The headline read "Markets Keep Eye on Hong Kong" The subtitle was: "Biggest fear: that protests spread to China, where economy is slowing."
What’s at issue here? Values! Values are that which we consider to be important. Values themselves are internal, within us. How we strategize to fulfill those values are external activities or things. An example of a value and ways to satisfy that value:
Value = "Security". At Bold New Directions, we say that (attitudinally at least) there are 18 ways to do anything, including strategies to fulfill our values. So what are various means to satisfy a value of "security"? A house, a job, a life partner, an alarm system, a monthly Social "Security" check, filling your car’s gas tank before a major winter storm hits, having some reserves in your bank account…and on and on and on.
But there is also a bit of messiness with values. Not all values are ranked the same (thankfully, we are in charge of prioritizing our personal values). But values can compete with each other; personal values, collective social values etc.
A simple example of personal values competing: perhaps you have a value of taste-satisfaction. One of 18 ways to satisfy that value is to eat sweets. But you also have a value of health. Eating a piece of chocolate cake while wanting to lose weight for health are values in competition.
Let’s go back to the initial headline:
"Markets Keep Eye On Hong Kong". This refers to mass demonstrations by tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Hing Kong, day after day taking a stand for greater democracy. The value here is greater freedom of choice.
But there is a competing value (or strategy for satisfying values)…Stock Markets around the world are afraid that protesting for democracy will hurt China’s slowing economy. Seems like they’ve set up an either/or values competition – Democracy or Wealth.
While mass human values have a complexity beyond most of our abilities to solve, we can work more effectively with our own personal values. The first thing to celebrate is that we get to define our own values. The good news too is that we are in charge of prioritizing our own values. And thirdly, we have 18 ways of satisfying the values we’ve elected and ranked. Knowing that and owning that will eliminate any feeling of being a victim of your own choices. And they are all choices.
So if you have a value of "taste", own that value. And if you have a value of "health", own that value. And knowing there are 18 ways to satisfy any value, step back from seemingly competing strategy choices (that you’ve made; we get in choice ruts) and reassess what other strategies will work even better. Yes, a piece of chocolate cake is one way to satisfy taste but so is a smaller piece, or a sweet fruit, or… Both taste and health can be satisfied. It doesn’t have to be either/or.
Like all habits, changing strategies we’ve been using for a while to satisfy a value takes consciously choosing to do so. It then takes patient perseverance of new practices (and therefore neural rewiring) to make the change easier, more agreeable. But it is all possible. And again the good (not easy, but good) news is, you are in charge. When you take charge of this process, your resilience is that thankful beneficiary.
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http://www.resiliencetraininginstitute.com