Today’s post comes from a very good friend of mine by the name of Dean Letfus from Massive Action

Over many years of observing and working with many people I have noticed that we don’t pick our values, they kind of pick us!
Professional psychological research tells us that our value systems are 100% developed before we are 7 years old. And 80% of this is established before we are 2!!
So changing a value system is a big deal.  If we don’t like what we value we have to undo a lifetime of programmed thinking and behaviour.
In my work with investors I powerful value systems operating and often undermining our efforts. You see one of your stated values might be financial independence for example. However if your parents established core values in your life such as:

“Get a good education and get a good job”
“Money doesn’t grow on trees”
“We can’t afford that in our family”
“Rich people are snobs”
“Making money is related to time and effort”
“Having anything nice is showing off”

Then our stated value of financial independence is likely to remain a dream.  Our behavior will be driven by these underlying core values, which in the case of the statements above is basically that poverty is good and being rich is associated with a string of negatives.

An extreme example would be gangs. I’ve worked and even lived with them and gang members operate on values of honour, “family”, pride and mutual protection.  Most of us would be happy to have those values in our lives.  Yet their interpretation of those values allows them to rape, kill, steal, intimidate and abuse others. They behave how they were programmed as children, in spite of their stated value systems.

So the initial key to understanding, (or changing) your values is to start to observe your behaviour.   You are what you do, not what you think.

This will take some effort, but it’s worth it.

“I notice I am last to arrive at work and last to leave”
“I spend 15 minutes getting ready for lunch and 15 minutes recovering after lunch before I do any work”
“I adore my daughter but I bite her head off every time she walks into the room”
“Why do I always eat the last biscuit/chocolate/whatever and never offer it to my spouse”
“Why am I depressed for 2 days because I lost a stupid game?”

Don’t be too terrified