Naomi Pauling
Therapy
Society values vs Personal values
What are values?
Values are:
- Principles, standards, qualities, or activities that you consider worthwhile
- Things that are important to you
- Things that bring meaning to your life
- What you want your life to be about
It’s important to think about values because they shape what we pursue in life. They motivate our goals, guide our choices and priorities, and give us purpose. When our goals align with our values, they tend to be more stimulating and more achievable. Values also influence how we evaluate or judge others, as well as how we evaluate ourselves – our self-esteem. When our way of life reflects our values, we feel content and fulfilled.
Where do values come from?
From a young age, we are taught, modelled, and guided to value certain things… by parents and caregivers, the people around us, our peers, as well as our culture and society. Depending on our individual upbringing, some values may be more important to us than others, and their relative importance may change across our lifespan.
But the values we share culturally and socially help us to live and work together. They encourage us to focus on important goals and adopt useful roles in society. They guide how we should think and behave.
Of course, shared cultural, social, and even global values are essential to humans living and working together. And many of the social values we hold are worthwhile – such as human rights; freedom, justice, security, equality, the right to education and work, the right to start a family, and so on.
Whilst these values have been officialised and legislated for, there are other values that are not so explicitly mentioned. Instead they are perpetuated by the media, social media, and their influence on people’s thinking, choices and actions. These are the values that our society holds, but that don’t fit with the values in our laws. These are the values that make people feel unworthy and undervalued in our society, because they are discriminatory and oppressive.
I believe this is one of the driving forces behind the growing incidence of mental health, identity and self-esteem problems in our modern society.
What do we value as a society?
Think of the people that our society puts on a pedestal? What values do they represent?
I will focus on just a few of these values; those I believe to be particularly harmful for many individuals and society as a whole.
I’m thinking from a european/western perspective, though I’d argue that these have become global values.
Beauty, attractiveness, and physical health. People who are attractive are seen as being more physically and mentally healthy, intelligent, sociable, socially skilled, and successful. Our society values a specific body shape and physical ability, a specific skin colour and hair type, youth and fitness. Some physical characteristics are desirable, while others are not. But we can’t all fit society’s beauty and health standards, leaving many of us feeling inadequate, undesirable, and unworthy.
Fun and happiness. We try to avoid and suppress unpleasant feelings, and judge, criticise, or try to fix people who express them. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t aim to have fun and be happy sometimes, but we can’t always be in this state. It’s an unrealistic goal, which sets us up for disappointment and failure.
Social media plays a huge part in perpetuating these social values, because it’s so easy to show only what we want the world to see on social media – to show only the pictures where we look happy, where we’re having fun, where we look beautiful.
This encourages us to be inauthentic – to only show certain aspects of ourselves. We get validation for these characteristics through the likes and comments and support, which reinforces the belief that these are the parts of ourselves that people like and value. So the other characteristics that make up who we are start to feel less and less worthwhile, and we want to hide them from others more and more. We start to believe that if we show them to people, they won’t like and value us as much.
Wealth, success, and power. We tend to believe that wealth and success will make us happy. We even trick ourselves into believing that everyone can become rich and powerful if they work hard enough. But in a system where not all skills, talents, and interests are valued, and a system in which some people are significantly and unfairly advantaged, I don’t believe this to be true (at least not using standard measures of success, like wealth and career).
Furthermore, power and success are associated with specific traits, like being a man, being white, straight, having a privileged upbringing and an education. We not only see people fitting these characteristics as being more powerful, they actually are more powerful because of their valued status in society.
We’re convinced to respect and admire billionaires and what they do for our society; they provide thousands of jobs, they contribute valuable things to society, they’re philanthropists… This may well be the case, but no one, absolutely no one needs that amount of wealth or should have that amount of power over so many people. I believe billionaires are hoarders of resources, which I don’t respect, not while others live in poverty, struggling day by day to meet their basic needs.
I want to invite you to think about the impact of these values on us as individuals.
We try to reflect our society’s values, even when they don’t make sense for us as individuals. We set ourselves unachievable goals in our search for approval in society’s eyes. We compare ourselves to the people who represent and best model those values, those we see as being successful, powerful, attractive, and happy. And we always find ourselves wanting, because it isn’t a fair comparison.
Can we take a different approach to life?
Reflecting personal values rather than society values
I want to invite you to live by your own personal values, rather than the harmful and discriminatory values perpetuated by our society.
Putting society’s values aside, what actually matters to you?
What do you most care about?
What are the most important things for you to achieve?
You might be surprised (or not!) to find that your values aren’t the same as those that our society would prescribe.
By living in a way that reflects your personal values, you can live more authentically. This will give you more confidence in yourself, strengthen your sense of identity, and boost your self-esteem.
What are your personal values?
You are likely already familiar with your personal values, though you may not have thought of them as values. Below is some guidance to help you reflect on your personal values, and differentiate them from society or cultural values.
What is the most important thing in your life? What is it about it that makes it so important?
What would you not want to live without?
If it feels ok and safe, you can think of times when you felt very emotional; disgusted, angry or upset – What was going on? What values were not being reflected in these moments?
Think of a moment in your life that was powerful and meaningful – What happened? What values were being reflected at this moment?
For example, I climbed to the summit of a big mountain a few years ago. It was a struggle, but I made it, and was flooded with a sense of power and achievement. I realised in this moment the value of my body and my health, my strength and determination.
What are you proud of? Or, What are you particularly not proud of?
What do you like, admire, or value in other people?
What do you find particularly distasteful, annoying, or upsetting in other people? If you reverse it, you may uncover a value.
For example, littering makes me feel annoyed and disgusted, as does any disrespect for nature, life, or other people. I value respect and kindness towards all life. I appreciate people who care about nature and other people, and try to avoid causing harm.
You may come up with quite a few different values, so it may be helpful to group them together if they’re related.
For instance, I value my friends and my family, but also my interactions with colleagues, clients, acquaintances, and even strangers. I can group these by saying I value social connection.
Think about where these values may have come from.
When and where did you learn to value them?
Who taught or modelled them to you?
Are they global, cultural, societal, familial, or personal?
Why are they important to you personally?
It can be helpful to rank your values by importance. I find this really tricky, but imagine a scenario in which you have to choose between one value or another – you can’t have both. Whichever one you choose to save is more important to you.
Hopefully your top 3 values will feel like they really define what matters to you.
From values to goals
Now that you are hopefully feeling clearer about your values, you can think about how your life goals relate to them.
What are your goals? And, Do they align with your values?
Does your way of life reflect your values?
If your way of life or goals don’t reflect your values, think about introducing things that do. This can be in a small way to start with, but try to dedicate a little bit of time every week or every day to it. Particularly if you’re feeling undervalued or worthless.
People value people who value themselves. So by finding your own sense of self-worth, you may find that other people treat you with more respect.
Perhaps also, if we had a sense of individual self-worth and purpose based on our personal values, society would be more inclusive, helpful, and healthy.
Values affirmation has been shown by research to have a long-term positive impact on academic achievement, self-esteem, and health, as well as helping to protect against the negative effects of discrimination.
Please get in touch if you have any questions or need support with exploring your values.
Read more about the benefits of affirming your values: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589421/
For further reading about values: Mimar Türkkahraman / Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 633 – 638. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814002870
Read about research on people’s bias in perceptions of attractiveness and intelligence: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/stories/2016/smart-at-first-sight/
Feingold, A. (1992). Good-looking people are not what we think. Psychological Bulletin, 111(2), 304–341. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.111.2.304
Naomi Pauling 