Do you Have Any Standards (Personal Standards)? Part 2

Values aren't anything special; everybody has values. And more, everybody's values sound wonderful. Nobody has a value called "killer" or "idiot" or "pushover" -that is, nobody has values like these that actually mean what the name insinuates.

People have values like: love, honesty, connection, security, hard work, self-care and the like. But have you ever thought about people like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin... and their values? Hitler killed 30 million people; Stalin killed 60 million and yet I'd be willing to bet that neither of these men, if you were able to sit down with them and do a values clarification exercise with them, would confess to having values such as: genocide, rape, pillage or S.O.B. No, no, no... their values would sound no different than Mother Teresa's or Gandhi's.

I'd put A LOT of money on the fact that all four of these individuals from the 20th century would have had values that sounded quite similar. I'm sure from Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa you hear words like "commitment" and "mission" as values. I'm sure Joseph Stalin and Gandhi would speak mutually, yet independently, of their commitment to the values of: "change" and "peace".

How do we reconcile this? Certainly Adolf Hitler was "committed" and on a "mission". So was Mother Teresa. Mohandas Gandhi could very well be the quintessential example of a person who lived the values of "peace" and "change". Joseph Stalin too, worked for "change" and his own version of "peace".

On a much lighter note, but staying on the same theme... I've worked with people who have a value called, "self-care". I've seen people use this value to justify getting a massage, eating cheesecake, eating spinach salad or numbing out with their drug of choice (food, work, porn, drugs or drink). Oh man! I've been one of these people! What does the value "self-care" mean? The answer is, it means whatever we want it to mean, given the right circumstances. This simply can't be good enough.

The above, is just one example of many, where values (which are naturally vague even when there clarified with other words) actually can be used, not to bring people what they really want, but in our moments of weakness, to justify the things we don't want and wouldn't do otherwise. Yikes! Just say no to values.

Go get yourself some Personal Standards!

Soon enough. Stay tuned to Thursday morning's post.

As Always,

Be Good-Don't Compromise

RR