How often does someone genuinely piss you off with stuff that THEY’VE done, not just inadvertently done something fairly innocent that turns out is a pretty significant trigger for you?
Sorry. That’s a weird way to start. But it matters. Promise.
What kind of treatment do you expect for yourself? What kind of behaviour do you expect from yourself?
What gets you proper, personally morally outraged? Like, the rules of common decency have been transgressed so severely that medieval torture is just barely adequate for what these animals who do (insert small but cumulative antisocial behaviour here) deserve for their horrific crimes.
Well… Why? Why does that piss you off? What does it represent to you so that rubs you like that?
Someone important to me was just the other day expressing herself about how she started to feel a bit lost, forgetting her core values and struggling to stay motivated in the face of not living the life she wants to. First world problems, right?
BUT, what seemed important in that conversation was that she had lost the prominence of her core values in the experience of finding different ways to live her life with how things are right now.
Cracking the shits can have that effect... I’m told. So I hear.
And the frustration with it was struggling to know where to start in finding them again. Assuming they hadn’t changed in a time that forces a lot of us to reflect on what is actually important.
Sometimes (well, more often that not, really) our core values are very short words but HUGELY involved and complicated concepts that also have a very innate feeling of simplicity we all just understand somehow.
Take love for example. Or justice. Or balance. Mercy. Beauty. Pain. Grace. Fear. Faith. Doubt.
Can you explain those things in a few sentences? Without referring to other things that don’t require some complicated explanation or qualification?
If you struggle explain them, how do you find them? If those concepts that relate to those huge intangible things I mentioned before are so hard to explain, how do we experience them personally?
Frankly… Feelings.
Yes, I know Chad. The dreaded “F” word you smash brewski’s and watch foobal for every other day.
I asked about what pisses you off before. And I only mentioned being pissed off because its usually a pretty obvious feeling to have at the time. AND, I asked why it pissed you off? Why did you feel that way?
See the link yet, Chad?
I have a theory. It seems to fit, in most of mine and my client’s experiences anyway.
A while ago I wrote a post about gods and superheros and stories, how they can be used as clue and signposts to give you a better idea of who you are and what matters to you.
“yeah, yeah dude... Stop trying to get us to read other stuff you’ve written with your cheap and obvious plugs, and tell us the damned answer” I hear you eyerolling-ly say.
Fine!!!…
Standards inform beliefs.
Beliefs inform Values.
And the reverse is true to. If you know your core values, you can see the trickle-down effect in your day to day behaviour, just as you can see your daily behaviour and feelings about those actions to determine your beliefs and core values. Just takes a little bit of introspection and thought guys, promise.
If you see an empty parking space, relieved you’ve found one at 4:30pm Christmas eve with literally ALL of your shopping still to do (food AND presents, Geoff…), only to find that’s its marked in blue paint, what do you do? Do you take it, not really worrying that it may well be needed? Or do you move on and keep looking, knowing that sometimes there’s more important stuff to consider that your family’s outrage for Christmas day sucking?
Well, you just showed yourself a standard of behaviour you have for yourself.
What would happen if you saw someone else do that?
That’s a standard you have for everyone else.
What does that mean about your beliefs on the blue lines? Beliefs about how those people who genuinely need those blue lines deserve to be treated?
How do you think you arrived at that belief about blue lines? What is important to you about how you treat those blue lines? Why, deep down, do they matter? Or don’t matter, if that’s how you feel.
Respect or self-preservation/convenience, depending on which side of that blue line you fall.
If respect is something you value, you know that to disrespect those blue lines is a disrespect of who they are for. What kind of feeling do you think you’d experience if you held respect as a high core value, but did it anyway?...
I’ll let you answer that, Geoff…
If you held the core value of family highest, what feeling do you think you’d experience if you didn’t take that space, knowing it might mean Christmas was ruined?
Actions taken, and the feelings you experience with those actions (before and after, guys. feeling shitty about consequences are NOT the same thing as core values) tell you a lot about who you are and what matters to you.
Which brings up another way they show you where you line’s in the sand are.
If you feel a certain way about something you could do, do you pay attention to that? Or do you let other factors dictate what you do?
If you did take the parking space, is it because your family is important to you? Or because you fear the shaming glares of naked contempt you’ll experience from your 4 year old daughter who now doesn’t have Rainbow Sparkle in her My Little Pony collection which is now going to result in decades of therapy because you are an atrocious excuse for a parent?
Or, if you didn’t, is it because you are a god and upstanding moral citizen who lives by jurisprudence? Or would the limp you’d try to fake be so transparent when you got out of your car that the busy shoppers around you would take recordings of you number plate and terrible excuse of a fake disability, which would see you virally shamed on Facebook and news reports to the point you need a name change, facial reconstruction surgery and the need to move at least 2 time zones away?
Do you do things because its who you are? or because of what people will think you are?
That will tell you a LOT about yourself too.
If you have standards for yourself, but you consistently cross them, what do you think about yourself really?
If you are treated a certain way by someone, consistently, but say or do nothing about it? What does that say about what you think about you? That its okay to get walked on because their presence and the lack of confrontation is more important that something you KNOW is wrong and makes you feel like shit?
Well, that tells me an awful lot about your standards anyway. It tells me they don’t mean shit to you. And I know this because that’s who I was too.
If you allow your behaviour to compromise what you know is important deep down, I’m pretty sure your subconscious and feeling state are going to have something to say about that. Sleepless nights, anxiety and depression, “pharmaceutical” coping mechanisms, projection. All the fun stuff…
If you allow their behaviour to compromise what you know is important deep down… Well, read above. More good times…
So, what to do about it?…
PAY ATTENTION!!!!
I’ll say it as many times as I need to, Geoff…
What do you know you like?
What do you know you don’t like?
Why is that?
Why does that line in the sand matter to you?
What happens when it gets crossed? By you or someone else?
If it does get crossed and you do nothing about it, internally or externally, how many fucks do you really give about those standards, beliefs and values?
Have a good hard look at that. Because those are at the core of who you really are. If you ignore that… well, who are you really without them?
Maybe a puppet. Maybe a prick. But only you have to live with the consequences of ignoring yourself or the people around you. If you were doing what matters to you, would other people’s expression of their core values (or projection of them not living up to theirs…) really matter to you?
To the person who asked the question that inspired this writing today: Thank you. You are important to me regardless of how much I see you. You will find your way back to your core values, and they will see you back on your path. You have time and space and support, if you need it, and you will find your way forward again.
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No barfights.
“All standards are double standards.” Tucker Carlson
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