For the past month or so, our writing group has been working on our values using various tools. Anyone who has really delved into this process knows that it really is quite a process – not something that can be done quickly. We used a combination of thinking about lists of values alone and sharing our thoughts with the group. There have been three or four group meetings spent talking about the meanings of specific words – dictionaries and thesauruses consulted and personal interpretations shared.
Yesterday, feeling extremely far from any kind of completion, one of the group members and I worked on my personal mission statement. At this point, I had about thirty values noted and couldn’t see narrowing them down to less than about ten! I was doing better with verbs – I quickly (yeah, I think
THAT may be a key to this process) eliminated all but eight: appreciate, grow, heal, inspire, love, respect, support, and value.
I decided to transfer values to where I had written the verbs and came up with: authenticity, integrity, joy, wisdom, intention, sustainability, abundance, acceptance, and gratitude (I liked it better as a value than as a verb).
Playing around with these words we came up with several statements and ideas:
To radiate love through authenticity, healing and joy.
Sustainable abundance
Heartened healing
To inspire growth, respect, and sustainability.
To help others heal and find their authentic selves.
Finding gratitude
To live a life of gratitude to be able to be present to the wonder (needing a better word here) of all around me.
Then we came up with this:
to live a life of gratitude and authenticity. WOW! This is me, this is what I want to be about. This is what will guide my choices.
Sometimes we make things too complicated. Sometimes there truly is beauty in simplicity.
