  Spiritual
This week: What Are Your Values? Edited by: Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline  
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What are your values? Are you the kind of person you want to be, or does life keep getting in the way?
This week's Spiritual Newsletter is all about values, goals, commitments, and a couple of dirty cups.
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What are your values? Seems like an easy question, doesn't it? I see myself as a person with strong values yet, when it comes down to it, I struggle to find an answer.
Values differ from goals. For example, I am an undergraduate student, so my goal is to graduate. Once I have graduated, I have achieved my goal. After that, I would like to do a Master's Degree. Another goal, which I will hopefully achieve. There is an end point with goals – a point where you need to do nothing more; you've made it. This is not the case with values. Your values will need living by for the rest of your life.
What, then, is the value that underpins my educational goals? I love to learn, and I believe that one should never stop learning. After my Master's, I would like to go for a PhD. Even when I am 80, I will probably have my nose in a book, or do MOOCs, or whatever the future options are. I guess, then, that I value knowledge, and feel that I should always strive to obtain new knowledge.
There are many areas in a person's life for which they can figure out what their values are. What kind of parent to you strive to be? What kind of child? What kind of grandchild, brother or sister, friend, colleague, employee, employer, writer? What are your spiritual values?
Most of us want to be a good person. We want to be a good child to our parents, and to make them proud of us. We want to be good, nurturing parents to our own children. We want to be the kind of brother or sister who can always be relied upon. And so on. In reality, though, it is easy to slip up. I have never managed to make my parents proud of me. I don't contact my sister as much as I should. I am a writer who hasn't written anything other than Newsletters in ages. I don't pray every day.
This is where value commitments come in. Once you've figured out your values, you can analyse how far you are from living up to these values, and make personal commitments to improve. This doesn't mean you have to take giant leaps in the direction you want to go in. One small step at the time will do.
I can set aside some time to write a poem, or a story. I can remind myself to pray a bit more often. I can work on my relationships with other people, instead of getting lost in my own little world. One step at the time.
There are benefits to figuring out one's values, and working on living in harmony with those values. When we don't live according to our values, it can lead to stress, and guilt, and a general lack of well-being. When we take steps towards being the person we feel we truly are, we can look back at our day without those negative feelings bubbling to the surface. If we have made some achievements, however small, it will feel like it's been a good day, in which we have done something worthwhile, and that can have a positive effect on our mental and physical health.
In addition, it can make tedious tasks a bit less tedious. I am far from a Domestic Goddess, and I especially dislike doing the dishes. However, I have noticed that it's not a nice feeling when my place is a mess, and I sure wouldn't want people to come over when there are dishes all over the kitchen surfaces – it's embarrassing. So, if I frame doing the dishes as something beneficial to my well-being, something that would bring me in harmony with the part of me that values a tidy environment and wants to be a good hostess, that will make it less of a chore.
Or that is the idea anyway. I am still figuring this out, and reaching the conclusion that I have a lot of values, and that I would need to make a lot of commitments, and it all seems rather overwhelming. I am also looking at the cups on my desk, and am yet to be convinced that I will reach a stage at which I find cleaning them any less tedious than I usually do. They're not going to clean themselves, though. And who couldn't do with less stress? I guess it's worth a go.
My question to you this week is – what are (some of) your values?
kittiara
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My pastor's chickens made another appearance in his sermon, and it got me thinking...
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The Spiritual Newsletter Team welcomes any and all questions, suggestions, thoughts and feedback, so please don't hesitate to write in. 
Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Spiritual Newsletter Team
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Spiritual: June 17, 2015 Issue [#7053]
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