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What are Values?

Values are who we are. What we value determines what life means to us and what actions we take.
When we honour our values consistently, life is happy and fulfilling.

Two fundamental areas have an influence over the happiness we experience in our lives, and they are
our values and our beliefs. This section will set out to explain the importance of understanding the impact
that values can have on our accomplishments. Beliefs are covered in the next section.
Values are the supporting framework for our beliefs and are strongly connected to our identity.
Our primary principles and way of life are controlled by our values. They give us direction and motivation
to accomplish tasks and face challenging situations.
Why are our values so important?
It is only when we identify our core values, the things that really matter most to us, the processes
on which we base all of our emotions, decisions and choices, that we come to realise how
important they are in our search for happiness and peace.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we have inner values that strongly influence our outward
behaviour.
Deep within each of us there are strong behaviour governing values and beliefs that have
always been there. Many of these values were embedded in us from the earliest stages of
childhood, partly from the influence of parents, siblings, elders, relatives, teachers and friends
and partly from our own experiences.
Our natural human inclination is for our actions and behaviour to be consistent with these
deeply held governing values. That is why we experience pain when our actions are not
consistent with our inner value system.