What Are Your Core Values?
A friend once said, we change gradually. Looking at the sentence makes no great meaning until you consider it properly. We might not look very different from the way we looked yesterday, but by the end of the week, we are a completely different person than the person we were on the first day of the week.
This same concept happens in other areas of our lives, including our core values. What our core values are can change over time and it is important to realize if it is changing for the good or the bad. Only when we are able to define what our core values are can we even begin to understand if they are changing or not. Start now and ask yourself what your values are because it seems we have stopped asking that question.
As such, a lot of things that are not normal seems to be normal to us now. How can you begin to imagine things that are considered barbaric in other countries still considered a norm in our country and our society. Consider the case of beating traffic, this is an act that has become so easy for everyone to break that you begin to look like the odd one out when you follow it. It has crept into our values that we can feel alright breaking laws that should never even be broken.
Someone might ask what the correlation between beating the traffic light and other values is, it is the same thing because once you feel comfortable breaking the law, it is only a matter of time before you are comfortable doing the same thing in other areas of life. This keeps going until you get to a point when you feel no remorse in doing anything bad. At that point, your values are completely gone. So there is a correlation between the small things you do everyday and to your life’s value. It is important that we seek to always consider what our values are.
It is said that we get leaders who are simply like us. And sometimes when you look closely at our dear country Nigeria, you begin to wonder how many more people would behave differently if made the leader. Very few people still remember what values even stand for and are only waiting for an opportunity to get what others have also been getting. So in the end, it is the same set of minds that are in control. Some minds simply have more opportunities but the end is still the same.
So my message to you today is to look inwards and ask what your values are. You keep hulling insults at the leaders but ask yourself how you would behave if you were in their shoes. Would you keep away from the small offenses that keep pushing you towards the greater evil. Every bad person was once a good person. They just changed gradually until it was no longer reversible.
So look into your life today and begin to realign your values. Ask questions on how you want to really live your life. It matters that we seek values that make us better so that when we have the same opportunities as our leaders, we would be different. So start today and ask yourself what your values are. Then align to them. Let not the actions of others make you into something you are not proud of.
If we do not change and become better, we would look back to these days one day in the future and see that we could have done something different. But we did not change our values and we would have to leave with that decision. In the end, you would have to either live with the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The choice is ours and the clock is ticking.
We can live in a country that respects one another if we uphold our values and seek to only follow the right way. Seek to only employ people based on their capacities and not based on any other quota system. We can still make it work. It is a goal we can achieve. Thanks for reading and God Bless.
