For example, when I wake up in the morning, my first thought when I get up is, what do I do now? I look at my values, and I see clarity/focus in the top spot, so that might translate into the action of reviewing my schedule for the day to get clear on what I intend to do. Ok, so now I’m feeling pretty clear and focused — I know what I have to do today, so that value is satisfied. Then I look at value #2, health/vitality/fitness. This value tells me to exercise right away and to remember to focus on getting in shape. So I exercised, showered, and then ate a breakfast of fresh-squeezed veggie juice and steamed broccoli. Then onto value #3, peace… feeling pretty peaceful after exercise and breakfast, so that value is already satisfied. Next, connection/love… spend time connecting with my wife and talking about what’s coming up for us. Then intelligence/reason mixed with honor and courage led me to conduct and conclude a negotiation that transformed an increasing messy win-lose situation into a win-win one (and that in turn gave me additional peace and clarity). So your values become your daily priorities. It’s not that you have to address them in order each day like this, but you have to put first things first and invest time and energy into satisfying them — the higher on the list a value is, the more important it is to you. If a high value isn’t being satisfied, you need to do whatever it takes to get it up to par.

Of course there are interruptions that will throw you off course, but you just keep going back to your values and doing your best to satisfy them, starting from the top down. This keeps you putting time into what’s really important to you instead of having it gobbled up by urgent things.

One more question, if you don’t mind. I realised when trying to set my values that there are some differences. There are values like growth and there are values like courage and discipline which are the base for the growth. If I won’t have discipline and courage I will not do things which are helping me to growth. Should I differentiate these.

Is growth value? Is effitiency value? Aren’t they functions and the Intelligence/Excellence/Courage are the values to lead to them?

You don’t learn what’s right for you by thinking about it all day long. You learn what’s right you by diving in and trying different things. If it’s wrong for you, you’ll find out by doing. Then you can change and move onto something else. Fail your way forward.

I remember seeing an interview with a group of self-made millionaire entrepreneurs, and on average each of them had been in something like 17-18 different businesses before finding the one that made them really wealthy. They dove in, tried something, and if they found it was wrong for them, they cut out fast.

Read the bio of Leonardo da Vinci. He had an amazing number of different interests. There’s no reason you can’t do the same. You’re free to have a dozen or more different careers if you so choose.

Steve the problem is, I am always feeling different professions I am congruent with. I am not talking about values now. Values are nearly the same for me as I realised after reading your post. But what profession to be in life is the biggest question for now. I am very widely oriented person, I enjoy everything what I have mood for and my moods are changing in days, weeks, months and they change totaly. I am able to be satisfied with being the speaker one day and the other day I am very reserved and don’t need to speak with anybody just to meditate, the other day I am ready to learn martial arts and enjoy movement, the other day I am lazy to train at all, but instead I feel I was born to be artist and enjoy painting that day. The problem is, I feel always congruent with nearly everything I doo, but only for the particular moment of life, till my mind change.

But I realised one thing. The values are still the same. Interesting, but still have no clue what way (profession) should I move on to achieve these values and to be myself. I am totaly lost what my predispositions are, maybe because I am so self-confident and precise in the jobs I do that I am succesfull in everything, the problem is I have no drive to stick with one thing and I am always changing, so the end effect is null.

PS. I am sorry for my english, it’s so hard to explain what I mean, if it’s not my native language.

My conflict was rooted in the fact that I was not discerning. I was blindly following orders. The Church demanded money and obedience and told me not to pursue money or success or women. Family demanded my obedience and my labor. My boss demanded that I work late and on weekends. The TV demanded that I buy a big house, and a sofa, and a double-cheeseburger. They gave me conflicting orders. How could I not be conflicted every day?

I shut out their voices and began observing the world. I realized that my church, my family, and my friends, were serving themselves. Most of them wanted something from me. Moreover, they lacked wisdom and had given me false information. I eventually saw that the world is not confusing. The people are confused. And they spread their confusion to me!

I do not understand Taoism, well. As I understand it: Working for success is good. Dwelling on success is bad. Struggling to grow is good. Domineering is bad. Creating wealth is good. Possessiveness is bad. Working 100% is good. Desiring 100% is bad. Perhaps there is no real conflict? Or perhaps some of the information you have been given is incorrect? You must learn what is true and false for yourself.

This involves carefully balancing “being” (presence) with “doing” (action). I used to have a lot of conflict between these two, where I’d ask the same questions you do. But then I started to search to see if there was a state I could reach where being and doing were entirely congruent, where I could accept being who I was in the moment while at the same time taking action to achieve new states. For me this involves reaching the state where what I do is simply who I am, so there’s no conflict. I feel I’ve finally reached this point just in the past few months. It started with focusing heavily on the “being” side and figuring out what was really important to me in life and what kind of person I wanted most to be; then I thought about what I could manifest in terms of actions and results if I just made a strong effort to be my best self.

Money, success, enjoyment, family, etc. are not deep enough values to understand being. You need more character-focused values like honor, integrity, honesty, compassion, courage, etc. When you decide the kind of character you most want to wield, deep beneath the more superficial values like success, then you’ll have a strong sense of being, and from that will begin to arise a purpose that will lead you into taking action that is perfectly consistent with who you really are. For example, courage is a very strong character value for me. So when I act with courage, I feel very congruent. But if I take steps that are too timid and overly cautious, I feel a conflict between who I am and what I do.

I have a little problem with definition of my values. Because of one value that’s driving me crazy - moodiness/inconstancy which I don’t know how to deal with. I am able to set my goal list one day, but the other day my mind completely change and I have new life values in my brain which don’t correspond with my list.

I am talking about the big values of life. One day I am completely for enjoying of life in the mean of learning, studying everything I can, working 100% on my goals, but the other day, my little freaky Taoist mind impeach all of my strove for knowledge and enjoyment and is focused on the simple things of reality. Calmness, simplicity, nothing is more important than to be here and now and there’s NO knowledge you can get from (self improvement) books, all you need is your clear mind and consciousness.

Is it the real schizophrenia in my mind? I don’t know, but never found anybody similar. Always when I start to hunt for anything (money, success, enjoyment, family…), my self-reflection is saying: it’s not going to lead you anywhere; it’s not the meaning of life

I have a really strange life after all.