Characteristics of values

Immediate availability and free choice

An essential characteristic of values is that they are available in the "here and now".

While goals always place us in a waiting room for the future ("I'll be happy when I get the promotion"), values allow us to connect to a meaningful life right now.

If your value is "be loving," you don't need to wait for a partner or for your children to be good; you can act lovingly right now toward a friend, a pet, or even yourself.

This immediacy gives power back to the person, taking them out of the passivity of waiting for circumstances to be perfect.Furthermore, values must be freely chosen.

This means that they are not rules imposed by society, family or fear ("I must be hardworking because otherwise I'm a lazy bum", "I have to be nice so I won't be rejected").

An authentic value feels like a personal choice, similar to choosing your favorite flavor of ice cream: you don't have to logically justify why you like vanilla, you just like it.

If a person pursues a life direction just to avoid guilt or gain approval, technically they are not following a value, they are following a "compliance" (pliance) rule.

The therapeutic work consists of clearing these social attachments to discover what the individual really cares about internally, regardless of what "should" matter to them.

Dynamic prioritization and the absence of justification

Values do not need rational justification. There are no "right" or "wrong" values, there are only values that are true for you.

Just as you don't need to defend in court why you prefer the color blue to red, you don't need to argue why you value adventure over safety, or vice versa. These are vital axioms.

However, in actual practice, values often conflict with each other due to limited resources (time, energy, money).

We cannot honor all our values with the same intensity at all times. This is where the characteristic of dynamic prioritization comes in.

Life is like a sound equalizer: sometimes you have to turn up the bass (intense work) and turn down the treble (leisure), and at other times the song calls for the opposite.

If a father values both his professional development and his family presence, there will be times when, in order to be consistent with reality, he must prioritize one over the other. This does not mean abandoning a value, but adjusting the volume according to the context.

Rigidity arises when we try to keep all values at maximum volume all the time, which leads to exhaustion and frustration.