Have you ever thought about what you exist for? What is the meaning of your life? Your children, your work, or new discoveries? Life can be eventful, but it is boring if there is no room for something special, personally yours, which isn’t just a duty, but a meaning and a value. What are life values?
We often talk about life values, but not everyone actually has them. Psychology says that it is necessary to grow up to this concept, to become a person. A person often lives driven by his needs – for food, for approval; he often takes something else for life values. And it’s not always what you want that you need.
Definition of Life Values: What Scientists Think
So how do you know what is a life value and what is an ordinary need? Recognize your true priorities by these criteria:
- A value comes at a cost. For the sake of the value of life, a person is ready to give much, sometimes even life itself.
- Values are understandable and explainable. We don’t just consider some concept to be archival for us, but we can explain why we think so. Sometimes values are facilitated by some important change in life.
- A value “sustains” itself. The person remembers it without reminders from outside. If a need can be met and forgotten for a while, the value exists as if by itself and “leads” the person through life.
- A value is always something positive. Needs and attachments can be shameful; a value will make you proud.
What Are the Values
This would seem to include the same list of concepts: love or self-development; business or work, honesty, trust, peace, etc. In fact, each of us understands something different by these words, which means that life values will be as individual as fingerprints. Priorities are usually formed by 12, influenced by parents, teachers, peers, and many other factors. But they change over time, for example, most people start prioritizing relaxation, like gambling at an online casino Canada real money or going out with friends, only when they grow up.
The list of life values is large, but conventionally, psychologists divide it into three major parts:
- Personal life, relationships with people.
- Career, business.
- Own development, studies.
The Problem of False Values
Besides the true values that shape our lives, there are also false values. It is not uncommon for a person to live by false priorities – and lose something very important.
Pleasure
There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with pleasure. Pleasure is the natural consequence of a job well done, a love for your wife or child, an exam you passed with flying colors. But pleasure can also be an end in itself; that is how drug addicts, gluttons, alcoholics, and promiscuous people appear. The problem is that pleasure is too easy to obtain and too short-lived.
Money and Material Goods
Money and things aren’t bad either: they provide the comfort we need, allow us to develop and travel. Worse, they define self-esteem: such a person’s car should be newer and more expensive than the neighbor’s, and the house – bigger and better maintained. Moreover, the more money you have, the less joy an extra million will bring you.
The pursuit of money often displaces such concepts as respect for others, honesty and compassion. Their owner becomes a monster. Classical writers have written quite a few novels and plays about it.
“I Am Always Right”
There is such a pseudo-value. Confidence in your own rightness is fine: if you doubt, you will never dare to do important things. On the other hand, the always-right person never notices his own mistakes and is unwilling to assimilate new information that differs in any way from his picture of the world. This is how superstitions appear, and the Inquisition and the Crusades existed at the expense of righteousness.