World of Art

Top 5 values :

Health

Family

Security

personal accomplishment

enjoyment

The following 15 other values:

Friendship

loyalty

leadership

personal development

wealth

community

wisdom

expertness

service

power

prestige

independence

integrity

creativity

location

Today, I woke up in the morning and went out for running around 30 minutes. This activity represent my value of health. Then, I went back home and prepare food for lunch. This activity represent my value of health and enjoyment, since I like preparing health food for myself. After having lunch, I went to library to finish my homework until dinner time. This activity represent my value of personal accomplishment as well as personal development. After dinner, I talked with my family over the phone. This activity represent my value of family. Then I watched movies until late night and go to bed and sleep. This represent my value of enjoyment.

I believe my family was one of the most important factor to drive the development of my values. Health and family values were directly came from my family. My parents prepare health food everyday and they are very concerned about their family members and relationships among the family. However, some of values came from my family to me are not as important as before after I grew up. For example, my parents value location a lot, since they love my home cities and want to live in that city forever. But to me, I might want to move to some bigger cities which may provide better chance for my career. One goal I have and yet to pursue is travelling all around the world to experience different cultures and different people. Time and money are the  difficulties to realize this goal.

In the article “Sorting It Out: How We Choose Our Values”, the author produces a question that how do people arrive these evaluations and beliefs. Then the author uses four basic modes and two synthetic mental modes to explain how people know things and establish evaluations. When I read this section, a questions came into my mind that if I knew something is true, but actually I was wrong that something is not true, how can I adjust my established values. In the article, the author summarize the sense experience mode:

“I know it’s true because I saw it, I heard it, I tasted it, I smelled it, or I touched it myself.” (Lewis, 9)

Indeed, we always rely on what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch in our daily life. However, if what we experienced and what we believed were not the true, how should we figure it out and adjust our mind and values?  When I was small, my parents always told me to study hard and I saw every child around me studied harder than me. I built understandings and values about studying hard and high test score that they could guarantee my future successes. At that time, I valued the test score was the most important thing in my life. However, after I grew up, I knew what I believed was wrong that high test score could help, but not guarantee my future successes. I changed my mind and adjusted my values, but it took me a long time to figure it out and make adjustments. Is there a way to evaluate what we experienced and help us to build the right understandings and values especially in our childhood?

I believed bias is one of the main reasons why our experience could produced information that was not true. For example, if you are a MBA student, and all other MBA students around you earned salaries above $50,000 a year, you might build a value that a MBA student should earn a yearly salary of $50,000 or more. At this moment, if a company offer you only $30,000, you might reject it. However, your value might be wrong which will produce extra pressure for your future career. How should we figure out what we believed and our values are right? My answer is asking more people and more questions. If you received different opinions and answers than you thought, you might want to re-evaluate your experience.

Reference:

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