I didn’t question how I spent my time and energy for most of my life. I just did the things: work, family, running a home. I was on automatic pilot. There were plenty of signals in society that pointed me to what I was supposed to be doing. “It’s the right thing to be successful, independent, and efficient.”
But, after I retired and went back to college, our teacher reminded the class that values are morally neutral! What? Does that mean there are no superior values? It was a revelation that sent me on a quest to finally clarify my own values.
I began to understand the reason why certain choices I’d made in my life felt “off” or uncomfortable. They were not my values.
Discovering My Values After Retiring
To become aware of my values, I paused to do some specific self-reflective activities. [Download a free example activity below]* It was surprising to find out that some of the values I’d been following for years were different from the values I hold now. (Maybe, they were always different, or maybe they are just different now that I’ve retired?) I just know that as I move forward into life after retiring, certain choices don’t make sense to me any more.
Success Isn’t Ambition
I can see that ambition is unimportant to me. Even though the business world is organized around monetary growth and expansion, that doesn’t interest me at all. Since starting Retired And Now What?, I continue to get emails pressuring me into optimizing my website, allow advertising on my blog, and develop a marketing funnel. They assume that their definition of success is mine, but it’s not.
Community Over Independence
Independence, striving to do everything on our own, is a value that we grew up with in North America. It’s almost unquestioned, and imbued with righteousness. However, I noticed after reflecting on my career as a teacher, in building a business, and in surviving health challenges, independence is nowhere near as valuable to me as community and connection. Community and connection give me the support that allows me to grow and weather the storms of life.
The Struggle To Slow Down
Similarly, efficiency, that backbone of capitalism, holds little interest for me now. But, I find it’s the most difficult external value to shake. Remembering to slow down each day is extremely challenging, when for my whole life I’ve been expected to get everything done as quickly as possible.
But, these days I can see that it was the cause of so much stress and unhappiness. It’s not required of me to pack my days with so many commitments that I tie my stomach in knots. It’s not necessary to fill my head with so many projects that I can’t sleep from all the anxiety of trying to keep up. Nope. Those actions valued efficiency, and efficiency doesn’t draw me in as it did before.
Easier To Decide Without “Should”
The biggest payoff for clarifying my values is that it makes it easier to banish the “shoulds.” That voice in my head that says I should be doing more. It’s banished because I don’t value efficiency. If I think I should be able to handle this by myself, I remind myself that I value supporting others and being supported, over independence.
Those shoulds are society’s values and they don’t align with what I value anymore. Importantly, values are morally neutral. So, I’m not a bad person for choosing community over independence. It changes the “I should” in my head to a choice based on what I value now, and that helps me to justify my choices to myself. Because ultimately, I’m the only one who needs to feel comfortable with my values.
*One of the values activities that I’ve found to be very useful in clarifying what’s important to you now. Download for free.
