…Unhappy? Check Your Personal Values…
Being unhappy can probably be caused by the following condition:
- unclear personal values
- conflicting personal values
- failing to distinguish which personal values fall to the catogory of means, and which are ends
Now, what is personal values? They are set of things or attitudes which are considered as the most valuable things in one’s life. For example love, career, connection with others, money, success, spirituality, adventure, security, and so on. As you may have guessed, different people would have different sets of personal values, with probably different order from the one which matters most to the least.
Now, what happen if one does not have a clear definition about his/her personal values? One of the possibilities is that person will not have a clear standard on measuring whether he/she has done an accomplishment, or not. How to measure something if we don’t have a clue about what to measure?
Personal values can be sorted from the one which matters most to the least. A conflict inside one’s mind or heart can be caused by the need to comply with one (or more) personal value(s), but at the he feels that if he choose to do so, he will break some of his other values. One way to resolve this situation is by trying to figure out which value is more important, and then choose to comply with it. In many cases people become unhappy eventhough he/she complies with the third, fourth, fifth value, and so on, but is failing to comply with the higher values.
When people make lists of their personal values, sometimes it is just natural to miss out which ones are means, and which are ends. Means, as in transportation means, are only the vehicles to bring him/her towards the ends, i.e. their real values. For example, money is a mean to give a contribution. To contribute itself doesn’t have to always involve money.
Now, I must say, this is not the magic key to happiness. This is only a simple tool which can help people a little bit to get rid of unhappiness from their lives. I got this from Tony Robbins’s book, Awaken the Giant Within. Trying to summarize a little bit, by no intention to take credit from it.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Interesting.
Are we happy because we are able to satisfy our personal values or is it because we are happy that we are able to satisfy our personal values? Can we satisfy our personal values without the so-called happy feeling? Or rather can we get to experience the so-called happiness without having to stick to our personal values?
My answer would be yes.
Those with unclear personal values can also get to experience the so-called happy feeling. But then you can tell it’s vague and because it’s undefined and they don’t know accurately what it is that produce the flood of the so-called happiness. Selfishness is sufficient to originate this kind of happiness. Ego is even more.
I think it’s safe for me to say that the so-called happiness is mainly originated from the pleasure that the senses find in what we do, rather than the lack of it.