What if the values you live by now aren't the ones you chose, but ones somebody gave you?
Most of us carry a set of rules we rarely look at. Work hard. Don't make a fuss. Put other people first. Some of them are ours. Others arrived early, from a parent, a teacher, a first boss or the place we grew up, and they still steer our choices without our noticing.
Why it matters
A value you chose and a rule you absorbed can look the same from the outside. The difference is in how they feel to follow. One well-known study tracked students working towards goals over a term. Those whose goals fitted what they personally cared about kept going for longer, and reaching those goals left them more satisfied. Goals chased out of pressure or obligation could still be reached, but did less for the people who reached them (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999).
Picture someone who has always been the reliable one. She says yes to the extra project, the late shift, the friend's house move. Each yes looks generous. Underneath, the rule might be: if I say no, people will stop needing me. The behaviour is kind. The reason behind it is costing her.
How borrowed rules take hold
Children need the approval of the adults around them, and taking on their rules is a sensible way to keep it. The rule then outlives the situation that made it useful. Not crying might have kept the peace in a tense household. Thirty years on, the same rule makes it hard to tell a partner you are struggling.
A useful clue is the word "should". Rules we have chosen tend to sound like "I want to". Rules we were handed tend to sound like "I should", and breaking them brings guilt rather than a sense of having made a choice.
A way to sort your values
This exercise takes about thirty minutes and a sheet of paper. It moves rules out of the background, where they run automatically, and onto the page, where you can question them. Writing a rule down gives you a little distance from it, so you can see it as a thought you were taught instead of a fact about how life must be (Hayes et al., 2012). The aim is to find out which rules you would choose again.
Write down your rules. Finish the sentence "I should..." ten times without editing. Include small ones, such as "I should reply to messages straight away", as well as large ones, such as "I should stay in a secure job". Stop at ten, even if more come.
Find the source. Beside each rule, write where you first heard it or whose voice says it: a parent, a teacher, a faith, a workplace, friends, social media, or your own experience. If you can't tell, write "unsure". That tells you something too.
Ask what it protects. For each rule, ask what you fear would happen if you broke it. The answer often shows what the rule was built to guard against. "If I stop working late, I'll be seen as lazy" points to a fear about how others will judge you.
Run the private test. Ask whether you would still want to keep this rule if no one would ever know either way. Rules that pass are likely to be values you endorse. Rules that fail are worth a closer look.
Rewrite as a direction. Take the rules that passed and rewrite them in the language of choice. "I should always help" might become "I want to help when I have the capacity to". For the ones that failed, write what you would rather do.
Test one change for a week. Pick one rule from the closer-look pile and act a little differently on it, once. Let one email wait until morning. Say no to one request. Then notice what happened, both around you and inside you. Did the feared outcome arrive? How strong was the discomfort, and how long did it last?
Choose, try, adjust
Some rules will survive this, and that is a good result. A value you have examined and chosen again is held more firmly than one you never questioned. Others will loosen slowly. Rules learned early come back with feeling attached, so a week of discomfort is expected and is no sign the change is wrong. Repeat step six with the same rule, or move to another. Keep the sheet and look at it again in a month.
The next post in this series explains why each step works, and the third looks at what philosophy has said about the values we inherit.
Sorting this alone is possible, and the exercise above is a fair start. Some people find it easier to examine these rules out loud, with someone asking the questions. If that would help, the first conversation with us is free.
If this was useful, or someone you know has been living by a rule that isn't theirs, feel free to share it.
References
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482–497. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.482
