The concept of life values: what are the main ones in a person’s life, examples

The role of life values for a person

Subconscious - what is it, definition

Psychologists call the values in a person’s life an “inner compass” against which he checks his daily actions. When there are certain internal attitudes, it is much easier for an individual to make the right decisions and determine his life productively. In turn, they influence the formation of personality in a certain way. How this happens can be concluded using basic traditional schemes:

Love for children and family - responsibility and the ability to care for others are formed.
The desire for a successful career develops determination and discipline.
The need for spiritual development shapes morality and intellect.
The desire to improve health promotes an active lifestyle.
Rejection of deception, betrayal, and meanness is interpreted as the highest manifestations of decency and sincerity.

Important! Personality begins to form in childhood, so it is advisable to become familiar with basic values as early as possible. You shouldn’t think that small children don’t understand anything, the example of adults should be before your eyes, then it will become the norm of life.

Basic values in human life

It is difficult to meet two people who have absolutely identical priorities. However, there are personal values that are common to all intelligent women and men. What can be the most important thing in human life? A person's basic values make up a short list.

How life values are created

Mental rigidity - what is it, definition

Psychologists argue that reasoning about basic life values is accessible even to a small child, since they are similar to the rules that organize a person’s life. Therefore, the sooner acquaintance with the norms accepted in society begins, the easier it is for the child to learn and accept values.

The main thing to remember! It is almost impossible to change your views and beliefs in adulthood. For example, if a person has lived a difficult life, and at the end he realized that it turned out wrong, then it will be too late to change anything.

Family is the first and main source of knowledge about life values for children

There are several stages in the formation of a value system:

At the first stage, the main authority for the child is the parents. It is under their influence that the first significant principles and model of behavior are laid. If a child is raised correctly, then the values are ordered, then it is clear how to set priorities correctly. Unfortunately, mistakes in upbringing lead to the formation of false values.
As you grow older, kindergarten and school play a big role in setting value priorities. Education is considered a key stage, as children begin to form beliefs and judgments, for example, about the norms and rules of behavior at school, and make an adequate assessment of events and actions, the abilities of their own and others. The student’s position begins to be determined by subjects that provide knowledge about the basic laws of life: literature, biology, natural science.
In the future, the formation of life priorities is influenced by the social environment, which not only dictates certain rules, but also condemns an individual who shows a different life position.
In adulthood, values can be revised, as the suffering and adversities of life allow us to understand more deeply our views and beliefs. At the moment of realizing that they do not coincide with generally accepted stereotypes, they are rethought.

Basic values of human life

The question that concerns young people with little life experience is which values are the main ones in life and which are secondary. Psychologists call these thoughts a problem in setting life priorities. They propose, from a huge list of universal human values, to identify unique beacons on the path of young people, which consist of basic guidelines:

Spiritual development;
Family;
Health;
Financial position;
Career;
Rest;
Self-development;
Environment.

It doesn’t hurt to listen to the advice of experts, but you should still keep in mind that for each person, life values are personal, individual, and their arrangement may differ from the generally accepted one. Much comes from childhood, since the ideals of life come to the individual through the transformation (adjustments) of parental values.

A helper for young people in finding priorities can be the synton approach, that is, the psychology of common sense for healthy people: personal life and relationships, business (business, work), personal development

Important! If you correctly raise a child using the example of universal human virtues, then it is not difficult to form the right guidelines in him. Then he will respect friendship and love, maintain spiritual and physical health, learn to have compassion for people and animals, altruism and decency will not be alien to him, that is, all the qualities that fill life with meaning.

True and false life values

There are values that most people consider basic; psychologists call them true. In modern society, it is accepted that an accomplished person must build a career, start a family, and acquire material wealth in order to ensure a comfortable existence for himself and his loved ones. Of course, all this is important, but on the condition that a person acquires all the benefits through his work, diligence, and abilities. But every value has some downside. In psychology, this phenomenon is defined as false values. They arise due to the irrepressible desire to possess what seems most important to a person.

For example, it is now customary to consider an individual successful if he has an expensive car, the latest brand of iPhone, and the opportunity to vacation abroad. If it is not possible to obtain such benefits, a person with false guidelines experiences disappointment in universal human values.

How to instill good life values in your child

For many young parents, one of the most important questions is how to instill life values in their child and give them the right upbringing.

When choosing a system of priorities for raising a child, each parent must understand for himself what the “correct” values are.

10 tips for raising self-confidence in your child

Those things that are formed in early childhood remain in the head for the rest of your life. If a person does not expect serious shocks, these ideas cannot be changed. These are universal human values - family, love, self-development, education, career, material well-being.

A child in whose family preference was given to relationships with close people will devote a lot of energy to love and interpersonal relationships. The desire for career heights will shape the child into an ambitious personality with aspirations for a certain status.

How to help your child choose a profession

Life experience allows a child to build a value system.

For example, convincing a teenager that they need to value family will not work if the father devotes all his time to work, and the mother is only busy with gadgets or beauty salons, without paying any attention to the child. Only the parents’ own example will help form the “correct” life priorities.

Factors influencing the rethinking of life values

Self-control - what is it in psychology, definition

As a rule, situations arise in human life that entail a rethinking of life values. All of them are associated with positive or negative emotional shocks. The list is endless, but psychologists highlight the most important factors that make you think about reassessing priorities:

Death of a loved one;
Marriage and birth of a child;
Dangerous disease;
Financial difficulties;
Unrequited love;
The onset of old age;
Career collapse.

A striking example of rethinking priorities is the situation when a person who is accustomed to living alone starts a family. He begins a new life, the main thing is not his career, but harmonious family relationships, love for his spouse and children.

Adverse life events can sometimes be beneficial for a person who has trouble prioritizing life. They help you find true values and meaning in life.

Another example is financial difficulties that force a person to look at the world with different eyes and look for options to get out of a critical situation. Psychologists give many examples when an individual completely reconsiders his views on money, material wealth, and his environment.

An illness, especially if it is considered dangerous, also forces you to reconsider your views on the values of life. The main thing for the patient is health, the ability to enjoy every day he lives, everything else is unimportant.

Many examples can be given when those values that were once considered secondary are brought to the fore, and, conversely, the main ones turn out to be not so significant.

Important! Some events, even negative ones, must be treated very carefully, as they can give impetus to rethinking life ideals. Even the sensations that arise from certain events may lead to a desire to reconsider them and set new priorities.

Dissatisfaction with life

There are times when a person experiences dissatisfaction with his activities. It has been noticed that when work becomes a burden, dissatisfaction begins to spread to other areas of life, for example, family. All this dissatisfaction gives rise to doubts about the correctness of any actions. People around them can convince a person to ignore dissatisfaction and consider it temporary. If you seek psychological help during this period, any specialist will say that it is best to reconsider your beliefs and principles.

Too much self-criticism

At the moment of reassessing life priorities, which happens to almost everyone at one time or another in life, psychologists warn about excessive self-criticism. Criticism in some cases is even useful, but it should not go beyond limits, since too much can undermine self-esteem and faith in success. Excessive self-criticism is a sign of internal contradictions that should be identified and dealt with.

At a certain stage in life, a person needs to reconsider his life values in order to return to a comfortable existence. To a greater extent, this is facilitated by a complex psychological state

Pessimistic attitude towards everything that happens

Often, self-doubt or lack of prospects prevents you from setting priorities correctly. Psychologists identify the main difference between people who lack self-confidence and those around them – indecision. As a result, a person commits actions that contradict his inner beliefs, but “everyone does this.” Pessimism leads to the fact that at one moment a person concludes: the priorities set under the influence of society do not at all coincide with the true ones that are most important to him. Such insight can lead to a pessimistic attitude, or it can become an impetus for changing your views on the world.

All-encompassing boredom

Sometimes, oddly enough, a boring existence leads to a revision of life values. A person does not show initiative in relation to his life and begins to go with the flow. According to psychologists, most often this condition appears when priorities are set incorrectly and false values come to the fore. For example, a person has strived for material well-being all his life and, indeed, has achieved great success in this field: an apartment, a dacha, a car, a position (he achieved everything he wanted). But the realization comes that he missed the most important thing. Any specialist will tell you that it is necessary to realize the priority values and decide on the goal, then an interest in life will appear.

Examples of human life values

To understand the important role of life values, it is useful to more often turn to situations that people do not always notice and consider them ordinary. Here is an example from life: volunteers in orphanages or nursing homes believe that by providing invaluable help to others, they experience deep moral satisfaction. Psychologists explain this by saying that good deeds release hormones of joy (dopamine, serotonin) into the blood. Not everyone can become a volunteer; the values of life should be so high that they see their goal in helping others and feel satisfaction from this.

To achieve knowledge of the priorities that are important to you, psychologists advise starting with something simple, making a list of the most significant ones and implementing them immediately

There are many examples of setting life priorities: for some, the goal may be the desire to conquer mountain peaks, cross oceans, or invent new technologies; for others, the desire for a quiet family life, raising children, or mastering a favorite profession is enough. Still others believe that career, business, success are the true purpose of life.

Psychology gives important, at the same time simple advice to those who are rushing around in search of priorities in their lives. Determining your values is not as easy as it seems at first glance. Therefore, you can start by simply compiling a list of values, then select from it the most significant ones for yourself, which you need to strive for right now.

Features of the formation of a system of life values

The system of life values of each person begins to form from the first years of his life, but it is finally formed only upon reaching a responsible age, i.e. by about 18-20 years, although even after that it may change in some ways. The process of its formation itself takes place according to a certain algorithm.

Schematically, this algorithm can be expressed as follows:

Aspiration > Ideal
Aspiration > Goal > Ideal
Aspiration > Values > Purpose > Ideal
Aspiration > Means > Values > Goal > Ideal

However, subsequently, between all these points, another one appears - ethics, as a result of which the whole scheme takes on the following form:

Striving > Ethics > Means > Ethics > Values > Ethics > Goal > Ethics > Ideal

From this it turns out that first of all, the ideal and the very desire for this ideal arise. An ideal, which can also be called an image, if there is no desire for it, is no longer such.

At the first stage, which is most often instinctive, the ideal is neutral from an ethical point of view, i.e. it cannot be assessed in any way, and it can be formed in the form of a sensory-emotional substance, the content of which is quite difficult to determine. The meaning that is attached to the ideal is formed only at the stage of transformation into a goal. And only after this, reaching the third stage, values are formed that serve as resources, conditions and rules for achieving the goal that leads to the ideal. And the entire algorithm ultimately ends with the so-called inventory of the necessary and available means to achieve the goal.

Each element of the presented algorithm is extremely important, but you need to pay attention to the fact that the ideal, goal and means are formed and selected under the influence of not only needs, but also ethical norms, which seem to “filter” all stages of the algorithm. At the same time, ethical standards may exist in the human mind, as well as in the mass consciousness, representing the results of the action of previous algorithms, and therefore be perceived as “existing objectively.” In addition, they can also be formed as new ones, being conditioned by a newly emerged ideal and the corresponding algorithm.

The life of any person, as we have already mentioned, from childhood begins to obey this algorithm, and it does not matter what it concerns: the choice of a future profession, a loved one, political or religious views and actions performed. And here “ideals” play a special role, regardless of whether they exist in a person’s consciousness or in his subconscious.

To summarize, we can say that a person’s system of life values is a fairly stable structure, despite the fact that it is subject to changes, both small and global. And a person’s awareness of his system of life values is the first step towards understanding his life purpose.

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Key words:1Self-knowledge

The role of life values ​​for a person

Basic values ​​in human life

How life values ​​are created

Basic values ​​of human life