Values Simplified: What Makes You Do What You Do

I value this, you value that… That aligns with my values, this aligns with your values… That company is value-oriented… Hold your horses. What does any of that mean? Valuing something… aligning with values… value-oriented… value proposition… core values? What is this pop-psychology, new-age-y, astrological hogwash? How come we use “value” in day-to-day conversation if we don’t even know what it means? Here’s to clearing things up. About time.

Defining Values? Impossible

Trying to define values, you’ll run into complication. Everyone—the bloggers, the psychologists, the self-help gurus, the private coaches, the philosophers, the Joes and Jills down the street—perceives values differently. Everywhere—the dictionaries, the articles, the encyclopedias, the research papers, the audio programs and videos—you are going to run into distinct answers. And this muddles everything.

Chew a few. The psychological fandom says “the core from which we operate or react… broad preferences concerning appropriate causes of action or outcomes.” Psychology Today writes “an enduring belief upon which a person acts.” A clinic from Melbourne “your values are what matters most to you deep down in your heart.” A researcher from the University of Michigan gets nerdy “values are internalized cognitive structures that guide choices by evoking a sense of basic principles of right and wrong, a sense of priorities, and create a willingness to make meaning and see patterns.” PsychCentral comes in “the justification for who and how you are.” A fancy-schmancy Annual Review of Psychology finishes with “broad desirable goals that motivate people’s actions and serve as guiding principles in their lives.”

What’s This? Brain Helmet?!

Get it? I have no doubt. When the creator is as confused as the user, things get troubling. Imagine this. The inventor of the electroencephalogram (EEG) forgets to write instructions. Because you and I are, y’know, curious and slightly moronic apes, we try it out. Zap. What’s an EEG, you may ask. They plug you in. A bunch of wires. Stuck. On your head. To measure brain activity. A bridge between psychology and neurology. Gold standard for diagnosing and monitoring epilepsy, brain tumors, brain damage, inflammation of the brain…

Don’t know about you, but where “brain” and “electrical helmet” and “no instructions” are combined, I’m walking out. They aren’t strapping hundreds of electrodes on my head. Value systems require equal care. The stakes, they’re high. Values can kill. They are the measuring sticks by which cold-blooded murderers determine that slaughtering someone is a “meaningful” activity which makes them “successful”. Same for nurses. And doctors, pilots, firefighters, police officers, special forces, and investigators. Their “meaningful” and “successful” are just slightly different. The scary part? We have the electrodes, the head to plug them onto, and the power outlet. We’re missing instructions.

An Austrian Boy

Bit of a trick question for you. Ready? You were born ready. Would Hitler be considered successful? Don’t lie. Your reaction was “no.” Correct? See for yourself. Hitler was broke. Hitler was a failed artist. He had a bee farmer father who beat him to get better grades at school. He took singing lessons and performed bad in school intentionally to show his father “what little progress I was making at the technical school”. Hitler and his friends didn’t have a special handshake. No, they said “heil!”

Financed by his mother and orphan benefits, he left to study fine art in Vienna. Remember those schooling adventures? Yeah, well… Rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Twice. Lacking academic credentials for the School of Architecture. “Studying” was a flop. Not finishing secondary school apparently takes a toll on you. Then mom died. Breast cancer. He was 18. The money lasted him two years before he was forced to live in homeless shelters and dormitories.

One Trauma, Two Trauma, Three Trauma…

Tough times. He earned money by casual labor and painting and selling watercolors of Vienna’s beauty. The passion for music and architecture, it grew. The neighborhood in which he lived was infected with German nationalism. The newspapers he read promoted prejudice and Christian fears of being swamped by Jews. He also grew anti-Slavic. Then World War I happens.

At the time, Hitler was living in Munich and voluntarily enlisted into the army. He didn’t even have permission to do so, since he was an Austrian citizen and should have returned there. Oh well. History is history. Hitler wasn’t the typical soldier, out on the battlefield. Nu-uh. Most of his time was at the headquarters where he drew cartoons and instructions for the army newspaper. Hitler suffered one severe injury. Wounded in the left thigh. A month and some at the hospital. A mustard gas attack and temporary blindness as well. That’s about it.

Traumatic Life, Traumatic Ideologies

He loved war. I’ll let him say it. Apparently, his role was “the greatest of all experiences”. His commanding officers praised him for his bravery, he received countless medals, and his German patriotism only grew. Hitler was shocked to find out Germany capitulated. So shocked, in fact, that historians attribute his displeasure with the result for shaping his ideology. German nationalism had him believe the stab-in-the-back myth, claiming the German army was never defeated in the field, but was “stabbed in the back” by Jews and civilian leaders.

Hitler’s core values were formed. The abusive father, the war, the homeless shelters, the male-only dormitory, the academic failure, the unfulfilled artistic calling, the abundant propaganda, the death of his mother, the poverty, the myths told by the press and fellow soldiers, the… I’m not justifying the genocide of 6 million Jews and millions of others. Yet you can see the Austrian-born German politician didn’t come out the oven looking to massacre nations. His values accrued. The Holocaust didn’t enter his brain overnight.

Was He Successful?

Back to the question. Was Hitler successful? By traditional means, yes. After being discharged from the army, he worked full-time on his party. Yes, that one, with the banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background which he designed. Within a year he was speaking to crowds of over 6,000. Hitler also had regular audiences in his speeches at beer halls, where he learned and honed his crowd psychology. His speeches had a supposed “hypnotic effect”.

An influential public speaker, powerful leader, connector of people… If you didn’t know we were talking of Hitler, the answer is an outright “yes”. Broke and homeless artist to commandeering an entire country and the most powerful military in a matter of two decades. Mobilized and inspired millions. Tirelessly chasing his goals. Changed the course of history. He was “successful” in “meaningful” work. The issue was his “successful” and “meaningful”. A killer issue. Killer of tens of millions.

Choose Your Fighter

Your values, as Hitler’s, are how you define right and wrong, good and bad, successful and unsuccessful. You cannot do the “right” thing to become “better” as a person and “successful” as a professional. Not when those three are undefined. Not before you describe what a better and more successful person who does the right thing, is. And that’s bad. It’s really, really bad. Because if you don’t decide where you’re going and why, you might pull a Musolini, a Stalin, or a Hitler.

If your values suck, your actions suck, the consequences suck, and your life sucks. Your biggest value is not gulping shot after shot until you lose sense of your body and time and space and… Life. There are millions of books written on that. Getting more, doing more, achieving more, working more, producing more, creating more… They’re shots to numb, all the same. A fallacy underlines each. Learning how to achieve your goals is nice and all, but what if you shouldn’t be striving for a goal in the first place?

No Way!

I can’t tell you what good and bad is. I’m not looking to install my values into yours. That breaks the point. Your values are supposed to be your values, adopted and chosen by you, for you. Did Hitler have a say in his? The propagandan newspapers, the abuse, the German nationalism, the myth that acted as the tipping point on his post-war self? The environment “helped him out”. A cascade of negativity and constant failure from an early age predisposes you toward maladaptive things. Who would’ve thought?

What Your Values Are

You do them. Every minute of your day. You decide where to invest your time, energy, and money. The way you choose to behave is a mirror to your values. Don’t get things mixed. I’m sure you have that heroic list of things you think you value. Actions don’t lie. You might believe you want or need or value something, but if it isn’t reflected in your behavior, you don’t. Mark Manson calls it “The Great Value Disconnect”, the gap between values you wish you had versus actually have. Instead of meeting who you are, you lie to yourself to feel better.

You are them. That thing you perceive and understand as yourself? Your identity? It’s an aggregation of everything you value. Values are the fundamental component of your psychological construction. You are defined by what you choose as important, what you prioritize, and how that’s manifest in your actions. If it’s “saving” the planet from falling off “the edge” because we’re a flying “disk” in space, you draw a flat Earth on a poster and protest. If it’s money, you chase it, foregoing your friends and family to enlarge your bottom line. It comes out in your actions, words, and decisions.

Itsy-Bitsy Values Assessment

Thus, what you can sincerely say you do and are, is what your genuine values are. Everything else? Aims. Illusions. Perhaps conclusions of what sounds acceptable and coherent to societal norms. But they’re not the values you have. They’re the values you wish you had. A psychologist named Shalom Schwartz distilled them down to ten basic values and their underlying goals. The others you’ll find in lists, they stem from these. Try them on. Think, from -1 (completely opposed to your values) to 7 (supreme importance) which fit you. Remember, you have to do and be them.

Self-direction—independent thought and action; choosing, creating, and exploring. Stimulation—excitement, novelty, and challenge in life. Hedonism—pleasure or sensory gratification for yourself. Achievement—personal success through demonstrating competence according to social standards. Power—social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources. Security—safety, harmony, and stability of society, relationships, and yourself. Conformity—restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses which are likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms. Tradition—respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas of your culture or religion. Benevolence—preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with who you are often in contact. Universalism—understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection of the welfare of all people and/or nature.

The Take Home

To conclude, values aren’t just words, or statements, or ideas. They aren’t just what you think is important. They are much more complex, the true decision-makers in our brains. Values manifest in actions. What you do, who you are, what you think. So, do you really value adventure and altruism and ambition and all the other heroic-sounding things, or are you playing yourself? “A person’s worth is measured…” says Marcus Aurelius, “by the worth of what he values.”