What are your core values, and do you actually bring them into every room you walk into?
Ask anybody and they will say integrity, caring, understanding. Ask them if they carry those into a work meeting, a family row, a queue in the shop, and it goes quiet. I call values the roots of the tree. Lose a branch and you are fine. Lose the roots and you are gone. Integrity, for me, means you promise a thing and you deliver it. I have failed at that. I once went off on one at my carer, on and on, and she just stood there and took it.
One thing to try: Pick one value you claim. Name one place today where you did not bring it. That is the whole practice.
In this episode
(1:28) Everybody says integrity. Almost nobody checks
(2:47) Do I take my values into a council meeting
(3:50) Values are the roots, not the branches
(5:32) There is no excuse for never looking at them
(6:35) The day I went off on my carer
(7:36) Doctor, binman or gardener, it is the same job
What are your core values, and do you actually bring them into every room?
Ask anybody the first half and they answer instantly. Integrity. Caring. Understanding. Ask the second half and it goes quiet.
The heart of it
Values are the roots. Roles are the trunk, beliefs the branches, opinions the leaves.
You can lose a branch. You cannot lose the roots.
We demand values from other people and are considerably softer on ourselves.
I got this from a conversation with my daughter in the kitchen. Your roles are what you do. Parent, nurse, builder, councillor. Your beliefs come off that. Your opinions and preferences are the leaves, and leaves come and go.
Underneath all of it are the values, and they are the only part holding you into the ground. Weather can strip a tree back to nothing and it survives, provided the roots are intact.
The test is not whether you have them. It is whether you carry them into the council meeting, the row with your family, the queue in the shop, the reply you are about to type.
I do not, reliably. Nobody does.
My daughter came in one day and said something and I went off. I do not shout much but I can go on, and I went on for some time. She stood there and took the lot. When I finally ran out she looked up and said, well that was not very Zen of you, was it.
She was right, and it was exactly the period when I was busy becoming calm.
Mine is integrity, which sounds noble until you define it. Integrity is promising a thing and delivering it. And I over promise constantly, not out of carelessness but because my mind still thinks I can do what an able bodied person does. Editing a podcast takes me three or four times as long as it takes anybody else and I keep forgetting that.
So living with integrity, for me, means promising less.
One small thing to try
Write down two or three values you would not trade, then pick one relationship and check yourself against it this week.
Not everything. One. Your mum, your colleague, the person who serves you.
And notice which values you demand loudest from other people. That is usually a clue about where your own gap is.
If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.
Questions people ask
Where do values come from?
You build them. A baby has none, and quite right too, because it is busy surviving. Empathy and care are grown, which means yours are an achievement rather than a personality trait.
Why does having them matter?
Because they are the only thing that does not move. Roles change, beliefs change, opinions change weekly. Knowing what you will not compromise on is what makes all that movement survivable.
What if I keep failing my own values?
Then you are like the rest of us and you have something to work with. Noticing the gap is not the failure. Never having looked is.
Found this helpful? Leave a review. Finding something hard that isn’t covered here? Tell me, and I may make an episode about it.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
values · purpose · ego
Read the transcript
Hey, welcome to Living Deeper Lives, the podcast that helps you to live a more deeper life, a more meaningful
life, a life of freedom and purpose. I'm your host, Steven Webb, and there's a new podcast every Monday that
will help you with the pointers towards more freedom. this week. I'm talking about core values, the underlying, fundamental
values of who you are beyond your roles, of what you do in life, and beyond your opinions and belief.
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to my daughter in the kitchen one day and she was going
through a particular hard time and like she is at the moment, and we were talking about, like, the tree
of life and how we form the ego and how we form who we are. And I said, like, the
trunk of the tree is the roles we play.
Maybe mom dad daughter or doctor, fireman, nurse, you know, builder, just dustbin men,
whatever. That's the trunk of the tree. And then you've got the early part of the branches, that's your beliefs,
your, you know, that could be your religion or your politics. And then you've got the outer branches and the
leaves. That's all your opinions and your likes and your dislikes. And then we were talking about core values, the
underlying values below that, and we were talking about what they might be and do we actually use them.
And if you talk to anybody you say, like, well, what are your core values? And they'll say, well I'm
I've got integrity, I've got caring, I'm understanding. And then if you really asked them do you really bring those
core values to every role you have in life?
And we thought about it and we really don't. We don't develop these core values and these fundamental values enough,
in my opinion. We know they're there, we want them. We want. We expect other people to have them and
we get really offended and we take it personally if somebody else doesn't live up to the core
values we think they should have. You know, if they lie to us and they break the core value of
honesty, it really does trigger us. And then. But when we turn it around on ourselves, how much do we
live up to our core values? It's made me think over the last few weeks a couple of weeks since
that conversation, what are my core values? And I'd like to think that I'm caring, I'm understanding,
I'd like to think I got integrity. But
then I thought, yes, I may have those, but how much of it do I really bring to every aspect
of life? I'm a city councillor. When I sit on a Council meeting, do I bring those core values to
that meeting, do I bring them to. When I say something, do I. I'm also. I have
carers when I'm with my carers, do I bring those core values to that? And what about when my daughter's
here or when I'm at my parents, when I'm listening to my mum? And very often it's very difficult when
we're with family and especially our parents
and I always go back to what Mother Teresa says. I think it's Jack Cornfield always says this as well.
If you think you're enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents. But when I go up and spend
like a few hours with my mum, am I really showing up as love and understanding? So I wanted to
dive deeper and I want you to consider what your fundamental values and which ones of those
that you will not budge from. And I think if we develop these, the tree becomes rooted into the
ground. You could say they're the roots of the tree, these fundamental values. And we don't worry about losing our
branches or we don't worry about anybody disagreeing with our beliefs or moving from role to roll As long as
we've got the core values intact. You know, they're the fundamental building blocks that everything are built on.
You know, the weather can take away the tree and the storms could almost knock it over, but if the
roots are intact, you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about life so much. You
don't have to worry about someone wiling you up the wrong way, because we're going to show up as these
values anyway. And
also, what values do we need to develop a little more? And if you think about going back to when
you're first born, do you have these true values? Well, no. We learn to have empathy. We
develop empathy as we grow, we develop caring as we grow A baby doesn't care. A baby doesn't have
empathy. It's not lying there thinking, oh, I wonder if my mum's tired I perhaps I'll just lie here and
be quiet and let my mum have a bit more sleep. They don't have that ability when they're born. Because
at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if they don't get those core needs met, they're going to cry. They're not going
to care who they upset, or they're not going to care whether they bring understanding along with that crying.
But as we get older, there's no excuse, really, when you move beyond Your teens and your adulthood you have
your own children. There really is no excuse for not looking at these core values and developing them, looking at
what is important to you, what you. How you would like other people to show up in your life.
Integrity and honesty is like absolute, the utmost importance to you. Are you living from that place as well?
Do you bring that true values to every conversation you have? Do you bring them to every reply and post
on Facebook? Do you bring them to the job you do? Do you bring them to every conversation you have
with your family when a friend phones you? I doubt we do I've just been honest I don't. I've got
to somehow almost come back and pinch myself and go, do you know what? You really weren't that caring. You
say you're caring and loving, Stevie, but you really weren't in that instance. And
I remember Kember coming back here one day and she said something to me and I I just went off
on it. I just went off on this rampage of, I don't really shout, but I I can kind of
go on a little bit. And I did that to her. And she stood there and she took it, and
I kept going on and on and on. And then I finished and I said, and I'm done now, and
I'm finished. She stood there and she looked up and said, well, that wasn't very Zen of you, was it?
And it's funny because I was trying to develop my Zen side. This is about three, four years ago now.
I was becoming more peaceful. You know, I'm very Zen now. I'm very stoic. But in that
moment, I did not bring that to that conversation. And this is what I'm talking about, you know,
So I want you to consider yourself. What are your what What is important for
other people to show up in your life as. And there's so many core values. Let me know in the
comments below or let me know on my Facebook page. What. What core values are important to you and
are you working on yours? Do you really bring them to every aspect of your life? Say, if one of
your core values is to be loving now, then whether you're a doctor or a binman or a
gardener or a president, it really doesn't matter what your job is in life in that time, are you
bringing that loving core value to that job? And the same as if a belief, if you're in a debate
or having a conversation or you're in church on Sunday, are you bringing the core value that you're you say
you are to that belief? And that day and that moment, I think if we were perfectly honest, we could
do better. You know, C minus could do better. And as we work on it more and as we, every
time we shake someone's hands or give them a hug, if we think about these core values, we can live
from them a little more. And I think it benefits us because it'll come back around on us and then
also identifying the ones where we demand from others. But we don't show up ourselves if we're really
honest about it. And one of mine is integrity. I like to think I've got lots of integrity. But what
is integrity? Integrity is you promise something and whether you deliver or not, that's one of the values of
integrity, I believe. And I promise a lot. And sometimes, quite often, okay, nearly all the
time, I can feel my inner dialogue going as I'm saying this. I let people down and it's not
because I don't mean to deliver, it's because I, I overestimate what I'm able to do because
I'm paralysed and my fingers are paralysed. Just editing a podcast takes me three or four times longer than it
would somebody else. And I tend to forget. Although I've been in a wheelchair now, I've been paralysed since I
was 18. My mind forgets at times and I still think I can do what an able-bodied person does and
I forget things take longer. So I tend to promise things and I don't deliver very often. But
integrity is taking that into account and going, well, look, if I'm going to live with integrity, I'm only going
to promise what I'm going to deliver. And that goes as been a parent. As you know, I'm a dad
that goes in that role of being a dad or in the role of the teacher in the inner piece
Academy that I run. And if anybody's Interested, go to StevenWebb.com spelt with a V, not a Ph
and you can have a look about the academy there where you can join, where I help people have a
lot more in life. But yeah, that's what I want you to think about this week is what core values
do you have? What ones are you really good at remembering and which ones do you need to work on
more? And it will create a stability in your life and there's a freedom to knowing that your core
values are not going to be compromised, that they can chop your branches off, they can interfere with your tree,
they can do all the other things, but they're not going to rock your roots and your foundation of who
you are. So work out your core values, work out your underlying roots of your internal tree. I'm
Steven Webb and I help you to go from
I think that's the best way of explaining it. I give you a little inner peace and a little calmness
about your life and if I help you head over to my page and buy me a coffee would be
absolutely awesome and thank you. That supports the work I do and there you can sign up to a monthly
like three dollars a month and that will help me to get things edited and help me to speed things
up and help me to deliver um and that I guess that helps my integrity as well. So
yeah, head over to my page and you can click the link and buy me a coffee, support the work
I do. Or you can head to the website supportsteven.com thank you. Really appreciate your time. Time is the most
precious thing we have and spending the last 10-12 minutes with me is really. I really appreciate it and
take care and have a good week. I will be back next Monday for a new episode of Living Deeper
