“Learning to love yourself will be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do in life.”
~ Unknown
My mission was to identify a set of core values that could guide my behavior and define my vision. Identifying my core values was necessary if I wanted to live a meaningful and purposeful life. Meaning and purpose, if achieved, would mean greater joy, inner peace, contentment and fulfillment. Knowing and living in accord with my core values became the next step in figuring out who I was. Thereafter, those values, not my past, would help define my path.
Realizing I now had the privilege of choosing how I wanted my reclaimed life to look, I felt like I had made it to recovery’s bonus round. The truth was, when I made the commitment to get clean, I hadn’t given much thought to what life might look like beyond just escaping the constant chaos of my day-to-day existence. Now to have this – an actual choice in how I wanted my life to look – felt like such an immense gift that I approached the assignment as if I were choosing names for a newborn baby. In a way, I was. I looked at this as my opportunity, not so much to reinvent myself, but to experience a rebirth. I sat for hours envisioning what my life had the potential to become.
I poured over websites, printed out pages and pages of information to read, studied definitions, made a long list, then a shorter list, and eventually landed on eleven core values (my thorough and heartfelt research would have made any etymologist proud): Authenticity, Accountability, Spirituality, Gratitude, Humility, Integrity, Empathy, Compassion, Service, Trust, Uniqueness.
I posted that list in numerous places throughout the condo: on my bedroom door, the nightstand next to my bed, the bathroom mirror, on the table next to the couch. Wherever I spent any significant time, that list was close by. I made sure it was one of the first things I saw every morning, the last thing I looked at every night, and something I came across several times each day. And I knew that no matter how long I studied that list, my effort would yield nothing if my actions failed to support my words. Call it obsessive, but that list was always at the forefront of my mind. My values had to drive everything I did.
In time I felt truly proud of how I was beginning to live my new life. And the more I saw future glimpses of it, the more I began experiencing a profound feeling that I was worthy of it. I had never imagined that reclaiming my life could be so exhilarating. It was as if I was finally giving myself permission to be everything I had the power to be. Those were heady days filled with great dreams, but also bone-chilling fears. There were times when I became overwhelmed by how far I had come, scared that this was also something I could lose. Whenever I grew afraid I redoubled my efforts to behave in ways that honored only my new values. Was I perfect? Absolutely not. But I always got myself back into the present moment and concentrated on my core values.
In an important way my chosen values served as a foil, giving me the courage necessary to identify my vulnerabilities and admit my imperfections. I also began to realize that some of my vulnerabilities and imperfections were also what made me beautiful – not physical beauty seen on the surface but inner beauty reflecting God’s image from which I was created. I am not exactly sure when it happened but I had fallen in love – true love – with this new life I was working so hard to create. Every day I was getting to know my true self, the most intimate relationship I would ever know. That notion in and of itself was a huge departure from the way I had previously lived, skimming the surface, never looking within.
~ Excerpt from Cracked . . . Not Broken