Today’s question. Who am I . . . at my core?
This is not my first experience with core values exercises. I tend to enjoy such activities, as both reflection and personal growth are among my values. Beginning with nearly 500 potential labels for what motivates me, I shed over 400 the 1st round, and took it down close to 60 the 2nd. Only after I began grouping did those most central to my being begin to surface. I am tasked with narrowing the list down to five, only five core values. Well, I made it to six so far. Those selected are not perfect, but they are progress.
I ask myself many questions. Do I value hard work because I value productivity, or is it vice versa? Which labels suit me best? Clearly excellence, independence, trust & productivity belong in the top five. I nearly made “learning” a subcategory under “excellence,” but life-long learning and continual growth are such passions that I just had to set apart learning with its own heading. That leaves a 6th weaker category that I am unable to shift below any other.
The present label of “positivity” is not satisfying. The idea here is attitude. I ask myself, “Is having a positive attitude a core value? Or is it a choice?” Can those two coexist? By choice I look for the silver lining in a dark cloud of a situation. It is by intent that I actively welcome people once I am established in a group. Gratitude is definitely a choice. Then again, I AM an encourager, which I think is more than a choice.
More questions. How does positivity relate to equality? It’s a poor label for the attitude of having value for others that are different from me. Why subordinate cooperation to positivity? Because, though fiercely independent I have always seen cooperation as higher than isolation. These things are about attitude.
The question that comes next – What does one do with the values one aspires to embrace but that have not yet made it into the core of one’s being? For instance, I want my life to be about love. I will forever reference prophet Bob Jones’s encounter with God when the Father asked him if he had learned to love. Ever since I heard that, I have set it before myself as a life goal. I will learn to love like the Father. I wish I could say love was currently at my core, but no, I am as yet on a journey to learn love.
Abba, I set before you those labels I have observed as presently describing the core of my being. I offer them up and ask that one by one you set them below the label of love. When I stand before you in eternity, I want love to be who I am.
To the Ends of the Earth 