I had an interesting discussion today about the value of personal values.

Personal values are your internal conception of what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive, etc. In essence the values are used by you to guide your behavior.

Behaving Consistently

In any given moment how you react/ behave depends on a myriad of factors both external and internal to yourself.  A strong personal value system simply provides a support guideline to help ensure the internal factors coincide with your conception of what is good.

It is actually quite easy for the external influences to override your logic and cause you to behave in a way you don’t really want to and under less stressful circumstances, would not.

Although it is certainly not a fool proof method, by adopting a simple set of values, which are easy to remember and understand you will have a fall back to assist in behaving the way you want to.

An Example

“If I say I will, then I will”   This value statement falls within the category of Integrity.  It is simple, easy to understand and follow.

Let’s say you told a friend you would meet them at 2:00 pm on a Saturday at a coffee shop downtown.  Between the time you made the commitment and the time of the appointment your circumstances changed and you no longer want to meet.

Your personal value dictates you will arrive at the appointment (unless alternate arrangements are mutually agreed).  To the person with this value, a promise is a promise.

Keep it simple

With a small and clearly defined set of values (I have four) you can help guide a significant amount of your behavior.

Back to the discussion that prompted this post, my view was the person with the internal guidance support provided by simple, easily followed values will most often be perceived to have the best behavior.   That is on an overall macro basis.

This does not mean they would never have bad behavior, just the chance their behavior will generally meet their conception of good will occur more often.

On the whole this will improve their interaction with others and visa verse