After completing the first stage of the life values assessment m top five values on the list turned out to be:

1. Family
2. Personal Development
3. Enjoyment
4. Independence
5. Security

Today I actually did not do many activities. I got up and went to work at Subway, came home a cleaned the house, talked with my boyfriend until he left for work, played with my dog and then worked on homework for the rest of the night. Working at Subway strongly represents my value of Security. I work to pay the bills to help support me, my boyfriend, and my dog. Cleaning my house can fall under the value of Personal accomplishment. Talking with my boyfriend before he left for work goes under my value of family as well as playing with my dog. And finally doing my homework falls under personal development as well as personal accomplishment.

One belief pattern that I can think of from my family is to learn to be independent. My mom raised me so that I knew how to take care of myself. I believe this is a good trait to teach people. This will be something that I will pass on to my children. I used to have the same religion as my parents and inherited that belief system. As I became older I carried my own thoughts and beliefs and no longer went based on my “authority’s” beliefs. This is a belief that is no longer valid for myself. One goal I have and yet to pursue is starting up ceramics again. I would like to create poetry and possibly sell them. I have yet to pursue this goal mostly because of money, and time. It can be expensive to pursue and also with school and work I don’t have time.

For this weeks reading of “A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives” by Lewis, H. I have come to challenge myself in understanding what my personal values are and how I got to have that value meaning what type of mode did I use to obtain that value. I had never heard of values being separated as Lewis did in his book. But they all made perfect sense. I even tried to come up with values that did not fall under one category but Lewis was correct. Every personal value was categorized in either: Sense experience, Deductive Logic, Emotion, Intuition, Authority, or Science. Personally I feel that many of my values are in the emotion mode and authority mode. For example one of my values is family. This is strictly under the emotion mode because mentally I just feel that it is true. It is not based on somebody else’s beliefs (authority mode) it’s not due to my 5 senses (sense experience mode), and I can’t scientifically prove it with observation and tests (science mode), etc.

In the second section of Lewis’s book, I found his comment about how somebody can be like another and share some values with them as well as a few other people but still be totally different type of person whether they have similarities or not. There can be people that share many personal values and still be completely different and I believe that goes down to what is later on mentioned about determining the importance of your values. Two people could have the same value of wealth but one person has the value of wealth at the top of their list and the other person could the have the value of wealth at the bottom of their list.

Something I am struggling to understand however is when Lewis states the following: “human beings cannot separate the way they arrive at values from the values themselves” and then follows by stating how we emphasize one value over another. I don’t really understand what he is trying to say here. I don’t understand how trying to separate how you got to your value and the value itself and emphasizing certain values over others connect to each other.

This reading has gotten me thinking about what exactly my value are in life and what values triumph over each other. I am eager to take the Life Values Assessment this week.

Reference:

Lewis, H. (1990). A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives. Axios Press.