Personal Values

In this paper I will briefly discuss my personal values, ground rules and ethics development. The focus will be discussing what sources that help shaped my values and the criteria and decision-making factors I can make the most of to revise them. To understand this paper and the analysis within it, you have to first understand the meaning of a "value" and how it relates to an individual personally. According to Webster Dictionary, a "value" is a concept that describes the beliefs of an individual or culture. A set of values may be place into the notion of a value system. Looper (2006) defines "values" as deeply held beliefs about what is good, right and appropriate. These values help align our personal strengths, weakness, preferences and even lifelong ambitions.

Values are personal. They are your convictions, your beliefs, and your ethics rolled into one.

Personal values are the individual characteristics and beliefs that determine how people behave. The four most important personal values that I hold to the highest regards are: honest, loyalty, accountability and compassion. I'm not the type of person that thinks I know everything. However, in a personal setting, I am very honest and trustworthy. Honesty is the biggest thing I judge an individual on. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they give me that one reason to distrust the person. When this happen, I distance myself completely and limit my contact with that individual. Loyalty has been a value that's probably been a blessing in my life. Again, my mother always stressed how we need to be loyal to God, our family, our friends, our spouses, community and our jobs. As a result, I discovered the hard way that loyalty is not a very well known value. I have encountered so many people that are only loyal to themselves. They have no regards and obligations to anyone or anything; however, they believe that everyone should be loyal to them. One of the major problems in our society today stems from people not being loyal, from CEO's to their employees, from parents to their children and from husbands to their wives. Accountability is the next value that I hold at a higher level. I believe that everyone should be held accountable for their actions even in the midst of troubles. If you are not strong enough to accept and deal with the consequences then you are not worthy to be respected. That to me is an act of cowardliness. The last important value is compassion. You have to love the work that you do. If you are doing a good deed only to please someone else and not for yourself then that defeats the purpose of doing the good deed.

Values and ethics compose a large part of who I am today. The values that I believe in play a very important role in my life. As I looked back on my life, my mother instilled in my brothers and I that God was the uttermost important thing in life. As a child, I was taught doing right from wrong and knowing that if I chose wrong then I'm going to be punished for my bad decision. As I became an adult, the choices became harder but I still knew the differences between right and wrong because it had been instilled in me. Determining what is ethical or unethical can weigh heavily if I didn't know where I stand on my own personal values. Past experiences have influenced who I am today. I had to make choices in the past that not only affected me but those close to me. For me, I've surrounded myself with those who similar values to mine and helped me choose the right decision. One major lesson I've learned is not taking the easy way, which is usually the unethical choice and may be the short term answer but rarely doesn't pays off in the end. The beliefs that were instilled in me are so important because they shape the way I live in my life and in a way that I think is mostly desirable to me and those that are around me.

My values are strongly aligned with the character profile. This ethical profile has been developing over my entire life. I feel that I am a dependable person that people can count on for things to get done. I am considered a leader in everything that I do as well as a very organized person. At times, I feel that I am a people pleaser but found the balance between overdoing it and just not doing is enough. The experiences that I have gone through with mixed results have molded my character to one of integrity and honor. I do very much care about what people think about me and my actions in this life. There had been a point in my life where I did not care about what other people thought about me and my ways. I've learned through life challenges that I must continue to strive to do the right things that would honor my family. The values that are and were accepted as good in my formative years growing up are still fresh in my mind. Some of these values are appreciation,