Core Values

I read an article on The Art of Manliness web site a couple of weeks ago that got me thinking about this. As we all do, from time to time I do a little introspection about what is really important in life. This helps us decide if we are living the life we should be living. If not, some course corrections need to happen. For the parts that seem to be working, how can we do it more and better.

At any rate, this article was "How to be a Better Man in 30 days". I have not embarked on a 30 day boot camp or anything, but there are lots of good suggestions in that list. The only one I took any action on was the first one, Define your Core Values. All I had to do was write down 5 core values, no more, no less. There was even a list of 40 or so to choose from. I liked choosing from the list because it included a wide range and helped constrain the exercise. The rule was to choose exactly 5, so some hard decisions were necessary. Most or all of the ones on the list are important to me.

So, I finally whittled it down to these 5:

• Health - maintaining a strong mind and body
• Wisdom - pursuing knowledge, experience and introspecting/synthesizing into wisdom
• Financial Stability - maintaining independence
• Integrity - consistency and wholeness of belief and actions
• Personal Relationships - includes family, friends, professional and spiritual

These are not listed in order of priority as choosing only 5 was hard enough. I plan to keep these values and the others on the list as a backlog of things to blog about when I draw a blank. Who knows, further thought and writing might change my list of 5 even though just living up to each one of those is more than a full time job.