Matters of the Mind - Values

Hi,
Before this blog turns into a white elephant, let me add on something that i learned recently to this new post.

Life is like a marathon race. You'll see a lot of people at the starting point but few at the finishing line. It is always easy to start things, but hardest is to follow it through. Many people want to achieve great things in life. But the moment they start, they began to see the pain of disciplining themselves to do the necesssary things to reach their goals. Think about setting goal to lose weight by going to gym, or to save up a sum of money at certain age.

Indeed key to success lies in the areas of discipline. Nothing comes easily in life. If your goal is something easy to achieve, most likely the goal is not something that is really important to you. Set an audacious but realistic goal and set your heart to complete it. Someone once said, it's not the matter of where is the destination, but the journey that you are going through. Through the journey, we see our characters being develop. Through the mountains and the valleys, you begin to see your capacitiy being stretch, a wider perspective of what life is all about.

Recently i heard a powerful message about values. Values are important to every individual. It's what we call the makeup of a person. You are judged by the values you hold dearly to your heart. A person, other than the outer shell of the person and how he/she sounds, what distinguishn him/her would be the values that one holds. For example, I can say John is an honest person because he was never seen doing things against his integrity or there is a specific incident whereby he was tempted to be dishonest, but he stood firm.

Values will determine the decisions we make in life. Most of us learnt values from people that are close to us when we are young, either our parents, teachers, close relatives and sources like media, magazines, internet etc.
Value is like a seed that is planted in a person. It takes time to cultivate them but over time it will produce good fruits. Hence it's important to decide at an early stage what values we should embrace in our life. What kind of person do you want to be known for?

I've list down 10 values which i believed is essential for everyone of us. This may not be the complete list. But this should be sufficient for anyone who wants to lay a good foundation of character in life.

1) Loyalty
2) Family
3) Accountability
4) Respect
5) Love
6) Faithfulness
7) Commitment
8) Hardwork
9) Integrity
10) Generosity

To be continued...