later on telling someone the truth. Or the liberation you feel when you terminate being a racist fuck and hand over your Klan robe to a nice old blackness human being.22

Like jumping into a cold puddle, the terror and daze passes and you're left with a wonderful sense of relief, and a newer, deeper understanding of who you really are.

If you value this commodity, you will probably value my book, Everything is Fucked: A Book Almost Hope. Values are one of the core themes of the volume and I go much deeper in explaining them and how our psychology is constructed around them. Y'all can society the book here.