LIFE VALUES: YOUR PERSONAL COMPASS

“Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.”

—BRUCE BARTON

Courage, determination, perseverance, dedication … As Ross Perot conducted the tense briefing in Dallas, he saw those qualities reflected in the faces of the men he had handpicked for an extraordinary rescue mission. In the early days of 1979, civil unrest and anti-America hysteria were rising to a fever pitch in Iran, and only a few days before, two of Perot’s corporate executives in Teheran had been inexplicably jailed. Bail was set at $13 million.

When high-powered diplomatic negotiations failed to get results, Perot decided that there was only one way to get his men out: he’d have to do it himself. Calling upon the expertise of legendary army colonel Arthur “Bull” Simons to lead this daring raid, Perot quickly assembled a crack team of his top executives to pull off the jailbreak. They were selected because they’d all been in Teheran and had military experience. He called his men “Eagles” to signify “high fliers who used their initiative, got the job done, and gave results, not excuses.”^*

The rewards would be high if they won, but the risks were even greater: the mission was completely unauthorized, and not only was failure a possibility, but so was death. What drove Ross Perot to muster all his resources, to take the risks and defy the odds? Clearly, he’s a man who lives by his values. Courage, loyalty, love, commitment, and determination are all values that give him an exceptional capacity to care and a strength of will that is legendary. These same values were the force that drove him to build his company, EDS (Electronic Data Systems Corporation), from a thousand-dollar investment into an enterprise worth billions of dollars. He rose to the top because of his capacity to evaluate and select the right men. He chose them based on a strict code of values and he knew that with the right people, those who held high enough standards, all he’d have to do was give them the job to do and get out of their way.

Now he would have the ultimate test of the people he’d selected as he called upon them to summon their finest resources and rescue a few members of the corporate “family.” The story of their mission and the challenges they met can be found in the book On Wings of Eagles. Suffice it to say that despite obstacles beyond compare, Perot’s heroic rescue mission succeeded and brought home his most valued assets: his people.

“A man’s character is his guardian divinity.”

—HERACLITUS

Values guide our every decision and, therefore, our destiny. Those who know their values and live by them become the leaders of our society. They are exemplified by outstanding individuals throughout our nation, from the boardroom to the classroom. For example, did you see the movie Stand and Deliver? It told the story of the maverick math teacher Jaime Escalante.

Were you as inspired as I was by the heroic strides he made in transmitting to his students his passion for learning? He got them to associate in their nervous systems, at the deepest level, a sense of pride in their capacity to master those things others were certain they could never learn. His example of commitment translated to these young people the power of values. They learned from him discipline, confidence, the importance of the team, flexibility, and the power of absolute determination.

He didn’t talk to these kids in the barrio about what they should do with their lives; he was a living demonstration, a new definition of what was possible. He not only got them to pass a calculus placement test in numbers that everyone thought were impossible, but he also got them to change their beliefs about who they were and what they were capable of if they consistently committed to holding themselves to a higher standard.

If we want the deepest level of life fulfillment, we can achieve it in only one way, and that is by doing what these two men have done: by deciding upon what we value most in life, what our highest values are, and then committing to live by them every single day. Unfortunately, this action is far too rare in today’s society. Too often, people have no clear idea of what’s important to them. They waffle on any issue; the world is a mass of gray to them; they never take a stand for anything or anyone.

If you and I are not clear about what’s most important in our lives—what we truly stand for—then how can we ever expect to lay the foundation for a sense of self-esteem, much less have the capacity to make effective decisions? If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where you had a tough time making a decision about something, the reason is that you weren’t clear about what you value most within that situation. We must remember that all decision making comes down to values clarification.

When you know what’s most important to you, making a decision is quite simple. Most people, though, are unclear about what’s most important in their lives, and thus decision making becomes a form of internal torture. This is not true for those who’ve clearly defined the highest principles of their lives. It wasn’t tough for Ross Perot to know what to do. His values dictated it. They acted as his personal compass to guide him through a situation fraught with peril. Recently, Escalante left the Los Angeles school system that he’d been working in to move to northern California. Why? He could no longer be a part of an organization where he believed there were no standards for a teacher’s performance.

Who are the most universally admired and respected people in our culture? Aren’t they those who have a solid grasp of their own values, people who not only profess their standards, but live by them? We all respect people who take a stand for what they believe, even if we don’t concur with their ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong. There is power in individuals who congruently lead lives where their philosophies and actions are one.

Most often we recognize this unique state of the human condition as an individual with integrity. Culturally, these people have come in many forms, from the John Waynes and Ross Perots, to the Bob Hopes and Jerry Lewises, to the Martin Sheens and Ralph Nader's, to the Norman Cousinses and Walter Cronkite's. The fact of the matter is that those we perceive to be congruent in their values have a tremendous capacity to have an influence within our culture.

Do you remember the nightly newscasts with Walter Cronkite? Walter was with us on all the most important days of our lives: during tragedies and triumphs, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. Walter was part of our family. We trusted him implicitly.

At the beginning of the Vietnam War, he reported on it in the standard way, with an objective view of our involvement, but after visiting Vietnam his view of the war changed, and his values of integrity and honesty required that, rightly or wrongly, he communicate his disillusionment. Regardless of whether you agreed with him or not, the impact he had may have been one of the final straws that caused many in Middle America to begin to question the war for the first time. Now it wasn’t just a few radical students protesting Vietnam, but “Uncle Walt.”

The conflict in Vietnam was truly a values conflict within our culture. People’s perception of what was right and wrong, what could make a difference, was the battle fought at home while the boys overseas put their blood and guts on the line, some not knowing why. An inconsistency of values among our leaders has been one of the greatest sources of pain in our culture. Watergate certainly wounded many Americans. Yet, through it all, our country has continued to grow and expand because there are individuals who continually come forth to demonstrate what’s possible and hold us to a higher standard—whether it’s Bob Geldof focusing the attention of the world on the famine in Africa or Ed Roberts mobilizing the political forces necessary to change the quality of life for the physically challenged.

“Every time a value is born, existence takes on a new meaning; every time one dies, some part of that meaning passes away.”

—JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH

We need to realize that the direction of our lives is controlled by the magnetic pull of our values. They are the force in front of us, consistently leading us to make decisions that create the direction and ultimate destination of our lives. This is true, not only for us as individuals, but also for the companies, organizations, and the nation of which we’re a part. Clearly, the values that our Founding Fathers held most dear have shaped our nation’s destiny: the values of freedom, choice, equality, a sense of community, hard work, individuality, challenge, competition, prosperity, and respect for those who have the strength to overcome great adversity have consistently sculpted the experience of American life and thus our joint destinies. These values have caused us to be an ever expanding country that innovates and continually provides a vision of possibility for people the world over.

Would a different set of national and cultural values have shaped our country differently? You bet! What if the value held most important by our forefathers was stability? Or conformity? How would that have changed the face of our great land? In China, for example, one of the highest values in the culture is the value of the group versus that of the individual, the idea that an individual’s needs must be subservient to the group’s. How has this shaped Chinese life differently than American life? The fact is, within our own nation there are constant shifts going on within the values of the culture as a whole. While there are certain foundational values, significant emotional events can create shifts in individuals and therefore in the companies, organizations, and countries that they make up. The changes in Eastern Europe are clearly the most profound value shifts that have occurred in the world community in our lifetimes.

What happens with countries and individuals also happens with companies. IBM is an example of a corporation whose direction and destiny was set up by its founder, Tom Watson. How? He clearly defined what the company stood for, what would be most important for all people to experience regardless of what products, services, or financial climates they would enter in the future. He guided “Big Blue” into being one of the world’s largest and most successful companies.

What can we learn from all this? In our personal and professional lives, as well as on the global front, we must get clear about what is most important in our lives and decide that we will live by these values, no matter what happens. This consistency must occur regardless of whether the environment rewards us for living by our standards or not. We must live by our principles even when it “rains on our parade,” even if no one gives us the support we need. The only way for us to have long-term happiness is to live by our highest ideals, to consistently act in acccordance with what we believe our life is truly about.

But we can’t do this if we don’t clearly know what our values are! This is the biggest tragedy in most people’s lives: many people know what they want to have, but have no idea of who they want to be. Getting “things” simply will not fulfill you. Only living and doing what you believe is “the right thing” will give you that sense of inner strength that we all deserve.

Remember that your values—whatever they are—are the compass that is guiding you to your ultimate destiny. They are creating your life path by guiding you to make certain decisions and take certain actions consistently. Not using your internal compass intelligently results in frustration, disappointment, lack of fulfillment, and a nagging sense that life could be more if only somehow, something were different. On the other hand, there’s an unbelievable power in living your values: a sense of certainty, an inner peace, a total congruency that few people ever experience.

IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR TRUE VALUES, PREPARE FOR PAIN

The only way we can ever feel happy and fulfilled in the long term is to live in accordance with our true values. If we don’t, we’re sure to experience intense pain. So often, people develop habitual patterns of behavior that frustrate or could potentially destroy them: smoking, drinking, overeating, abusing drugs, attempting to control or dominate others, watching hour upon hour of television, and so on.

What’s the real problem here? These behaviors are really the result of frustration, anger, and emptiness that people feel because they don’t have a sense of fulfillment in their lives. They’re trying to distract themselves from those empty feelings by filling the gap with the behavior that produces a “quick fix” change of state. This behavior becomes a pattern, and people often focus on changing the behavior itself rather than dealing with the cause. They don’t just have a drinking problem; they have a values problem. The only reason they’re drinking is to try to change their emotional state because they don’t like the way they feel, moment by moment. They don’t know what’s most important to them in their lives.

The consolation is that whenever we do live by our highest standards, whenever we fulfill and meet our values, we feel immense joy. We don’t need the excess food or drink. We don’t need to put ourselves into a stupor, because life itself becomes so incredibly rich without these excesses. Distracting ourselves from such incredible heights would be like taking sleeping pills on Christmas morning.

Guess what the challenge is! As always, we were already asleep when the essence of what would shape our lives was formed. We were children who didn’t understand the importance of having a clear sense of our values, or adults dealing with the pressures of life, already distracted to the point where we couldn’t direct the formation of our values. I must reiterate that every decision is guided by these values, and in most cases, we didn’t set them up.

If I asked you to make a list of your top ten values in life, to write them in precise order of importance, I’d be willing to bet that only one in 10,000 could do it. (And that 1/100th of a percent would have attended my Date With Destiny seminar!) But if you don’t know the answer to this question, how can you make any clear decisions at all? How can you make choices that you know in the long term will meet your deepest emotional needs? It’s hard to hit a target when you don’t know what it is! Knowing your values is critical to being able to live them.

Anytime you have difficulty making an important decision, you can be sure that it’s the result of being unclear about your values. What if you were asked to move your family across the country in connection with a new job? If you knew that there was some risk involved, but that the compensation would be better and the job would be more interesting, what would you do? How you answer this question will depend entirely on what’s most important to you: personal growth or security? Adventure or comfort?

By the way, what determines whether you value adventure more than comfort? Your values came from a mixed bag of experiences, of lifelong conditioning through punishment and reward. Your parents congratulated and supported you when you did things that agreed with their values, and when you clashed with their values, you were punished either physically, verbally, or through the pain of being ignored. Your teachers, too, encouraged and applauded you when you did things they agreed with, and applied similar forms of punishment when you violated their most deeply held views. This cycle was perpetuated by your friends and employers. You modeled the values of your heroes, and maybe some of your antiheroes as well.

Today, new economic factors come into play. With most families having both parents working outside the home, there is no traditional role model for values in the home. Schools, churches, and, on the less appetizing side, TV have all stepped in to fill the gap. Indeed, TV is our most convenient babysitter, with the average person now watching television seven hours a day! Am I suggesting that the “traditional” family structure is the only way to raise children who have strong values? Of course not. What I suggest is that we teach our children our philosophy of life by being strong role models, by knowing our own values and living by them.

WHAT ARE VALUES?

To value something means to place importance upon it; anything that you hold dear can be called a “value.” In this chapter, I’m specifically referring to life values, those things that are most important to you in life. For this kind of value, there are two types: ends and means. If I ask you, “What do you value most?,” you might answer, “Love, family, money …” Of these, love is the end value you’re pursuing; in other words, the emotional state you desire. Conversely, family and money are merely means values. In other words, they are simply a way for you to trigger the emotional states you really desire.

If I asked you, “What does family give you?,” you might say, “Love, security, happiness.” What you truly value—the ends you’re after—are love, security, and happiness. Similarly, with money, I could ask you, “What does money really mean to you? What does it give you?” You might say, “Freedom, impact, the ability to contribute, a sense of security.” Again, you see, money is merely a means to achieving a much deeper set of values, a set of emotions that you desire to experience on a consistent basis in your life.

“I put the kids to bed. I don’t want them watching stuff like this.”

The challenge in life is that most people are not clear on the difference between means and ends values, and therefore, they experience a lot of pain. So often people are too busy pursuing means values that they don’t achieve their true desire: their ends values. The ends values are those that will fulfill you, make your life rich and rewarding. One of the biggest challenges I see is that people keep setting goals without knowing what they truly value in life, and therefore they end up achieving their goals and laying, “Is this all there is?”

For example, let’s say a woman’s highest values are caring and contribution, and she chooses to become an attorney because she once met a lawyer who really impressed her as being able to make a difference and help people through his work. As time goes by, she gets caught up in the whirlwind of practicing law, and aspires to become a partner in her firm. As she pursues this position, her work takes on an entirely different focus. She begins to dominate and run the firm, and becomes one of the most successful women she knows, yet she feels unhappy because she no longer has any contact with clients. Her position has created a different relationship with her peers, and she spends all her time in meetings ironing out protocol and procedure. She achieved her goal, but missed out on her life’s desire. Have you ever fallen into this trap of pursuing the means as if they were the end you were after? In order to be truly happy, we must know the difference, and be sure to pursue the end itself.

MOVING-TOWARD VALUES

While it’s absolutely true that you and I are constantly motivated to move toward pleasurable emotional states, it’s also true that we value some emotions more than others. For example, what are the emotional states that you value most in life? What are the emotions that you think will give you the most pleasure? Love or success? Freedom or intimacy? Adventure or security?

I call these pleasurable states that we value most moving-toward values because these are the emotional states we’ll do the most to attain. What are some of the feelings that are most important for you to experience in your life on a consistent basis? When asked this question at seminars, my audiences invariably respond with words like: