How to Choose Values Over Rules
Values are the North Star that guides you in the journey of how you want to live your life. They guide how you want to be in the world rather than what you want to do or accomplish.
In the last newsletter, I talked about the Inner Rulebook that each of us metaphorically carries with us as we move through life. Each Inner Rulebook is customized to each of us.
You can spot a rule when it governs your conduct or your principles. It’s important to have some rules: Be kind. Pay your taxes. Don’t be racist.
But rules can go overboard if they’re rigid or coercive: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This is the only way to load the dishwasher. You can’t ask for help.
We also learned Dr. Karen Horney’s four perfectionistic rules that get in the way of living our lives. There are others, for sure, but these four act as the basic raw materials from which lots of other rules are formed:
Endure everything
Understand everything
Like (and be liked by) everybody
Always be productive
This week, let’s talk about what to turn to instead of perfectionistic rules, and how to do that without lowering your standards or letting yourself down.
The short answer? Consult your values. Values are the North Star that guides you in the journey of how you want to live your life. They guide how you want to be in the world. Values can be anything: you might value honesty, hard work, romance, the outdoors, generosity, self-care, cleanliness, or any of a million other things.
Here’s a deeper dive, with four things to keep in mind when choosing values over rules:
1. Values are continuous—you’re never “done” with your values, just like a pianist can never check off “mastered piano” on a to-do list. Values are more of the direction than the destination.
2. Values are freely chosen. Our values explain why we might volunteer to clean up trash on the beach on a beautiful summer Saturday, let your friend cry on your shoulder after she went back to the partner you knew wasn’t a good match, or sit through a squawky middle school orchestra performance, not that I know anything about that last one. If we do any of those things without being driven by our values, we’d feel very different—resentful, grumpy, not to mention in need of some ibuprofen.
Therefore, watch out for rules that masquerade as values. For example, my client Theresa was brought up to be generous, but in her family it was presented as a requirement. “If someone asked you for something—a homeless person asked you for a dollar, a friend asked you to babysit—you had to do it,” she remembers. But the lack of free will meant it ceased to be a value and became a rule—the very opposite of the spirit of generosity.
3. Context matters in determining how to follow our values. My client Julie has a young child with a disability, and she values advocating for him. Right now he’s 6, but “advocating for him” will look very different when he’s 16, and different again when he’s 26. As their context changes, her actions will change, even as she keeps following the same value.
4. Choosing values doesn’t always feel good. I value helping people through my writing. But that means I ask experts to volunteer their time for an interview, or ask my friends to read chunks of a new book—things that don’t necessarily help them directly and may even feel burdensome with their busy schedule. I risk making other people stressed in order to follow my values, and that can feel illegal to me.
Likewise, I value spending time with my family, but sometimes that means I choose to turn down cool projects or say no to other lovely people, and that feels bad, like I’m letting people down. Following my values doesn’t always make me feel 100% good, but sitting with that discomfort is, for better or worse, part of living a valued life.
Okay, that was a lot! Thanks to Drs. Mike Twohig and Clarissa Ong for their time talking to me about this topic, and their excellent book, The Anxious Perfectionist: How to Manage Perfectionism-Driven Anxiety Using Acceptance & Commitment Therapy.