Others

Values are important to me- knowing them, understanding them and intentionally living them out. They are so important to me, I wrote a whole page about mine and have them plastered all over my bedroom. One day recently, I realized that for someone who values values so much, I don’t know what the people closest to me value. Sure, I could guess based on what I know about them, but I had never actually talked to the people around me in depth about what they value.

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn once said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. This idea got me really curious to see if the people I spend time with had similar core values to me(love, spirituality, and positivity).

I asked about 20 of the people I am closest to what their top values were. I asked the people who I interact with on a regular basis or invest emotional and mental energy into consistently. The people I asked have different backgrounds, ages, genders, upbringings, religions, etc.. I asked people from my family, friends from home and from school and friends from different friend groups and circles. I even texted people I have dated and possible people I may date in the future(hey, values can be a pretty good indicator of a future partner).

I quite simply texted each of them, “Hi what are your core values”(I know, weird. But I’m weird so people didn’t really question it too much).

What I found was that the values that came up most frequently in the people closest to me were positivity/optimism, faith, relationships/friends/family, passion, and acceptance. These tie in so closely to my core values of love, spirituality, and positivity.

While I was a little disappointed that not one person said love, I realized that love is present in so many other values they said. Something that is so cool about values is that the meaning behind each word is different to everyone. When they elaborated on why they valued things like passion, acceptance, and relationships, they gave the same reasonings as mine for valuing love.

I think this little experiment acted as a testament to what Jim Rohn said about being the average of the people you surround yourself with.  The people I asked were from all different areas of my life and have different demographics. We share different life experiences, journies and have different aspirations in life. But without any guidance, no list of values to choose from and limited explanation to the purpose of the question, the people closest to me all ended up sharing similar values.

I’m not sure if we are in each other’s lives because we share the same values or we have the same values because we are in each other’s lives. Either way, my journey and the journey of those I asked have collided and we are in each other’s lives for a reason. The simple finding that we have shared values is reassurance that that reason is a good one.

(Quick note: I think diversity is so important in the sense of surrounding yourself with people of different social identities i.e. race, religion, sexuality, political views, etc.. Values show who people are, not what they are. To me, consistency in the values of the people around you show consistency in individual personality.)

One of the coolest parts about the whole experiment was the conversations that followed me asking the simple question “what are your core values?” I got to talk to the people I care about most about what they care about and why. I learned more about their hearts and the authentic people they are. Those kinds of conversations are the ones worth having. I am going to continue to challenge myself to dig deeper into understanding those around me and I challenge you to do to the same.