If I profess that I value a healthy lifestyle while exercising and eating nutritious meals then I am living that healthy lifestyle value. However, if I am sedentary and eat junk foods then the healthy personal lifestyle value is one that I aspire to.
Honesty and truth are values that my Mother taught me at a young age. Of course, she did not call them values. She called them “doing what was right”. I was a good student and enjoyed going to school. I recall an afternoon in fifth grade taking a history test and for some reason could not figure out the answers. Unconsciously, I turned my head and looked at the test of the student to my left. When I realized what I had done, I looked up at the teacher but she had not seen me. I felt guilty. I felt so guilty that I stopped taking the test and turned it in. I told the teacher that I had cheated. I went back to my desk and put my head down. In a movie of the week I might have gotten a second chance for being honest. In real life I failed the history test but, I passed my Mother’s test – “doing what’s right”. I made sure I was better prepared for history thereafter.
The following exercise has a list of possible values. The list on the next two pages is designed to help you identify your values and determine your highest priority values. This list is not comprehensive so feel free to add your own.
Step one – Choose twenty values.
Step two – Next choose your top ten values.
Step three - Choose your top five.
Step four - Rank the top five.
You will have your top five priority values.
| Achievement | Knowledge |
| Advancement | Leadership |
| Affection | Loyalty |
| Belief System | Love |
| Challenging problems | Money |
| Character | Meaningful work |
| Creativity | Originality |
| Competition | Organization |
| Commitment | Patience |
| Citizenship | Passion |
| Discipline | Peace |
| Discovery | Prestige |
| Education | Persistence |
| Empathy | Personal strength |
| Environmental awareness | Pleasure |
| Entertainment | Personal development |
| Fame | Power |
| Financial Security | Playing Sports |
| Friendship | Role Model |
| Family | Safety |
| Honesty | Showing expertise |
| Helping others | Spirituality |
| Inspiring others | Stability |
| Respect | Simplicity |
| Integrity | Tolerance |
| Independence | Truth |
| Inner harmony | Wisdom |
| Introspection | Working alone |
| Justice | Working with others |
The last step is to determine what type of values you have prioritized. Do you live these values or do you aspire to these values? If you live them, that is great. If you aspire to them you now have a guide.
4: Imagination is Creation
Imagination may be described in two ways: a space not limited by our sense or reason that we can unquestioningly embrace or a capacity for ground-breaking thinking and creative expression.
Children make-believe all the time and imagine all kinds of possibilities. We should reach back to that time of endless possibilities and grab the wishes we passionately longed for and make them happen in our lives. The fun part of imagination is that there are no rules but the ones you create. If you can imagine a green sky with blue trees and red grass, then so be it.
“I paint things as I think them, not as I see them”
Pablo Picasso
I don’t remember ever having an imaginary friend like a six-foot tall, invisible rabbit, in the movie classic “Harvey” starring Jimmy Stewart, but I had an active imagination. My father was in the Air force and at one time did in flight refueling. I imagined what it would be like to be in the air doing his job. Or what it was like to fly the airplane itself. My mother, when I was in elementary school, subscribed to a monthly National Geographic program that sent slides for a manual viewfinder. Every month my sister and I were transported to far away places like Egypt, London, China or Africa. I learned a lot and imagined what adventures I would have in these exotic locales. Later, when I fell in love with comic books, I became Superman or Mr. Fantastic or Daredevil and yes I dreamed I could fly.
“Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence.”
Norman Podhoretz
Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio believed in human powered flight – they imagined a man could fly. On Dec. 17, 1903, with Orville at the controls, the Flyer, a flying machine of spruce, ash and muslin, lifted off from Kitty Hawk and flew 120 ft. The seed of that dream has grown into air travel today that more than likely is beyond the Wright brothers’ wildest dreams.
“The man who has no imagination has no wings”.
Muhammad Ali
Can you imagine a box outside of a bank that will give you money? In 1939, Luther George Simjian started patenting an earlier and not-so-successful version of an ATM machine called Bankmatic. Don Wetzel, however was the inventor of the modern automated teller machines. Can you imagine what it would be like today without the convenience of an ATM?
We are all blessed with a spark of creation. We have the ability to imagine our future, create outcomes that we want and imagine some more!!
“Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surplus, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.”
Joseph
