Don't Overthink It - Anne Bogel Page 0,15
actual life to see if you’re in alignment. When I’m wondering if my life and my values are in sync, I’ve found it helpful to take a look at my calendar, because it reflects those things I value enough to actually plan for.
Will took this a step further. He decided he wanted to support arts events in the community, so he added a dedicated arts calendar to our family’s Google calendar. Things like book signings, concerts, and library events are color-coded purple on our calendar so we can see at a glance if we’re actually showing up for the arts. Now when we’re considering whether we want to attend a free author talk at the bookstore or a concert in the park, we don’t view it as a onetime choice about how to spend a Tuesday night. Instead, we make the decision in light of our values.
Just last week, our arts calendar showed that we’d long planned to attend the grand reopening of a local library branch that means a lot to my family—the “library next door” I write about in I’d Rather Be Reading. The ribbon-cutting ceremony fell in the middle of a busy workday, in the middle of a season that was jam-packed both personally and professionally. Will and I really didn’t want to take the time to go. For sixty seconds that morning, we debated skipping it to get some work done. Would anyone really miss us? But we value supporting the arts in our community, and the libraries in particular. This specific branch and the people who work there mean a lot to us, and we value showing up for people and causes we care about. At the time, the library system in our town was facing another round of budget cuts, and our presence at this event—our physical show of support—mattered. To keep our values and actions in alignment, it was clear we had to go.
What Matters to You?
What do you value? What kind of person do you want to be? What big-picture values matter most to you? You may be able to rattle off a few instantly, and that’s great. I hope this chapter gives you ideas for spotting how you’re currently living those out and how you can bring your values and decisions into better alignment.
If you’re frustrated that your big-picture values are unclear, take heart. It’s okay if you don’t have a completely coherent big picture. You can live your way into it; that’s part of the discovery process. Once Ally articulated her values, she didn’t immediately jump on a plane to Thailand; she got active in her community. Before I flew across the country for a family reunion, I showed up to coffee down the street with a friend. If we’re not used to relying on our values to drive our decisions, we may feel hesitant at first, and that’s okay. With practice, it will become second nature.
If you are struggling to identify your values, a twofold approach may be helpful. First, you can examine whether unarticulated values are already influencing your decision-making process. To spot these, pay attention to where you spend your time, money, energy, and attention, because we tend to allocate our resources to the things that matter to us. When you do this, do your values begin to emerge? If yes—and you like what you see—you can begin to consciously live those out more thoroughly.
Second, if you don’t like the values that emerge, you can identify new values. Some commonly identified core values are authenticity, honesty, kindness, reliability, and loyalty. When I asked friends to identify core values they felt were less common, they named things like lifelong learning, friendship, weirdness, humor, a spirit of adventure, sleeping well at night, a commitment to trying new things, and a healthy lifestyle. Your values don’t need to be right for everyone, but they do need to be right for you.
When choosing and discovering new values, thinking about who you are as a person and what kind of person you want to be can bring clarity. How do you want to spend your time? What causes do you care about? When have you felt happy or proud or fulfilled? What was happening then, and why were those experiences so meaningful? The answer may not be clear at first, but a hunch is all you need to move forward. Remember, you’re going to live your way into it. You can still move forward down the path even if you don’t yet