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
(8:53) What integrity actually costs you
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Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
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.
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, Stephen 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, 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 mum, 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 and you say, like, well, what are your