What do you stand for? Get clear on your values. Everything else will follow.

What do you stand for? “If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?” is one of my favorite lines from Hamilton. Okay, I have about a zillion favorite lines from Hamilton.

But seriously- what do you stand for as a family? What are your core values?

Values are the things that give our lives meaning. Values are who we want to be and what we want our lives to be about.

I’m not talking about specific, measurable goals here. Goals have a clear endpoint. Values however are with us always. Values are like our directions. Consider the direction of east. You can go east. You can keep going east. You can go east for your entire life. But you will never achieve east. You can’t check east off your goals or to-do list.

Here’s the thing- if you value the direction of east and you just keep going east- that’s where you find fulfillment. East isn’t on most lists of values, so instead consider calm, peace, fun, connection. You can spend every day going in the direction of fun. You will never achieve fun and check it off.  But you’ll find that your life is more fulfilling with this value of fun as your direction.

Within our Confident Parenting Framework program, I get the joy of interviewing smart behavior analysts and other professionals as they share tips and tools with our crew. One such interview that I always think of when talking about values is when I got to chat with Brianna Kauer of Create Behavior Solutions. Brianna’s family values calm and peace. She shared this with me in a calm and peaceful tone of voice and expression. There was no noise or interruption from her family in her home. It was calm and peaceful.

I like the ideas of calm and peace. Sometimes I BEG for them in my family. But we are not a calm and peaceful people. We value fun and friendliness. My home is rarely quiet or peaceful, but that’s okay. We value the loudness of having extra people around, of kids laughing and being goofy and too many different radios playing at the same time.

So who is right? Brianna’s calm and lovely peaceful family? Or my loud and friendly family? We’re both right. There are no wrong choices because you get to choose what is meaningful for you and your family. You have that power to decide and to live in the direction of the values that you choose.

Choose east, calm, peace, loudness, you name it! Values are your direction. Choose your direction.