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• Life.
• Work.
• Friends.
• Family.
• Neighbors.

These relationships are the foundation of our total reality. Our values determine how these relationships grow and flourish, or wither and die. It can be very easy to compromise your values, especially when we get into stressful or fast-paced situations. It is important to maintain your mental and spiritual health by keeping an eye on what kinds of choices we are making. Cutting corners, or compromising my guiding principles, in order to solve problems or avoid conflict has, in my own experience, come back to bite me later.

Your lifestyle can leave you vulnerable to situations that lead to compromising your values: simple, everyday actions and choices that you do not give much thought to. I would like to share some lessons that I have learned to reduce these temptations, eliminate “drama” form my life, and make it easier for me to maintain my principles and values.

1. Be Careful About What You See - “The eyes are the window to the soul“. An old expression, but an important one. Most of your information absorption is visual, so you need to be aware of what you are taking in. Keep it positive! Television and movies, while generally meant to entertain, can also subtly influence the kind of information that you get in a negative fashion. News and Politics in particular, can suffer from interesting biases on television, and “Reality TV” in all of its notorious forms is purely designed to feed on scandal. None of this is good for your mind or your values.
2. Be Careful About What You Hear - The types of music that you listen to, the radio programs, and the language of the people around you can have an influence on your values. There is nothing wrong with walking away from a conversation that has taken an ugly turn.
3. Be Careful About What You Think - You are your own greatest critic. If you think and believe that you cannot do something, achieve some goal, you are very likely to be correct. If you are careful with your thinking, and avoid the mental traps of self-guilt and doubt, you can do anything that you put your mind to. Your values should be a guide to success, not an obstacle that you try to skirt around by cheating on principles.
4. Be Careful About What You Say - The language and vocabulary that you use with the people in your life is so important. Not that you need to speak to your children as if they were employees, but you need to be mindful of the impact that the words you use have on others. Show the people that you speak to that you value them and their input. How you say something can be even more important that what you are saying.
5. Be Careful of How You Feel - The world of emotion can be a dangerous one. Anger, depression, and guilt can lead you down the road to compromising your values. Keeping perspective, and using your emotions in a positive way, will have a tremendous effect on your life and your relationships. Do not be afraid to ask for help when you need it. And sometimes when you think that you don’t! You can go to a friend, a parent, your pastor or priest when your feelings are overwhelming you. Taking a small step like that now can save you from compromising your values later.
6. Be Careful of Where You Go - My father once told me, “You can’t be arrested for getting in a bar fight, if you don’t hang out in bars.” Heh. Good advice. Where you go and who you associate with will often present you with values-based choices to be made. If you do not put yourself in a bad situation, you will be much less likely to be able to make a choice against your values.

What do you say? Have you been in a situation where the “better” choice was to back down on your principles? When it can be easier to “go along so you can get along“? What did you do?

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/58dvnq. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen