One of the most common questions that everyone inevitably asks within counselling is “How do I stop an unwanted behaviour?” The truth is that seeking to stop a behaviour is usually one of the biggest problems at hand. How anyone changes a behaviour is not by initiating “cold turkey” on unwanted conduct but by pursuing behaviours that are tied to the values one truly holds most dear. Allowing vital actions within a value to become the new standard, or hill someone would die on, to take over and decrease the unwanted behaviours with more awareness over time. But this of course prompts the next question of “what then are values?”
Values are desired qualities of conduct which represent who we want to be in the world around us. They are the answers to what sort of employee, leader, friend, spouse, partner, child, sibling, or parent we want to be. However, it is important to clarify that values are not goals. Goals are things that can be tangibly measured toward obvious achievement, whereas values are moment-to-moment decisions and choices someone makes on a daily basis. For example, someone could choose to behaviourally pursue a value of Curiosity, yet no one can truly achieve the absolute title of Curious nor easily quantify its final outcome. One simply qualifies themselves on whether they feel more curious than before.
Values are also not guidelines to be kept nor rules people put onto themselves or their families and households. They are qualities that people choose to freely sustain, as it soon becomes apparent to most individuals that once they start to feel obligated to follow a prescribed “value” it will unfortunately begin to lose its momentum – having less significant purpose in being sustained beyond its original creator. It stops being so initially valuable and instead becomes demanding. With any level of employment showing this pattern, even when people seem happy to join in on their company’s “values,” in time energy dwindles around such things, especially after the more prominent reward of money takes precedence, or unfair consequences and threats are put forward to uphold the workplace value.
Hence, values must be centered on personal integrity and not what someone wants or needs to get from others. Which should help to explain why an expression of “I value my family for the love and support they give to me” is in need of further examination around what this valuable support means to an individual. Confusing values with needs and wants can actually become problematic, causing some individuals to begin to devalue their families or other things in life which they have come to depend upon. Therein a mental health counsellor can provide some direction, with a slight conversion of words now steering back to a more empowering position: “I value my family and show it in my care and affection I give during my daily interactions with them.” The behaviour hopefully seems clearer and the value is better defined.
But why could this be suggested as something more important than a goal? Because as one theologian shared many years ago, “Though someone is drunkenly walking home, they are still walking on the path home.” If you falter in a goal, it may appear undone and hopelessly unreachable, but if you falter in fulfilling any behaviour tied to a value, the value remains valuable. In other words, you remain on the path where you want to go.
