I love listening to podcasts and audiobooks while I do monotonous activities like driving, washing the dishes, cleaning, and so on. By far my favorite podcast host is Hal Elrod, author of an amazing book, The Miracle Morning. Today, I specifically listened to podcast number 341: “The ONE Decision That Makes All Others For You” which you can listen to or read the transcript of here. In this podcast he explains how we can rid ourselves of the stress caused by making decisions through establishing core values and guiding principles.
If you are like me, you have probably heard of core values before. The first things to pop into my head when he started talking about these, were things like honesty, kindness, and integrity. I really liked the way that Hal defined core values and guiding principles, as well as the importance of defining both. He says that “core values are personal values that guide you in making important decisions” and that a guiding principle “determines who are you going to be and how are you going to show up.” The difference then, as he explains it, is that a core value is normally 1 or 2 words, such as those shown below, while a guiding principle is the way that it is applied/interpreted by a specific person.
“authenticity, balance, compassion, contribution, curiosity, discipline, freedom, fun, God, growth, happiness, honesty, integrity, inner peace, leadership, learning, love, loyalty, optimism, religion, responsibility, respect, self-love, service, wealth”
The way one of these values is viewed by me and applied in my life, is not the way it will be interpreted in someone else’s life. It is very important, therefore, to not only decide what our core values are, but how we are going to live those core values. So, to finish this journal article, I am going to list a few of my top core values and the corresponding guiding principle. This is something that I want to spend more time on, so I may post about it again in the future. The more core values that we can define, the more decisions we won’t have to make in the future, because our guiding principles will decide for us.
- Love
- Honesty
- Hope
- Family
- God
- I will love everyone unconditionally
- I will always tell the truth, in every situation
- I will move forward with trust that everything will work out as it should
- I will put my family before everything else
- I will maintain a relationship with God and be obedient to his commandments
These are just a few core values and guiding principles that I have established for myself today. I invite you to take a little bit of time and define some for yourself. If you are like me there are probably various core values that you are already living, but it will feel empowering to think about them and put them down on paper.
Eternal Learning 