In this post, I share the four values that guide my life and work as a Holistic Mental Health Educator. They are love, knowledge, wisdom, and power. I’m sharing my values with you because I believe it’s important for you to know my core values and what they mean to me. I’ll start with love.
Love
Love is the joyful union of all. It’s the first value that guides me in my care of all with whom I interact. Love is a unique form of energy that radiates from our human spirits, our hearts. It’s the power and energy that connects us with each other. It’s always in our hearts and present, but we’re often unaware of it.
Love isn’t something we choose. It just happens to us. When it happens, we feel it and become aware of it. Then our love becomes contagious. Others feel the energy of our love, and it unites us.
However, even though love just happens to us, it doesn’t determine our actions. Our decisions about what to do when love happens is up to us. We are responsible—able to respond—for ourselves and to others. Our actions are in our control even when our feelings aren’t.
Once we are aware of love that’s in our hearts, we also become aware of knowing love. The second value that guides me is knowledge.
Knowledge
Knowledge is the hidden made plain. Before we experience love it is hidden. We were unaware of it until it happened to us. When love happened to us, what was hidden—love—was made plain.
Knowledge is not rational thinking or ideology. Knowledge is power—not power over others. It’s power in us. Like love, it is a power of our human spirit—one our spirits send to our minds. That power is knowing our truth, our personal truth. When we know our truth, what was hidden is made plain.
Once hidden knowledge becomes plain our minds are clear and certain. When our minds are clear and certain, we feel confident. Our clarity, certainty, and confidence—trust in our Selves—is empowering. We feel and know our truth.
Just as love is contagious, so is knowing our truth. Others pick up on the energy of our knowledge. What was hidden to them is made plain, and they feel the energy of our knowledge inside themselves. Feeling what was hidden and now made plain influences them in positive ways. They know where we stand, and that makes us safe individuals.
The joyful union of love, and the knowledge of the hidden made plain, leads to the third value of wisdom.
Wisdom
Wisdom is the value of choosing what’s best to do. It follows love and knowledge. Like love and knowledge, wisdom is an energy of our human spirit directed to our bodies. It’s the practical, grounded, down-to-Earth felt energy that guides us in choosing best what to do in specific situations. That choice is fully informed by our love and knowledge.
Like love and knowledge, we don’t choose wisdom. Wisdom happens to us naturally as we live, learn, and grow wiser from our mistakes. When we share our wisdom, informed by love and knowledge, we set an example to others and influence them in positive ways. Consequently, they also grow wiser and positively influence others as they move forward with their lives.
Now it’s time for the fourth and last value that guides me: Power.
Power
Like love, knowledge, and wisdom, power is an energy. It’s an energy that radiates out from our human spirits into the world. Like wisdom, its energy is very practical and down to Earth. Power is the practical ability to create and do.
To be clear, in this context, power has nothing to do with power over others—dominance. True power isn’t imposed on others by debate, argument, persuasion, threats, or violence. Those tactics come from a lack of love, knowledge, wisdom, and power. They’re divisive and life-denying instead of life-affirming and uniting.
Real power is a life-affirming ability—the ability to create and do. With our individual, unique powers we can create and bring forth new things into existence, things that have never been done before. When we do that, we inspire others who join in and share their unique abilities to create and do. When we unite and share our powers, together we bring new, life-affirming things into the world. Then we make the whole world more wonderful.
Conclusion
These values of love, knowledge, wisdom, and power have been my guides for over thirty years now. However, because I’m a human being, I’m less than perfect at always realizing my values. That said, I am wholeheartedly committed to doing my best to live according to values. I’m also committed to sharing them with my wife, family, friends, and clients.
If you are interested in learning more about these values and practicing them, CLICK HERE to book a FREE online 30-Minute Consult with me. I look forward to meeting you!