You Are What You Value
Somewhere during your lifetime, whether it be in a religious setting, a leadership seminar, or a Buzzfeed quiz, we've all probably been forced to identify our personal values. If you're like me, the word 'values' seems like another extremely elusive, squishy word such as 'synergy' and 'character' that gets thrown around copiously without holding too much significance or meaning. But Dev BootCamp must have some magical pixie dust - and not only for technical sorceries, because when I read the list of provided values to identify with and started getting all cheesy by looking up famous quotes, an epiphanic lightbulb went off.
It's a fairly elementary concept, but Jose Ortega y Gasset's quote says it the best, "Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are." Sagaciously profound, yet common sensical. And here's another, just to lay the morter down in your brain:
When tasked to identify my values, I first chose too many, but challenged myself to narrow the list down. Though I still was unable to consolidate my list to a focused few, below is a pictorial representation of my vales. The yellow words address, "What makes me the happiest?" while the black answers, "What makes you satisfied?" The size of the words are also scaled to importance and the effort I shouldinvest in order to live up to these values.
From the crazy music festival and skydiving pictures, the adventure and music aspects are probably fairly apparent. But, that number one spot unequivocally goes to my family, who is my lifeline, support system, haven, and essentially the root to all my other values.
Recently, my leave of work and committment to Dev Bootcamp has catalyzed much discussion about careers, aspirations, and movement in general. People say actions speak louder than words, and though I'm proud to be able to corroborate my values through my decisions and actions, it was important to remember others have differing value, which in turn are supported through correspondingly different actions. You're happy with sitting in a cubicle all day in a corporate job, you're content living at home with your parents, you're not itching to travel around the world with only a pack on your back - who am I to judge?
It's a good feeling to think about your values, and even more satisfying when you take a minute to stop and think about all the decisions I've made to further align my life with them. There's always much risk, change, and havoc in our lives, but hopefully our values stay relatively stable to serve as a benchmark and guide to when we feel a bit lost or discouraged!
