On Values and Clarity

Fragments from imaginary dialogues

“An essential aspect of the Wisdom journey is gaining Clarity on your Values. There’s two aspects to this:

Gaining clarity on what your Values are.
Gaining clarity on each Value individually.”

“How do you gain the second kind of clarity?”

“You can think of Values as guides. The clearer they are, the better they can guide you.

You can also think of Values as practice. Clarity reveals the details of the practice.

To gain clarity, I find it useful to write them down. I have a document with all my core Values:

Wisdom

Play

Love
Gratitude
Beauty

Simplicity
Balance

Courage

Thinking
Learning

Presence

Movement

Underneath each Value, there’s a selection of quotes / directives expressing different aspects of the practice.

Value
Details about the Value

Something like this:

Play

Live a Creative Life. (Robert Rodriguez)

Be your unapologetically weird self. (Chris Sacca)

EVERYTHING is the Beautiful Game [<link, medium length],
EVERY SINGLE MOMENT.

It’s ALL Play.

Regain the freedom to create like a child. (Josh Waitzkin)

Maximize each moment’s creative potential. (Josh Waitzkin)

Find the Gem
Think of your life as a game in which each problem you face is a puzzle to solve. By solving the puzzle, you get a gem in the form of a principle that helps you avoid the same sort of problem in the future. (Ray Dalio)

Love

Love what Is. (Byron Katie)
Amor Fati (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Love what you Do. (Marie Forleo)
ALWAYS do your best. (Miguel Ruiz)

Love the Storm. (Josh Waitzkin)

Gratitude

Take NOTHING for granted.

Celebrate every little win.
Celebrate how far you’ve come.
Celebrate your Beautiful BodyMind.

Find the Gift
EVERYTHING you experience has a hidden Gift inside of it. The puzzle is to discover it, and express Gratitude for it.

I have a tendency to add too much stuff, so I pass everything I add to the document through the 80/20 filter, and I constantly ask myself:

What can I eliminate?”