Ch. 1: Perceived voids lead to values Social idealisms are general. You will automatically find yourself living incongruously. You will go to work but will ache to be somewhere else with other people doing different things. Everything feels disconnected. That’s because everything is. You won’t try your hardest, you’ll give up, you won’t invest all your resources when pursuing social idealisms.
Your values determine your attention, intention, and retention. Your values determine what you see and what you pay attention to. Contrast this to affordance. See Peterson maps of meaning 6. If not interested in shoes will never notice then etc.. You’ll forget about the things you don’t care about. As for intention, you’ll do things that you value the most.
Some people are living according to their highest values but aren’t aware of that. Example of the introverted writer who enjoys quiet time, weekly hikes, family time, reading, writing and privacy right he should be doing more to become a famous author. But once he realized what kind of lifestyle that entails he realized that’s not for him. He will be more fulfilled embracing what he really wants to do and doing it.
With what do you fill your home and workspace? Books, sports equipment, dvds, whiteboard and markers, notebooks. What occupies your time? Reading, writing, learning, exercise.
What energizes you? Writing, exercise, reading
Where do you spend your money?
What do you talk about and think about?
In which areas of your life are you most focused and organized?
What inspires you?
What are your consistent long term goals?
What do you always research and explore?
Passion vs values Passion is not the same as values. It literally translates to suffering. It relates to being our animal selves. And gravitate towards immediate gratification. Lower values or other people’s values lead you to immediate gratification.
Your mission relates to your highest value.
Emerson “ignorance… Theroux” quiet desperatation”
Living according to your highest values means you’re going to be ridiculed. But this conflict has been faced by almost every major historical figure that has managed to change the world for the better. If the legends of the past just did what they were told, we wouldn’t know about them.
You don’t need to be a legend to live according to your true values, but it’s better to learn from those you admire than the masses of people that you don’t.
You know that you live according to other people’s values when you use words like “I should, I ought to etc” or you repeat an too conventional general advice like “save money, get a safe job” etc.. It’s not that you have to reject society and live selfishly.
That’s not the point. Your highest values can and likely do relate to society in one positive way or another. Maybe you want to teach, coach,and motivate people. Or you are obsessed with discovering medical cures, or philanthropic work. And even if you don’t want to do something that’s directly beneficial to society in a humanitarian sense, working at something you find meaningful and engaging will more than likely endow you with the ability to make a positive difference.
Key point : when you fail to do something you ought to do you’ll feel negative emotion. But the fact that you didn’t do it indicates that it isn’t one of your highest values, otherwise you would have done it.
My response : this isn’t necessarily true. It could be the case that you’re caught in an addictive, automatic mode of behavior of which you find it difficult to consciously get yourself out of.. Since you’re not spending that much time being aware (or thoughtful) at all. It is possible to subdue your authentic desires for those that have been adopted.
The social idealisms as Demartini would call them. And so, prioritizing social Idealisms over the things you truly want to do but say will do is quite possible. After all you only have so much energy in the day and after you’ve expended most of it on your duties (a job you don’t really like, or running errands) you’re not left with much fuel to pursue the things you care about.
That doesn’t mean you don’t care about them. It simply means that you haven’t figured out how to make time for them by either eliminating the things that aren’t that important to you or by finding a more efficient way to accomplish your tasks.
Determining how we spend our time is a conscious process by euchre we need to assign classes of priority to each task. Many people don’t do that and treat all their tasks with equal importance. Doing that results in the putting out of fires and accomplishment of unnecessary goals. Hence the framework by David Allen.. The matrix..
But the converse is not true. For example, if you were giving priority to a certain task and still not doing it then it is an indication that this task is not a primary value for you.