Summary: The text discusses the importance of living by your values to create a meaningful life and work. It contrasts values with goals, emphasizing the significance of moving towards what you care about rather than away from threats. Practical exercises like values journaling can help connect daily actions to your core values for a more fulfilling life.
If today was the last day of your life, would you be happy with how you’re about to spend it? (View Highlight)
It’s hard because it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind of making your company succeed. It’s valuable because the only way to make the stress worth it is to be working on something that matters to you. (View Highlight)
If, instead, I’d been more in touch with what I wanted out of my life and work, I believe we could have built a business that was both viable and meaningful. But how can we stay in touch with our values as we go through the grind of building a company? (View Highlight)
values are about “verbs and adverbs.” To get at a person’s values, you can ask:
• What would you be doing if you were living meaningfully? (verb)
• How do you want to show up to whatever you’re doing? (adverb) (View Highlight)
Moreover, values are about things we move toward, not things we move away from. “Not being afraid” isn’t a value, but “living courageously” could be.
This is an important distinction, because a meaningful life isn’t one where we’ve successfully avoided threats; it’s one where we’ve chased after something worth chasing. (View Highlight)
It’s also important to note that values aren’t something you reason your way to. They aren’t moralistic, and they don’t require any rational justification. Values are about what gives you an experiential sense of meaning and purpose, not a philosophical position on what you think should matter in life or what someone else thinks is important. (View Highlight)
Yet behind every goal is something we value. Perhaps you want to write a book because you value learning or contributing to the world. Maybe you want to build a business because you value autonomy or being able to support your family. A goal is only meaningful to us because it connects in some way to an aspect of life that we hold dear. (View Highlight)
