Other People’s Values, Rules, and Ideas
We all grow up to be leaders on someone else’s path.
That’s not a bad thing, but it’s a reality that builds our world view.
We need to learn how the world works … how to stay alive, how to access food, how to win respect, influence, and trust. The first values, rules, and ideas we learn teach us that. They set a foundation for building character, setting boundaries, and making decisions for ourselves.
Our First Values, Rules, and Ideas Come From Our Family
Most of us are born into a top-down organization called a family. Our parents (or older, bigger significant others) teach us about good and bad behavior. At the same time we literally find our hands and our feet. Before we learn to talk, we know some things work and others don’t. We’ve already figured out whether a smile or a crying fit gets us what we want. If we didn’t know that, we’d have died of hunger. As we find our way to standing in the world, values, rules, and ideas help us find the place for our feet.
Family values, rules, and ideas start simple. They come from our caregivers. They sound like “Love your brothers, Don’t take what’s not yours. Don’t hurt other people. Don’t yell indoors. Be nice. Do well by doing good. Think.”
We learn to navigate when those values, rules, and ideas conflict.
When my older, older brother was three, he tried to put his hand in the sugar bowl. My mom reached out to slap his hand.
My dad said, “Wait!” Then he turned to my toddler brother and said, “You won’t do that again, will you?”
My older, older brother agreed. But the very next day, he tried the sugar bowl again and my mother slapped his hand.
He said, “I’m going to tell Daddy you did that!!”
My mother slapped his hand a second time and said, “Now you can tell your Daddy I did it twice.”
We learn early to sort whose values, rules, and ideas are more powerful.
It’s a self-preservation skill.
The Next Values, Rules, and Ideas Come From School
At school, we learn to be a leader on someone else’s path. We learn values, rules, and ideas that engage us in a manageable way. Some kinds of creativity and leadership are rewarded because they help the school run better, faster, easier. They give the school more meaning. They make it more fun. Other forms of leadership and creativity are brought back onto the path, because they make things harder to manage. Some behaviors don’t fit.
Conflicting values, rules, and ideas come from the same source.
Some sorts of curiosity are good. Some sorts are disruptive.
Asking why is eager participation in some situations and defiance in others.
Some sorts of helping others are applauded. Other helping is called cheating.
It’s good to ask what would happen if you don’t brush your teeth.
It’s not so good to ask what would happen if you don’t go to “time out” when the teacher sends you there.
Add the exponential complication of the values, rules, and ideas of our peer group.
The simple values, rules, and ideas require interpretation as we get older.
We learn that some rules interpret our actions by what that action “most often means.”
We graduate and fit ourselves into yet another set of values, rules, and ideas.
The more people we meet, the more complicated the values, rules, and ideas become.
Why We Trust Other People’s Rules
The tricky thing is the way our brains build abstract thought. We construct our understanding of values, rules, and ideas through experience. We construct our world view, our basis for making decisions, the same way we construct the idea of blue — it all starts with someone else’s idea of what blue is. We learned our idea of blue by trial and error.
What color is this?
Blue.
No, honey, it’s red.
What color is this?
Blue.
No, dollface, it’s green.
We learned blue by learning what’s not blue at the same time.
We learn what to do by learning what not to do — by doing things wrong — by finding out that our inclinations and instincts have lead us astray.
We learn to trust other people’s values, rules, and ideas more than our instincts.
That’s a problem.
Most of us don’t realize where doing that.
That’s an even bigger problem.
In fact, it’s dangerous — so dangerous, it can cost us our life.
Whose Ideas, Rules and Values Are Running Your Life and Your Business?
How many of your decisions come from habits set years ago and never challenged. If you’ve been feeling like you’re not on the right path, I’m betting it’s because you’re working under some old rules — rules that don’t fit, rules you don’t need.
What are the values, rules, and ideas that run your life and your business? Who inspired them and are you ready to decide which are your own?
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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In some ways, it’s sad, isn’t it? We are so programmed to believe certain things and many of those beliefs hinder our progress as we try to grow and expand. It’s so wonderful when you find people living their lives on their own terms instead of what others expect. Here’s to a life of unlimiting beliefs!
Hi Martha,
What’s sad is that we don’t have some “coming of age” ritual where we are asked to choose our own values, rules, and ideas. Though those may not last us a lifetime the process of “cutting the cord” would teach us so much. I remember not knowing when to call myself an adult.
Yes, being free from fear of judgement enables a person to make choices based on their own beliefs and values rather than being driven to please other people.
Liz The power of these statements hit me like lightning!
“We learn to trust other peopleâs values, rules, and ideas more than our instincts.
Thatâs a problem.
Most of us donât realize where doing that.
Thatâs an even bigger problem.
In fact, itâs dangerous â so dangerous, it can cost us our life.”
Thank you for sharing wisdom with heart!
Chery,
Thank you for telling me. Those were important sentences to me when I discovered them. I’m thrilled they are meaningful to you. 🙂
trail and error. Learning from the mistakes What color is this?
Blue.
No, honey, it’s red.
What color is this?
Blue.
No, dollface, it’s green.
we learn what to do by learning what not to do — by doing things wrong — by finding out that our inclinations and instincts have lead us astray.wonderful way of learning, i must say.
I like this topic, because it is about personal awareness as an educator.
We have to face many challenging situation when working with yong children and their family.
Being critical to every decision you make is helpful for making a better choice next time.
Well said. Simply being aware of what values we are passing on — even when we’re not trying — can help us become better teachers and more decent human beings.
I feel that because each of us are raised differently, it sometimes might be hard to come to an agreement because of our teaching style. For me, I feel that it takes some trail and error to help learn about the mistakes that we sometimes make each days as ECE teacher in the field. I know that I do try my best to learn about the mistake through my trail and errors and it had taught me that even though we are ECE we are still learning and about self awareness and helping children reach their full potential in their own way
Yes, we all learn from trial and error. But many times too we are trying things without being aware. Asking ourselves what values do we want to pass on is a good start. Then when things go sideways, we can check how well what we did met the values we want to pass on. That goes us something to check against moving forward.
This is so true, from an early age we live the life values that we are taught as children at home. Then we learn life values in a different light at daycare, and in a different light in elementary school, in a different light in high school and finally in a different light as an adult. The core values that we follow as an adult represent all the different ways in which we were taught values as babies, toddlers, children, adolescents, and teenagers. You may have a good mix of values from each stage of life, but in the end, if we are self aware of all the different life values we were exposed to throughout our lives, we are able to adapt to the environment around us and understand other peoples values easier.
Yes, Darlene. We all sort through the values of others and use those that work for us. But those of us who do well come to know which values we’ve chosen for ourselves and why.
this explanation of how we come to trust other people’s ideas and values more than our own intincts
is very powerful to me. shows just how important it could be to allow a young child to trust his or her own intincts