Adopting moral values that align with your beliefs can lead to both happiness and success. It’s crucial to stay true to your beliefs and principles; by doing so, you can achieve a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction in your personal and professional life.
When you act in accordance with your values, you will feel more confident in your decisions and actions, which can positively impact your overall well-being. Ultimately, living a life that is true to your values is the key to a happy and successful life.
A Story About Ice Cream, Morals, Values, and Happiness
How much attention do you put on your real happiness? Do you consciously work on doing things that make you happy? Or do you just wish you were happy on those days when you realize you are obviously not?
Happiness is often associated with just having fun, but I believe it’s associated with our most basic need to feel good. And because everything we do is tied to a basic need to feel good, you are happy when you feel good. That makes sense, doesn’t it?
Also, happiness is relative, so you may not be dancing on tiptoes like tinker bell happy, but you can still be happy just the same.
And if you think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you can see that when those needs are accomplished, they will all make you feel good. And, again, when you feel good, that makes you happy.
So, knowing that would you be interested if I could show you how to easily be happier just by understanding a few things about yourself? If so, please read on as I explain a quick and easy process you’ll want to do once you know how it works.
First, the boring part. Sorry, but you’ve got to know this, or the rest doesn’t make sense. Remember, the end result is to be happier, so just look forward to the end. (You can think of it like banging your head against the wall and how good it will feel when you stop.)
What Are Morals And Values?
Moral Values go by many names. So if you hear the term moral values you can interchange them with any of these:
- Values
- Moral Code
- Morals
- Principles
- Standards
- Scruples
- And even stretch it a bit to Ethics and Beliefs.
I like using the term Values. And I often refer to them as Values and Beliefs.
Because, as you’ll learn in our NLP Training, the two are intertwined to the extent that you won’t find one without the other.
Knowing this can open opportunities in the areas of persuasion and motivation that are unknown to most people. Master this, and you can create any life you want.
So, for ease of explanation, I’ll often refer to moral values as just Values.
Values are the very core beliefs of a person or social group in which they have an emotional investment. They are your unconscious blueprint of what makes you the person you are or will be. Your Moral values will determine what you will achieve or not achieve in life.
Your happiness depends on whether you live according to your values. Whenever you are happy, you are doing something that fits your values. Whenever you are unhappy, you are doing something that doesn’t fit your values. Pretty simple, huh?
OK, Time For Ice Cream
So let me explain moral values through the use of ice cream.
Let’s say you like ice cream (like I do), and it makes you happy when you eat it. Now think that whenever you eat ice cream, your brain puts a “value” on it and keeps score. And the more points you get, the happier your life is.
To make it more accurate, let’s give different flavours of ice cream different value points, like this: (you can sort for your preference)
- Chocolate Ice Cream +100 pts
- Butterscotch Ice Cream +75 pts
- Strawberry Ice Cream +50
- Pistachio Ice Cream +25
- Vanilla Ice Cream +5 pts
- Turnip Ice Cream -100 (just work with me on this)
So, if you eat chocolate ice cream, you’ll score 100 points; if you eat vanilla ice cream, you will only score 5 points. If you eat turnip ice cream, you score minus 100 points.
Remember, the more points you get, the happier you will be. Are you following me on this? Good, because there’s more …
Make It Real – Do This
Now, ice cream isn’t the only thing that you can get value points for. You can get points for many things, but let’s use people in this example to make it more life-like.
So, let’s make a similar list of people you can get “value” points from. Meaning if you spend time with these people, you get points the same way you get points for eating ice cream.
- Husband – Wife – Partner +100 pts
- Your Kids +75 pts
- Best Friend +50
- Other Friends +25
- People You Work With +5 pts
- Ex-spouse or Bad Boss -100 (like the turnip ice cream or worse)
Here’s Where It Gets Sticky
Imagine it’s Monday, and you get to pick your favourite ice cream (+100 pts) and be with your favourite person while you eat it (+100 pts).
You now have a good happy day going with +200 Moral Value points.
High five! You have made an excellent value decision for yourself and are feeling good and happy.
Now imagine it’s Tuesday. Today two of your best friends showed up, and they brought ice cream with them. Guess what, it’s your favourite. YES!
You’re having another good day, spending time with your best friends + 50 points. Eating your favourite ice cream + 100 points, that’s a total of + 150 value points—way to go, champ.
This is going pretty well, wouldn’t you agree? So we can easily imagine it’s now Wednesday. You’re at work and … The Boss calls you into his office.
You know he’s never really liked you. You got the job because you’re a distant relative to his wife. He can’t easily fire you, but he can make you suffer. Here, he says with a nasty smile, have some Turnip Ice Cream.
Life was good, wasn’t it? Now, in the blink of an eye, you have racked up -100 points for spending time with the boss and another -100 points for having to eat his turnip ice cream. That’s a minus -200 point day.
Now You Must Choose
Thursday didn’t come quickly enough. Hard to believe you made it through Wednesday, isn’t it? OK, now you’re hoping today will not be as bad as yesterday. Fingers crossed.
Thursday, your daughter calls and wants to meet up for ice cream, her treat. She’s heard of a new ice cream stand that serves the best chocolate ice cream in town and thought of you immediately.
You can’t believe you’re good fortune. That’s + 75 points for spending time with one of your kids and + 100 points for the chocolate ice cream. Yee Haw!
But wait, you get another phone call as soon as you hang up. It’s your spouse, and s/he has some time off and wants you to go for butterscotch ice cream.
The gears start to turn. That’s +100 value points for spending time with your spouse but only +75 points for the butterscotch ice cream. If you meet up with your daughter, you get + 75 points and another + 100 points for the chocolate ice cream. A true dilemma, two choices but no real choice.
Should you say no to both, gather no happiness value points and keep the peace with no one feeling bad?
Tough call.
Finally, it’s Friday. It’s been a rough week at times, but overall you’re on the plus value points happiness factor. Then the phone rings. It’s your ex-spouse who hasn’t talked to you since the last big blowup that upset you for over a month. Oh, and they have some Chocolate ice cream they want to give you…
What Are Your Value Choices?
There is no real point system when using your moral values, but if you act as if there were, you might stop and think your choices out a little more thoroughly because real points or not, good value choices can make you much happier.
Sometimes your values choices are not your own. They were passed on from your parents or others close to you. These passed-on values can be a big problem because they appear as your values but are not.
These passed-on moral values give us internal conflicts that are very damaging to our relationships and, therefore, our happiness.
Luckily at Life Potential Developments, we have the tools to help you clean up your values, remove any conflicts that might be keeping you from good health and success, and be accepted, whether in business or with personal relationships.
Contact Us about Coaching and/or NLP Training.