By Jessica Sullivan
“So when your eulogy is being read with your life’s actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?”
1943-2021. Those are the birth and death dates, separated by a tiny dash, of my beloved grandma, who passed away recently after 12+ years of battling a rare form of cancer. Although we knew her illness was terminal, losing her was still heartbreaking to our family. Nonetheless, because my grandma had an unexpectedly long period of time to grapple with her impending death, she also had an unusual amount of time to dwell on how she wanted to be remembered. As a result, she requested that we honor her with a “celebration of life” rather than with an orthodox funeral. This celebration was to stand as an emblem representing who she was and what she truly valued—faith, family, fun, relationships, learning, love, and gratitude. By structuring her ceremony in this way, emphasis was placed on how she lived and not just what she did. It also gave us as her family an opportunity to hyperfocus on the meaning and significance of that tiny dash, which so succinctly summed up the life of this marvelous woman. The subtle distinction between focusing on how she lived versus what she did made all the difference in how we mourned her, and, I would assert, can also make all the difference in how we choose to spend our dash as well.
Think about this for a moment. How many times have you heard or maybe even created for yourself a phrase like one of the following? “I want to graduate from college/buy a house/get married/retire by the time I am ____” or “I want to lose 20 pounds by the end of the year” or “I want to be a millionaire by the time I am ____.” These kinds of goals are common vernacular in our contemporary society. As a result, many of us find ourselves caught in the rat race of life, always striving to arrive at the finish line of a goal we’ve set, but never feeling satisfied or fulfilled in the process. Although we may experience a burst of happiness when we do reach a desired goal, are the effects lasting? Usually not. Achieving a goal usually results in a short-lived moment of joy, after which we find ourselves needing to move on to the next big goal, and the next, and … you get the point. This method of living can not only be overwhelming, but totally exhausting! (Harris, 2015).
Fortunately, there is an alternate strategy that offers an approach to life that is both rejuvenating and joyful—this method is referred to as the values-based life (Harris, 2015). To give you a basic definition, values are the deepest desires of your heart—they provide a scaffolding for how you want to interact with others, yourself, and the world in general. Values are typically described as one-word “core virtues” or “ethics” that capture what a person wants their life to be about. They are meant to provide meaningful direction and joy along the way instead of putting emphasis solely on the outcome. In short, defining your values, learning to effectively live them, and actively refining them can be ways out of the incessant future-based goals mentality that can bog down our daily efforts.
My grandma not only epitomized the idea of a values-based life with how she chose to be remembered, but also with how she went about her daily living. She put her emphasis on how she was living, and less on what she was accomplishing. Of course, it must be acknowledged that sometimes those two things coincide; nevertheless, for an increased measure of joy and satisfaction throughout life, the how portion of living is more important than the what portion. Take an example from my grandma’s life—her core value was relationships. She spent all her waking hours strengthening and nurturing her relationships with those she loved. Whether it was with Deity, my grandpa, her children, her grandchildren, her friends, or her neighbors, bolstering these relationships is what she devoted practically all her effort to. It didn’t matter specifically what she did to reinforce those relationships—she didn’t necessarily have a specific regimen or goal to talk to five loved ones per day or to make it to every single one of her grandchildren’s performances/games. Sure, she may have created specific benchmarks to help her reach out to others, but her method of living by her relational value was constant and not just predicated on quantifiable measures of whether or not she accomplished a task pertaining to strengthening those bonds.
For example, if she were only able to talk to two loved ones or only make it to one grandchild’s dance recital on a given week, she may have failed from the perspective of a goals-based life (i.e., she didn’t reach all her benchmarks), but from a values-based life, she was still right on track. In this light, honoring her core value of relationships had less to do with fulfilling specific tasks and more to do with the little conscious efforts that pointed her towards the direction she wanted to head. In other words, her foundational value of relationships was a compass for her actions. The important thing to note, and to replicate, is that she intertwined this value into every adjunct of how she lived her daily life. The what may have changed, but the how was stable. Yes, goals can be a tool in the process, but notice that they are not the driving factor. Thus, adopting this value-based life over the goal-based life allowed her to feel joy in the process of everyday living instead of just at the conclusion of a goal.
“A highly developed values system is like a compass. It serves as a guide to point you in the right direction when you are lost.
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Values-based living can improve your overall well-being, because, as illustrated by my grandma, this method of living can promote more meaningful emotional experiences (Boer, 2017). These experiences can allow you to cultivate more positive emotions, which are the hallmark of psychological well-being (Lyubomirsky, 2010). Thus, choosing to adopt a values-based life not only makes daily living more satisfying, but it can also increase your sense of holistic well-being.
Are you motivated to embrace this alternate strategy of living yet? To help you get started in the process of cultivating a values-based life, refer to the following activity originally developed by Russ Harris (2009) called “Your mistakenly held funeral” (or, if you prefer my grandma’s term, “your mistakenly held celebration of life”):
Imagine that you’re a bit like Tom Hanks’s character in the movie Castaway. You’re on a plane that crashes in the ocean, and you’re completely unharmed, but you get stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the sea. Meanwhile, back home, everyone thinks you’re dead, and they hold a funeral. A few weeks later, you get rescued, and you fly home to a happy reunion. Sometime later, you get to watch a video of that funeral. As you’re watching it, you see someone you love very much (perhaps your parent, partner, child or best friend) walk up to the microphone at the front of the funeral parlor and start talking about you. What would you love to hear that person saying about the sort of person you were? What about your strengths and qualities? What about the way you treated them? (p. 219)
Envisioning this scenario may give you additional insight into what really lies at the core of who you want to be, and which values will help in this process. After completing this exercise, be sure to comb through your responses and see if they yield any specific values that you want to define your life. For example, you may notice that you would wish your loved ones to say that you were incredibly compassionate with others or fiercely trustworthy. You may wish them to say you were an adventurous person and oozed courage. Regardless of what the values are, as the purpose and values modules state, “you will know you're on the right track in articulating your values when you read them, and they generate strong feelings of satisfaction, authenticity, motivation, and resonance.” You should be able to say: “YES! These values are me! This is what I want my dash to represent! This is what I want my life to be about!”
In sum, remember that the subtle distinction between focusing on how you live (values-based life) versus what you accomplish (goals-based life) will make a major difference in the overall quality and satisfaction you find in your daily living. Best of luck as you strive to implement the former strategy of values instead of the latter method of goals. For additional help in the process, refer to the values module.
“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave ‘em all over everything you do.”
REFERENCES
Boer, D. (2017). Values and affective well-being: How culture and environmental threat influence their association. In S. Roccas & L. Sagiv (Eds.), Values and behavior: Taking a cross cultural perspective (pp. 191–218). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56352-7_9
Harris, R. (2009). ACT made simple: An easy-to-read primer on acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger.
Harris, R. [Dr. Russ Harris-Acceptance Commitment Therapy]. (2015, August 18). Values vs Goals [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-lRbuy4XtA
Lyubomirsky, S. (2010). The how of happiness. Piatkus Books.
My Best Self 101. (n.d.). Purpose. https://www.mybestself101.org/purpose
Salazar, G., MacDonald, W., Sullivan, J., Myers, J., & Warren, J. (n.d.). Values. My Best Self 101. https://www.mybestself101.org/values