In my previous post on Value Based Happiness I talked about how identifying your values and living in accordance with them can provide a deeper sort of happiness by giving us a sense of meaning and purpose. So let’s take a look at what is meant by the term values and how you can discover them.

What Are Values

Values are things which are important to us, “goods” that we seek. They are our moral principles which can guide the way we live.

Hierarchy Of Values

Values can be thought of as a hierarchy. Here’s a cut down example of what this hierarchy might look like, your “completed” hierarchy will most likely be a lot bigger than this. If you look at the example below you’ll see that as we branch out from our core values we start to look more at actions rather than values.

Happiness

• Love
  • Compassion
    • Charity
      • Volunteer work
    • Helping friends
• Truth
  • Learning
    • Reading
• Power
  • Freedom
    • Security
      • Money
  • Health
    • Nutrition
      • Money
      • Growing food
    • Fitness

You can decide how many levels you want in the hierarchy.

Bottom up approach

In this approach we look at day to day desires and actions and try to identify the reasons behind them. Lets look at money for an example, I would say it’s not something we want just for itself, perhaps we want money for the security it provides. So the core value might be security. We must look at security again though to see if it is desirable in itself or if there is another higher purpose behind it. Maybe we only want security because it gives us a greater sense of freedom.

The idea is to keep asking “and why do I want that” until you arrive at something that you want in itself with no higher purpose. In my example above happiness is the highest value.

Top down approach

Here we try to identify the reason that is ultimately behind everything we do.

Once we have found the highest value/good we  can try to work down from there. Try to think of ways you currently live those values as well as new possibilities.

Refining the hierarchy

This hierarchy definitely isn’t the sort of things that you can get right in the first shot. You’ll need to work at it and this is important become only through careful consideration will you understand why some actions are good and others bad.

You can combine the top-down and bottom-up approached by working up and down this value tree to gradually refine it. You may add extra levels in the middle to help you come up with ideas for values further along the tree.

Using the value hierarchy

This value hierarchy becomes a way of assessing your actions. It is possible for an action to show up under multiple categories. The more of your core values you are bringing into play the better. This gives you a deeper way of judging potential actions than merely looking at your feelings at the time.

Without this sort of system it is very easy for our thoughts to become disordered.

Personal Development For Smart People (Steve Pavlina) – This book introduced me to the core values of truth, love and power.

Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle) – Talks about happiness as the highest good at which all people aim.

The concept of happiness can be divided into two types “feeling based” and ”value based”. Here I will show you the distinction between the two and how focussing more on value based happiness can improve your life.

Feeling Based Happiness

Feeling based happiness is to do with the senses and is often known as pleasure. Eating nice food, kissing and other similar things can provide this type of happiness. Pleasure is clearly desirable but it’s also inherently unstable. It is dependant upon the right environment and also subject to the law of diminishing returns. So as soon as things aren’t going our way we will have lost this happiness.

Value Based Happiness

This is the happiness that comes from living in accordance with our deeply held core values. Living our values gives purpose and meaning to our lives. It is possible to experience value based happiness even while enduring physical or emotional pain. If we know we are doing the right thing we can look past the pain and see a deeper sense of happiness or fulfillment behind it. We have more control over value based happiness so it is more stable.

Finding Your Values

It can be very difficult to determine our true values. Finding whats really important to us is not easy but that’s no excuse to give up. Even if we never achieve a perfect understanding of our core values any progress towards such an understanding is well worthwhile.

Living Out Your Values

To live in accordance with your values is not always an easy task. Often you will be have to forgo pleasure or endure pain to live your values. Fortunately as you exercise your will power in this way you will often find that you no longer desire those same pleasure or that the pain is no longer as great as it once was. I’ve heard this referred to as “educating the sensitivities” which basically means making your feelings come into line with your values. So overtime your feelings or desires will help you to live your values rather than hinder you.

For further reading refer to:

Secrets of Happiness (Steven Reiss) – Psychology Today article where I first came across the distinction between “value based” and “feeling based” happiness. The concept was already familiar to me but this terminology was new and provides a nice way of looking at the matter.

Happiness (Matthieu Ricard) – A Buddhist perspective on happiness. Describes the idea of deeper underlying happiness as opposed to pleasures.

Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle) – Aristotle puts forward the case that happiness is the highest good the humans are all aiming towards. He also goes on to say that happiness is achieved through developing virtues.