What if?

In the business world, in order to experience success, organizations spend countless hours focussing on a very specific task. This task sets the pace for the ethos and drive of a business and those who do it well see their employees united and content, their businesses thrive.

This task? Defining the organization's values.

It's a theme with us, right? Yeah! And it's time we take it to a whole new level.

Organizations put huge effort into choosing their values, wordsmithing them to just the right lilt and tone, and rolling them out to the employees. The process is invaluable. It's great for business. Why? Because it helps create a clear direction resulting in a much better atmosphere for employees.

Let's sit with this idea here for a minute (while I clean up the wine I just dribbled all over my shirt...) and think about something else. Why do we leave it all at work and trash it when we enter our home lives?

What would happen if we transferred these ethos-improving, atmosphere-augmenting, direction-building ideas from a business setting to a HOME?

I mean, it's not that we don't have values as individuals and families already. We do, buried deep under our decisions and lifestyle. Sometimes they even creep onto our walls in cute and nerdy plaques hung above our kitchen sinks. "Your mother doesn't live here. Put away your dishes." "Eat, Laugh, Love." "Home is where the heart is." Admit it. You've got one or two. Yes!! Haha! I can hear you laughing! 

But really, these things don't define our life direction, do they? (I hope not!) Why is it that when it's business time, direction and values make perfect sense, but when we live our out-of-work lives (which we, ahem, value more, generally speaking) we seem to go from whim to whim without a glance deep into ourselves in order to examine what drives our direction?

I mean, what would it be like if in our home we had actual values stated, displayed, referred to at each turn of our journey? What if we displayed them on the wall just like a business would, to keep ourselves and those who live with us remembering what the core of our life direction is? What if?

Okay, let's cut to the chase.

What if...

...we put business-quality effort and energy into choosing values for our families?
 
...rather than relying on a 'general feeling' of what we value as a family, we carefully chose specific ones and started to evaluate our decisions and the way we live using them as a framework?
 
...we had those values hanging up on our wall next to our kitchen table?

How would that impact the decisions we make? How would that impact our kids? Their sense of belonging? How would it equip them to make their own decisions? Would it help us all get moving in the same direction?

I think it would.

Instinctively I think we all have a general sense of what our personal values are. But, we, after having gone through the process of selecting and writing them out, and trying to consider them in every decision we make, can assure you...

...it is hard work... 

...but it is so worth it!