our actions reflect our values ??
Is it really true that our actions reflect our values? It turns out that it is not always true.
When you aren’t fire-walking or otherwise acting in alignment with your highest self, it could be the case that our actions reflect any of the following:
- our fears
- other limiting beliefs, negative cognitions, doubts, guilt
- lack of imagination, black and white thinking
- habit
- stuckness
- inertia
- laziness
- stubbornness, ego! The natural knee-jerk defiance in the face of a request. The needs of independence, autonomy, choice, free will, freedom.
- attachments – to things, to places
- attachment to a sense of identity – who would I be if I changed? If I did something else or moved somewhere else – who would I be? Avoiding the existential anxiety of that experience. Again, ego!
- the effects of a bad night’s sleep
So when someone says they love you but they want to spend their evening attending to organizing their rock collection, I hope that keeping in mind these other possible meanings for people’s actions helps you take it less personally.
And instead of struggling around the push-pull of our desires with another person, isn’t the idea for all of us just to have caring for ourselves and each other around our experiences?
David Levingston
Like everyone, I have different sides. Counselor, photographer, writer, cooker of food – both spicy and plain, and seeker of truth and happiness. I have always taken an interest in the unassuming things that pass us by – both heard and seen, both ordinary and not so ordinary. They are all sacred and beautiful in some way.