Name Your Values

This weekend a friend of mine and I were watching the movie City Slickers. In the movie, Billy Crystal and his friends have gone on a vacation to a ranch to drive cattle. While there, he meets an old cowboy named Curly (Jack Palance). My favorite scene in the movie is when Billy and Jack are talking about the meaning of life. 

"You know what the secret to life is?" Jack asks, and he holds up his finger. 

Billy says, "Your finger?" 

 "No one thing, once you figure that out, nothing else matters (he said it a little more cowboyesque, so I edited it) Jack says,

Billy says, "What's the one thing?"

"That's what you have to figure out." Jack says

I remember seeing that clip in the theater and thinking ONE THING?!?! That is just too hard to come up with one thing!

We need to figure out what our thing is, whether that be one thing or five things. I do believe we need to limit it at some point just for the sake of focus. Once we figure out our top five things, then we can direct our lives and our life decisions around those five things. For me, the easiest way to do this is to look at our top five values. When we are aware of our values, we have a core place to come from when making life choices. Here are a few examples: Let's say you value family, and that is in your top 5 values, then you will make decisions that allow you to support/spend more time with your family.

If you value social change, you will make everyday choices that inspire social change through the clothes you wear, the websites you go to, the products you use, etc. If you value creativity, you probably engage in activities that feed your artistic side, whether drawing, painting, idea developing, or writing. The glitch comes when we value something, but we aren't making choices around it. For example, you value family, but you are working all the time, so you miss important family events. Or you value creativity, but you never give yourself time to engage in artistic activities. 

I believe--as Curly did in the movie City Slickers when we come up with our one thing (or 5), it makes it easier to focus on what's essential in our lives. Therefore the small everyday choices or the big life decisions become easier because we can always go back to the question of what do I value? When we are living from our values--we are living happier.