(audio version available at the end of this post)

There are only two more installments in this blog series on who should hire a coach.

I have documentary fever this week.  Ken Burns has produced another masterpiece, this time on the Roosevelts.

It always fascinates me how our iconic American political families, the Adamses, Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Bushes instill within their children a sense of public service.

A spirit of public service is a value, and values are concepts we hold dear, they make our hearts sing, and they guide us when we make decisions each day.  But only if we first identify them, define them, and choose to make decisions based upon them.

However, what if this same spirit of service is demanded by others we respect but not wholly accepted by us?  Then we fall prey to poor/stupid decision-making processes.

Poor decisions have a variety of causes.  The first cause we will explore in this blog  relates to our relations.  You are not your parents and trying to live life based on their values and their definition of those values has the potential to produce a value dissonance between their expectations for you and your expectations for yourself.

Mom and Dad’s Values

Try this experiment.  List 1 to 3 “advice gems” you heard repeatedly as a child from your mother and your father (or your significant caregivers).

Mine would be . . .

From my father: 1) Think before you act and 2) Why do today what can be done tomorrow.

From my mother: 1) Go wherever your feet take you and 2) Be happy.

Now review some of the critical decisions you have made in your life since childhood.  How much did your parents’ gems influence those decisions?

A lot is my guess. And there is nothing wrong with that, unless those parental gems influenced you to make decisions that did and do not make your heart sing.

Parents love to preach, teach, and cajole their children to live according to a set of values.

Their values.

“I do not want you to make the same mistakes I made.”  And the way we avoid those mistakes?  “Live like I do now (or how I aspire to live now).”

My father’s first value of thinking before acting is superb and I have inculcated it into my life, albeit not as a young man.  It helps to reduce self-inflicted drama, to increase opportunities for love and understanding of others, and to provide greater solace and meaning in my life.

However, too much thinking is debilitating.  I prefer a more balanced interplay of thinking and acting, knowing that, oops, I will mess up from time to time.  But standing on the sidelines over-thinking things is worse in my mind.

His second gem does not speak to me.  I love doing today what I could put off until tomorrow.  I love to engage, to achieve, to relate, and I love to do it now.  When I do not take responsibility and complete tasks assigned to me, when I delay for no good reason, and when I obfuscate out of laziness, I do not feel good about myself or my world.

My mother’s first value of going wherever your feet take you was wonderful for her.  She loved to live spontaneously.  I prefer to have an end point in mind (and then a new one, and then another, and so on).  I acknowledge there are all kinds of interesting detours along the “path of life”.  But for me, without a clear view of the horizon I tend to get caught up in the weeds along that same path.

Her second value is laudable and wonderful.  It lacks specificity though for me and probably on purpose since for all of us “happy” is defined slightly differently.  In my mind “happy” is about the actions we take that make it more likely for us to experience well-being, comprehensive and healthy well-being (which I define clearly).  So unless we have some kind of advantageous genetic/neurological predisposition to happiness, we cannot be something valued (“be happy”) without first doing something valued to train ourselves to “be” it.

Whether we had gifted or ungifted parents (or most likely in between those two extremes) they all tried, implicitly or explicitly, to impart their values on us.  However, it is up to us, as adults, to choose the ones, old and new, that work for us now.

And this reminds me of another political story.

A few days after his brother JFK died, RFK sent his own daughter a letter.  In it he implored her to live a life of responsibility, kindness, working for her country, and love.  I would say those were her father’s values.  I hope his daughter took the time in her own life to determine hers.  Maybe some were shared, maybe others she defined differently, and maybe, just maybe, still others she decided were not at all important to her.

In short, values only help us make great decisions if they are our own.

Defining what makes our hearts sing is not easy.  And although I use an effective method to start the value identification process with my clients, it is definitely only the beginning of the process.

Next week I will discuss a few additional value missteps.  In the meantime, go ahead, love and cherish your parents if you choose, but also just choose your own set of values.

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If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.