A couple of years ago someone asked me what my values were and honestly, I had no idea. I looked at them blankly and then looked to the sky, feeling like they must be up that way somewhere. When I looked back at the person my face was still blank, and so was my mind. I truly did not have an answer, and then I felt a bit silly. Did everyone walk around knowing what their values were? Was this yet another thing I had missed in medical school, along with all the other lectures that were too early in the day to even contemplate getting to?
If you are feeling similarly, don’t worry, you’re normal! Finding out what your values are, and understanding how that relates to your day to day life takes work, and time. If you’re anything like the me of two years ago, it seems like a bit of a hippy, wishy washy thing to think about when you’re busy thinking about everything else.
For a moment I want you to imagine two trains running along their tracks – one of them is a life aligned with your values and the other is how you are actually living. The closer these two tracks are the more settled you will feel, the wider the gap, the bigger the feeling of discontent and inner tension. Sometimes life happens and the trains need to diverge – you might find yourself working in a speciality that does not allow you to be the kind of doctor you want to be and that can be a horrible feeling. That feeling is your inner guide letting you know that at that point, your train tracks are far apart.
The key is to know how to bring them closer together again, and you can’t do that if you don’t have an awareness of your values in the first place.
For most people, after they have taken the time to work things out, they tell me how helpful it is to understand more about their personal values. They feel that they have a clearer picture of where to head and why. They have a deep sense of what is important and constantly strive towards it. They are the people who always seem to have a guiding light, a north star that they are following with their inner compass. They know their purpose and are making conscious choices to live in a way that aligns with it.
Talking about purpose and meaning is not a new thing, yet for many in modern life with all its busy-ness and chaos this is overlooked.
If you take the time to stop and think about it, you will probably realise that lots of people talk about the huge importance of purpose and meaning, or of “finding your why”. Simon Sinek says
“Fulfillment comes from why we do it. Happiness comes from what we do.”
In medicine we spend an awful lot of time, energy and focus working on what we do, but so many people have lost sight of why we do it.
Before Simon Sinek it was Victor Frankl, who endured three years in concentration camps such as Auschwitz in the second World War, who famously wrote
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’”.
Even all the way back to Aristotle, who lived in 384 B.C., said
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”.
If we continue to seek fulfillment and contentment externally with our “what”, without spending any time looking inwards to rediscover our “why”, we run the real risk of never quenching the internal thirst that exists within us all – to live a life of meaning.
So I challenge you to start pondering your own why. Be curious with yourself about the reasons you have ended up where you are now and be open to reconsidering where you are headed, especially if you discover your own train tracks are further apart than you realised.
