Values govern our behavior, our words, our actions. They are personal, emotional and arguable, a part of our unique, individual essence. They illuminate what is important and deeply meaningful to our lives. They put the spotlight on what we stand for, guiding our behavior, providing us with the personal code of conduct we live with.
Values aren’t as much selected as we discover them. As we live more fully in the present moment, we come to realize that certain values are very important to us, things like: Being honorable, living our life with integrity: Being kinder, more attentive: Doing what we say we will do: Being more decisive: Praising people more: Spending more time in nature: Having an artistic outlet: Being committed to working out regularly: Making time for meditation: Cherishing everyone: Deciding to do whatever it takes to be fit and healthy: Choosing to be content. For me, one of my core values is: Staying on time with my patients, which honors their time, making it easier for them to schedule my treatments into their day.
I firmly believe and make it a core value to every year be healthier than last year, to have better posture, gait and ergonomics. Every year, I am better at all seven habits: I breathe better, stronger. I am better at feeling all my feelings and the other habits…
Many of my beliefs and the core values they generate have to do with what most people consider “old age.” I have a core belief that we should not have to give up any more than 15% of our prowess before we die. But most people have shared core belief that, after thirty, they give up about 70% of their prowess by the time they are seventy years old and believe that is old age.
To make aging well one of my core values requires that I live the seven habits, eat healthy, develop good relationships, that I commit to working out at least three times a week plus all my other activities. I have done all that consistently for the last forty years and will continue until the day I can’t. That’s the power of core values.
Society conditions us to conform, to fit in, to give our power away. Slumping is a classic example because most people are actually afraid of or embarrassed about being powerful. When we maintain good posture, all fifteen of our powerful circulatory systems run full on. Then breathing out strong provides the fuel to live a powerful life. How will we handle that?
Researchers have confirmed that when people have a clear set of core values, it is easier to make big life decisions, pursue passions, undertake long-term career goals or relationships. They tolerate physical pain more easily. They have greater self-discipline and focus when studying or working toward goals. They have stronger social connections.
Things we value come and go, but our core values endure. They guide us throughout our lives, no matter the situation or difficulty. Real failure is failing to live by our values. Real success is taking action and living our core values every day.
Subconscious values: Our values are completely different when we are spiritually sleeping, allowing our subconscious brain to govern our consciousness with critical thinking as the highest level it attains to. The brain focuses on problems and references everything from the perspective of the past/future world of time. It models reality from below upward, and from outside in. Thinking that way means: Its core values are based on lack, limitation and scarcity.
In this subconscious model, the past predicts the future. Trouble is, the brain, if not directed by our heart, integrates all the unresolved past memories of shame, guilt and missed opportunities into all its considerations, its reasoning. That severely narrows our possibilities while letting our unresolved fears function as our advisors.
Then, the brain’s critical thinking about the future enfolds all our projected fears, anxieties and worst-case scenarios into its projected outcomes. This lets outer circumstances compromise our values. This way of thinking would appear deranged if most of the people around us were not still thinking this same way.
Conscious values: Mindfulness of the basic habits like: Breathe Out Strong: Stand Tall and Feel All our Feelings keep bringing us back to the present moment where we are the heroes of our story. In this scenario, our heart is in charge of our consciousness and wants to live in harmony with our core values as it creates our reality. This makes a fertile environment for happiness, peace of mind, and success. We are living more authentically, the author, director and lead actor of our own story.
Our heart wants to manifest our world in the most loving and efficient manner. Its model is “Above Down, Inside Out.” In this model, our lungs breathe in the higher truths and visions from above, then downward disseminates them to the heart and other organ systems. Our kidney system decides if this is what we need to do. When we commit to it, our liver immediately starts uptakes every bit of energy we will ever need to make it so.
At the beginning stage of any endeavor, we need to ask all the hard questions: Like how will this affect my family, my beliefs, my values and principles. At the outset we need to seriously challenge how it will affect all the facets of our life. But when we decide that THIS is what we want to do, then we need to become single minded.
Right after we commit to something, we begin the heroes’ journey. There is this state of bliss. But very soon after we commit, all the fears start coming up. When we go inside ourselves and actually feel those fears, one-at-a-time they dissipate into nothingness. If we do not actually go inside and feel those fears, thy continue to build until they become the “fire breathing dragons” of our old mythologies, effectively knocking us off our quest.
The brain, if not kept on point by our heart, will keep dredging up fears and reasons why this can fail. The fears and their reasonings that our subconscious brain generates then become competing plans. At this point, as the creators of our reality, we need to address our brain like we would address a recalcitrant child. That means telling our subconscious mind to stop generating distractions, that THIS is what we are doing.
The seven habits, and other habits you may take on keep bringing you back to the present moment where your Spirit and Soul are in charge of your consciousness. In our bodymind, that means our heart is in charge. We delete our fears by going inside and actually feeling them as they come up. Being single-minded is to keep bringing our focus back to all the intricacies of accomplishing the goal instead of letting our unruly brain keep coming up with fear-based “what ifs.”
