Living My Values, Part II
Aug. 2nd, 2025 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebSo a friend told me that people who thoroughly live their values like I discussed in my last post tend to have mental issues. Like the guy who volunteered to donate a kidney but was rejected because he had already donated his other kidney.
Okay, I should probably make a whole other post about how I don't have common sense so I have to use brute intelligence to figure things out.
And for this issue, I've realized that I am willing to do the following two-pronged approach to aligning my actions with my values:
1) Keep my values in mind - Stay on the lookout for ideas on how to more closely align my actions with my values. Going to church weekly is a great example of how some people do this--you get reminded every week about very different things than what ads are keeping in the forefront of your mind.
I mostly have my social media keeping me updated with new ideas.
2) Try new things - As I get more ideas, I will actually try some of them.
And living your values isn't just about you, it's also about the system. Systems can make some things very easy and some things very hard. So, it's easy for me to recycle because my city has provided a can to everyone living in a house (which includes me) and they come by and pick it up every other week. My city also allows us to choose to get our energy from wind (of course I still get it from the grid, but my money supports wind energy), so that's easy.
On the other hand, it's hard for me to avoid single-use plastic and to know what's going on behind the scenes for most of the goods and services I buy (a big exception being ingredients lists and nutrition information).
So I should also try to keep up to date on system changes.
And I should remember that of course I will be better at doing the easier things than the hard things, and that's okay.
Okay, I should probably make a whole other post about how I don't have common sense so I have to use brute intelligence to figure things out.
And for this issue, I've realized that I am willing to do the following two-pronged approach to aligning my actions with my values:
1) Keep my values in mind - Stay on the lookout for ideas on how to more closely align my actions with my values. Going to church weekly is a great example of how some people do this--you get reminded every week about very different things than what ads are keeping in the forefront of your mind.
I mostly have my social media keeping me updated with new ideas.
2) Try new things - As I get more ideas, I will actually try some of them.
And living your values isn't just about you, it's also about the system. Systems can make some things very easy and some things very hard. So, it's easy for me to recycle because my city has provided a can to everyone living in a house (which includes me) and they come by and pick it up every other week. My city also allows us to choose to get our energy from wind (of course I still get it from the grid, but my money supports wind energy), so that's easy.
On the other hand, it's hard for me to avoid single-use plastic and to know what's going on behind the scenes for most of the goods and services I buy (a big exception being ingredients lists and nutrition information).
So I should also try to keep up to date on system changes.
And I should remember that of course I will be better at doing the easier things than the hard things, and that's okay.