Thursday, November 10, 2011

Personal Values Checklist

From this list of values (both work and personal), select the ten that are most important to you-as guides for how to behave, or as components of a valued way of life.

___Achievement

___Advancement & promotion

___Adventure

___Affection (love and caring)

___Arts

___Challenging problems

___Change and variety

___Close relationships

___Community

___Competence

___Competition

___Cooperation

___Country

___Creativity

___Decisiveness

___Democracy

___Ecological awareness

___Economic security

___Effectiveness

___Efficiency

___Ethical practice

___Excellence

___Excitement

___Expertise

___Fame

___Fast living

___Fast-paced work

___Financial gain

___Freedom

___Friendships

___Growth

___Having a family

___Helping other people

___Helping society

___Honesty

___Independence

___Influencing others

___Inner harmony

___Integrity

___Intellectual status

___Involvement

___Job tranquility

___Knowledge

___Leadership

___Location

___Loyalty

___Market position

___Meaningful work

___Merit

___Money

___Nature

___Being around others who are open and honest

___Order (tranquility, stability, conformity)

___Personal development (living up to the fullest use of my potential)

___Physical challenge

___Pleasure

___Power & authority

___Privacy

___Public service

___Purity

___Quality of what I take part in

___Quality relationships

___Recognition (respect from others, status)

___Religion

___Reputation

___Responsibility & Accountability

___Security

___Self-respect

___Serenity

___Sophistication

___Stability

___Status

___Supervising others

___Time freedom

___Truth

___Wealth

___Wisdom

___Work under pressure

___Work with others

___Working alone


Now that you have identified ten, imagine that you are only permitted to have five values. Which five would you give up? Cross them off. Tell us your five important personal values.

When I did this exercise (2008), I used a scale and then picked the highest-ranked. I find that my top five values are super-important to me, and where they are not, I am not, if that makes any sense. (I'll tell mine if you tell yours)

Sources: selfcounseling.com , kon.org

8 comments:

t said...

May 2008 Top Five Values (ordered from most important):
Truth
Wealth
Meaningful Work
Time Freedom
Excitement

November 2011 Top Five Values (in alphabetical order):
Change and variety
Intellectual status
Meaningful work
Pleasure
Public service

And you?

DonCasiragi said...

I found the terms somewhat synonymous (at least in my mind..lol), so I first sorted thru the ones that resonate, grouped the synonyms together..and chose my top 10. The least five are struck out..the five standing pretty much defines me. The other five I struggle with but live up to them most times.


Top 5

Leadership/ Influencing other/ Responsibility & Accountability

Loyalty/Friendships

Truth/Integrity/Ethical practice

Efficiency/Competence/Decisiveness

Excellence/Achievement

Lower 5

Intellectual status/Personal development

Independence/Freedom

Community/Country

Adventure/Excitement

Religion

t said...

September 2014
My top five today:
1. Challenging problems
2. Pleasure
3. Public service
4. Order (tranquility, stability, conformity)
5. Being around people who are open and honest

========
More:
6 Personal development (living up to full potential); 7 Nature; 8 Creativity; 9 Sophistication; 10 Influencing others; 11 Leadership; 12 Meaningful work; 13 Efficiency.

Comments:
1 'Challenging problems' jumped out at me. At this instant, I'd say it's a dominant theme?

2, 3, and 12 : Pleasure and Public service returned. Meaningful work out of the top five (first time since 2008) perhaps because I have achieved it so it seems less pressing?

4 Order is odd because I often value creativity, freedom, and similar things variety and uncertainty. But today I feel a strong need for laws, peace, and order.

5 Being around people...open, honest or whatnot, is not a usual concern for a solo-ist like me, but today I'm seeking excellent people with whom I can interact and catch a growth spurt maybe.

6 'Personal development' too, usually smells of stale motivational literature to me, but today I like the idea of achieving more of my potential.
Perhaps 'personal development' via 'being around [excellent] people'?

7 Nature because a lot of our development is rubbish when the best things in life have always been with us and free.

8 Creativity - yes. I love elegant and possibly original solutions.
9 Sophistication - yes. Quality over quantity. Elegant solutions.
13 Efficiency - elegant solutions that still allow for Pleasure, Nature, Freedom, and other joys to be preserved.
Tie 8,9,and 13 in one theme?

10 11 Influencing others, Leadership - yes absolutely.
Tie 10 and 11 in one theme?

t said...

Re: Wealth
I wanted a wealthy happy country, and put wealth as a core value. Unfortunately, people hear wealth and think narrowly of me buying myself a pricey champagne party or something. Nigerians need re-education about wealth. Musicians and communicators of all kinds should get to work.

Wikipedia has the following definition for wealth:
Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions.
This includes the core meaning as held in the originating old English word weal, which is from an Indo-European word stem.[1]
An individual, community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources to the benefit of the common good is known as wealthy.

The modern concept of wealth is of significance in all areas of economics, and clearly so for growth economics and development economics yet the meaning of wealth is context-dependent.
At the most general level, economists may define wealth as "anything of value" that captures both the subjective nature of the idea and the idea that it is not a fixed or static concept.
Various definitions and concepts of wealth have been asserted by various individuals and in different contexts.[2]
Defining wealth can be a normative process with various ethical implications, since often wealth maximization is seen as a goal or is thought to be a normative principle of its own.[3][4]

The United Nations definition of inclusive wealth is a monetary measure which includes the sum of natural, human and physical assets.[5][6]
Natural capital includes land, forests, fossil fuels, and minerals.
Human capital is the population's education and skills.
Physical (or "manufactured") capital includes such things as machinery, buildings, and infrastructure.

...

t said...

Times have changed, and I did this exercise today with very new results:
( in alphabetical order )

Democracy
Effectiveness
Self-respect
Sophistication
Wisdom

Those were the only five items that received the top ranking of 5 from me. Odd. I usually have many ranked 5 (on a scale of 1-5) and then have to winnow down to a top 10 or top 5 from the top-ranked, but here we are.

Now I should check what these things / words really mean.
Sophistication, for example - what am I trying to say? Something about style, class, and an admirable and unimpeachable way of doing the cool things I do.
Wisdom for encompassing all important dimensions in determining what should be done and in taking action.
Effectiveness - does it actually work? does it 1. have an impact and 2. have an impact that is good considered on some somewhat global measure?
Democracy because distributed solutions are working well. Let everybody be closely tied to the how and what and the doing of making things better.
Self-respect, that seems to explain itself but I should check: (from google / yourdictionary.com ) Self respect is defined as holding yourself in esteem and believing that you are good and worthy of being treated well. An example of self respect is when you know you deserve to be treated right and, as a result, you do not tolerate others lying to you or treating you unfairly.
I would add that self-respect has another side - behave in a manner worthy of a great self-concept. Treat others well.

t said...

I just did this again, by scrolling through the list and I had a biro and scrap paper to jot those I thought important to me today. In 1-2 minutes I was done. No winnowing, no narrowing down required, I actually wrote down 4 items briskly, thought I might reach like 10 then have to proritize, but no I just got one more, that was 5; and done, really in like a minute and a half. Hmmm.

Nov 2018 Top Five -
Co-operation
Decisiveness
Democracy
Efficiency
Wisdom

t said...

Today I'm doing two different "Core-Values" exercises.

A.
From this one on TapRoot.com that can also be found here, after about 10 minutes listing and winnowing, but without following the instructions to group, label the groups and so on, my top seven are:
Balance, Well-being, Wisdom,
Brilliance, Excellence,
Empathy, and Ethics.

A further comment is that I feel my top past values (these I have mastered) are Knowledge, Leadership, and Thankfulness,
while my top future values (these I aspire to) are Community, Family, Relationships, and Expressiveness.
I am surprised by my future values list. This exercise has already taught me a lot.

B. The Values Exercise of this blog post, which I've repeated every few years since 2008. Within five minutes I scanned the list and wrote six strong and three weak matches and within five minutes I've decided to share this top five: Competence, Helping other people, Helping society, Honesty, and Quality of what I take part in.
Just in case you care, I'll share that my lower matches were (the sixth strong match) Influencing others, plus Inner harmony, Location, and Serenity.

t said...

I just did this again. TOP FIVE: Helping other people, Location, Truth, Pleasure, and Time-freedom.

Additional notes: just outside the top five were these two (Self-respect and Nature). My bottom four were Fame, Fast-living, Growth, and Work with others.

It's a snapshot, isn't it?

Previously on UpNaira

 

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