onward

Since the turn of the decade, I've been playing with the idea of a fulfilled life. What would that look like? What would it take to go to bed each night clear you've done something that fulfilled you? What builds character and abilities, or satisfies a promise or expected outcome? What dreams that I've dreamed would still be fulfilling to achieve? 

One of my favourite quotes. 

It seemed to me like a useful tool for answering these questions would be to start with clearly-defined values - how could I know what fulfills me without knowing what truly matters to me? Values are talked about frequently, but how many of us spend time clearly defining them for ourselves? What activities do we undertake without even the attached values? For example, I love to travel. However, "travel" isn't a value; it's an activity - the values behind it for me it learning and experiencing new things, a desire to understand the lives of other people, curiosity, openness. Conversely, I spend a lot of time watching TV, but nothing in that activity relates to my core values so it doesn't enrich or fulfill me. 

Over the course of the last 10 days or so I've worked my way, purposefully and slowly, through Scott Jeffrey's Seven Steps to Uncovering Your Personal Values. Although I consider myself fairly self-aware, it was still useful to follow these steps to affirm some assumed values and to uncover or clarify some others. 

In the end, I identified 5 core values and created 5 related value statements. It occurs to me now that these cover everything except my spiritual life. I'll spend some time considering how I want to include that, or if a "statement of faith" would be a separate thing. As always, being a human is a work in progress, and I reserve the right to change my mind about all of this. 

My Core Values: 

Adventure: I dance through life with openness and curiosity, visiting new lands and enriching my mind. 

Creativity: I  create, and support the creation of, beauty, art and authentic human expression. 

Justice: I activate my privilege for the good of all people, leading to global social and economic justice. 

Connection: I contribute to others and invite contribution through teamwork and actively engaging in community. 

Vitality: I experience strength, stamina and flexibility in mind and body through passionate growth at any stage of life.

Faith: Jesus loves me. Belief in God is not just a part of my heritage; it is a living part of me expressed in action.  

Up next - revisiting my 100 item quest list with my values in mind and see where that leads.