Successful Relationships Reading Corner
This week, we asked why your core values are important for having peaceful relationships. This is a core aspect (groan) of relationships, and we have written about various aspects of this a number of times.
Why You Need To Know Your Core Values “The way you look at things is often reflective of your core values. Understanding core values and learning what yours are is foundational to creating peaceful harmonious relationships. The more you are aware of those values and can bring your approach to interactions in line with them, the truer you will be to yourself and the feeling of inner peace that brings. Your core values are those upon which you base your life, your actions and decisions, even when you are not clearly aware of what they are. This can occur because values are often felt rather than thought, and as a result, you may not have put them into words for yourself. And yet they are so critical to your life, inner peace, and all your relationships.”
Why Are Core Values Important in All Your Relationships? “Some of these values are so intrinsic to who you are and how you want to be that they underlie everything that you do and decide. They are your core values; how things should be in life. They affect how you feel and respond to other people. Core values are not beliefs; they underlie beliefs. They affect how you behave, the way you respond to others, and how you make decisions. They’re the areas that most represent who you are and what has true meaning for you in life. Core values, just like emotions, are felt, not thought. It’s a deep sense that you have, and then you find words to describe the feeling. It’s often hard to see core values because they’re difficult to distinguish from so many other values that we inherit from family, acquire through friends, adopt through society or buy into through advertising.”
How to Create Peace in Relationships and Life by Knowing Your Core Values “Understanding core values and learning what yours are is foundational to the process we teach for creating peaceful harmonious relationships. We differentiate values from wants and needs on a spectrum of ever-increasing importance. This scale starts with wants which are the most ephemeral, moves through needs which are sometimes difficult to differentiate from values, and then to values which rarely change, even when you formulate them in different words or images. Your core values are those upon which you base your life, your actions and decisions, even when you are not clearly aware of what they are. This can occur because values are often felt rather than thought, and as a result you may not have actually put them into words for yourself. And yet they are so critical to your life, inner peace, and all your relationships. A knowledge and understanding of what yours are can be a great tool for creating mutual solutions to disagreements and misunderstandings in your relationships, as well as finding a more fulfilling way of applying them to what you do and how you do it in your life. We recommend setting aside time to take a deep dive into what yours are and formulating them for yourself. When you have done this, it will give you the opportunity to reflect on whether and how you put them into action.”