Living by Your Values

Learning values. During your life­time your parents and teachers have been teaching you the values of our society. Sometimes you have not been aware that you were learning new values, but you have been learning them every minute. You have learned from watching others, hearing others, and observing your own actions. You have learned that some things are con­sidered right; others, wrong.

One interesting test of your values is to think of yourself as an invisible person. How would your actions change if you knew that no one could see you?

Try This
Test your own system of values by completing the sentence: I believe that the three most important things in life are ….

Your conscience. You have the power to weigh the worthiness of everything you do or say. All your life your mind has been at work filing away mental impressions of the way you have acted and the ways those you respect have acted. Out of all these impressions and memories, your con­science has been formed. Your con­science judges you for every action you make.

The society in which we live has cer­tain standards of behavior by which we guide our lives. Our consciences and the consciences of our parents and loved ones have picked up these stand­ards. Your conscience reminds you to study for a test, even though you may be tempted to do the opposite. In later years your conscience will help you to accept greater responsibilities and will become a more vital part of your per­sonality.

Guilty feelings. You may find that occasionally your conscience conflicts with something you want to do. If you do not follow your conscience, you will probably feel guilty or ashamed. Ev­eryone occasionally makes mistakes. It is important for you to know how to make up for them.

Perhaps the hardest part of making up for a mistake is admitting to your­self that you were wrong. If you quar­reled with your sister or brother over some small matter, you probably do not want to admit to yourself that you were partly to blame. Once you have admitted your mistake to yourself, however, it is much easier to make a sincere apology or to make up for the wrongdoing. Certainly you can see that you will command greater respect if you follow your conscience and also try to make up for whatever short­comings you can.

Values in your personality. You may have been able to conclude from the information in the last few pages that a person’s values can shape his personality. For example, a person who believes in the value of a good education is likely to be curious, interested in many subjects, and active in school affairs. His values have had a great effect on his personality.

You can see that a lack of strong values can affect personality, too. A person who does not value honesty would have a less than admirable set of traits in his personality. In the eyes of others, your values may well be the mark of your personality.

As you think about values and per­sonality, you will realize that they relate to both mental health and family relationships. Because of these relationships, you are likely to improve your family relationships as you im­prove your mental health and personality. An improvement in one area is likely to affect other areas as well.

Maintaining Mental Health - Controlling emotion

Controlling emotion. The third aspect of good mental health is the ability to control the emotions. Undoubtedly you have occasionally lost your temper when your parents have forbidden you to go somewhere or do something. This could be serious, if you could not control your temper, or habitually lost your temper.

Because people your age are likely to become very enthusiastic about some things and extremely critical of others, it is a good idea to "stand back and look at yourself." Can you see yourself usually losing control of your enthusi­asm when your team wins a basketball game? Can you see yourself always arguing heatedly with an umpire? If you can answer yes to these questions, you need to practice controlling your emotions.

It is important for you to recognize that everyone has feelings of anger, and that nearly everyone occasionally loses his temper. However, a mature person does not allow himself to lose his temper habitually. Neither does he allow himself to become angry every time something happens he doesn’t like. If you think of the adults you like and admire, you will probably find that they control their feelings well enough so that they are pleasant peo­ple to be with.

Methods of control. There are many ways you can control your emotions. One is to talk over the situation with a friend, your parents, or a teacher. This way is often a good one because it can make you understand ways to deal with similar situations in the future.

Physical activity is a good way to get rid of your anger. If you are angry with someone and you cannot talk to anyone about it, it will feel good to perform some vigorous activity, such as washing the family car, playing basketball, swimming, cleaning the house, or mowing the lawn. This method of releasing strong feeling is called sublimation. You will be surprised to see how much better you will feel after sublimating your anger.

There are other ways of letting go of angry feelings. Creative work, such as woodworking, painting, or sculp­ture, is fun and useful. Writing is an­other way to get rid of your feelings of anger, rebellion, or discouragement. It sometimes helps to write down the reason for your feelings. Then you can control them because you know why you feel so strongly.

Another emotion that you can at­tempt to control is fear. Everyone has felt worried or afraid when he has ap­proached a difficult test or unfamiliar situation. However, this fear should not be allowed to become too strong. If it does, you will not be able to do your best. The easiest way to get rid of such feelings is to make sure you have studied adequately. Then, if you are still worried, try doing something re­laxing. If you are too worried to relax, you might go outside and play a game. It might be good to call a friend to see how he is progressing with studying. These methods will take your mind off your problems and help you to control your fear.

The important thing to remember about controlling your emotions is that you should do something about them. It never helps just to sit by yourself worrying about a disappointment or situation that made you angry.

Value of emotions. It has been said that emotion is the stuff of life. Any person who had not felt the joy of success, the anger of frustration, or the pride of victory has not lived very much or very well.

When properly controlled, your emo­tions are of great value. If you become supremely enthusiastic about support­ing a friend who is running for the student council, you are using your emotions. Probably no one has ever been elected to anything unless his friends were a little emotional about his strong points.

Your emotions are helping you right now. When you become worried about your grades on a science test, your fears cause you to do something— study harder or obtain special help from your teacher. Have you noticed that when you are playing a game the excitement has helped you to perform a little better?

The important thing to remember about emotions is that they should not be hidden or forgotten, but should be used well.

Maintaining Mental Health - Making adjustments

Making adjustments. A second aspect of good mental health is the ability to make adjustments to different situations. You cannot succeed in everything you do, and in order to be happy you will have to adjust to situations in which you do not get what you want and to situations that you do not enjoy.

There are many things that could happen to make you unhappy or to disappoint you. Perhaps you worked hard and tried out for a part in a class play. But you failed to get the part. You may have needed more practice, or you may have failed to get the part be­cause there were others competing for the part who had more talent and skill. Or perhaps someone else got the part simply because he seemed to fit the part better, physically.

There are several ways you could react to such a failure. You could lose your temper and complain loudly, making everyone around you uncom­fortable. You could stay by yourself and daydream about being a successful and greatly admired actor or actress. You could make excuses for not going to the play and even become ill the day of the performance. But none of these would be a satisfactory adjustment. These are all ways of running away from the real difficulty.

What are some of the ways you could adjust? You could use the method of compensation. In this method, you would decide to do something to help make the play a success, whether that would mean painting scenery, selling tickets, ushering, or making posters. If you failed to act as well as others, you could accept the fact that you did not quite "measure up," and that perhaps you never would become good enough to take part in a play. Then, you could enjoy other activities that make a play a success. When you use the method of compensation to adjust to a failure, you are showing a mature attitude and signs of good mental health.

Think for Yourself
In what situations is compensation a mature method of reacting?

Maintaining Mental Health - Maintaining self-confidence

Maintaining self-confidence. Perhaps the most important sign of your mental health is your self-confidence. Young people often become discour­aged and feel that they are failures. There are some good ways to help you avoid these periods of discouragement.

Being realistic. You need to set reasonable goals for yourself and then do your best to achieve them. For ex­ample, if one school subject seems more difficult than others, you may have to work diligently to keep up with the class in that subject. In spite of all that you can do, however, there may be times when you do not succeed in what you planned to do. This happens to everyone. But through your own ef­forts you can be successful most of the time.

Success can come only when you aim for what you can do, no more and no less. Your successes may not be great enough to put you at the top, but they will certainly give you a sense of satisfaction and help to give you a feeling of self-confidence.

Being realistic about what you are capable of doing does not mean, how­ever, that you should feel satisfied with yourself and your accomplish­ments all the time. Most people do not work up to the level of their abilities. As you achieve each of your goals, keep moving each succeeding one farther and farther ahead. It is only in this way that you can improve your per­formance and achieve higher goals.

Think for Yourself
In what areas has it been easy to achieve the goals you set for yourself? In what areas has it been difficult?

Making an effort. Setting your goals will not insure your success; nothing can do that. Setting your goals is the first step to self-confidence. Making an effort is the second. If you allow discouragement or fear of failure to keep you from trying, you will never feel confident of your abilities. When you can continue to make an effort in the face of failure, you will find you have won respect for yourself and have gained self-confidence.

Personality Traits

Knowing yourself. As you wrote your list of personality traits, you may have noticed that some of your personal qualities are more outstanding than others. Everyone has some traits which are less desirable than others. Being able to judge your own personality traits is an important asset. When you know yourself, you can begin eliminating the undesirable traits and adding others that are more desirable.

Changing traits. Once you know what you would like to improve, you can make an effort to acquire the new habits and attitudes that you find worthwhile. The first step in this process is making an effort to acquire new traits. If you find that thoughtfulness is a trait you want to develop, you can begin by making an effort to be thoughtful of others. You can try to be aware of the wishes of others at all times. As thinking of others becomes a habit, you will find you have developed the trait of thoughtfulness.

In your effort to acquire new traits, you must make and effort to be sincere. There is a difference between appearing thoughtful and being thoughtful. In the first instance the person is being dishonest with those about him. He is pretending to be something he is not. This lack of sincerity is easily sensed by one’s friends. They do not respect a person who is “putting on” a trait only for his own gain. It is only by being sincere in your effort to change some of your personality traits that you can make any change in your personality.