Principled Living
- Amanda Doyle
- Oct 23
- 10 min read
Beliefs, values, principles, satisfaction in life. How are they all connected and how can you increase satisfaction with your life?
Everyday, we are guided by what we believe, either implicit or explicitly, what we determine to be important, and various unsaid rules that give our living consistency. In this post, I explore the importance of stating, clearly and concisely, what we value, why we value those things, and how to direct your life toward what you feel is important. By doing this, we undermine unhelpful thinking, fortify edifying thoughts, and increase overall satisfaction with our lives.
What do you prioritize?
Map out, hour by hour, your week’s activities. Perhaps journaling or making notes in an app can help you do this exercise. Once completed, organize the information in an Excel spreadsheet (Columns days of the week, rows hour of the day) or on a timeline. Once you can see the week collectively, notice patterns. These can be grouped and explored with a gentle sense of curiosity. For example:
· Are there rhythms? Why are those rhythms there?
· Are there times that you dread? Why?
· Are there times you anticipate with joy? Why?
· Are there things missing from your schedule that you wish were there? Why?
As you explore these events, perhaps leverage more visual cues that will help patterns emerge. (I am a very visual learner and I love highlighters and stickers to create visual cues) Be sure to make notes on the timeline or spreadsheet of your “why” answers. You want to see everything collectively.
Beliefs
Once you see groupings and categories emerge, put pen to paper and write about that grouping. Put on the love of God for yourself and be gentle with yourself. Be open and honest.
Did you know you do each of these things to meet one of the following needs: significance, security, love, understanding, purpose, and belonging. When you are looking at a grouping or category, ask yourself what need you are trying to meet and if it is effective. Do any of your efforts spring from a sense that you "ought to" so you can feel worthy? Accepted? Good enough? As you explore your “why”, asking for the help of the Holy Spirit, what needs are you successfully getting met? Which ones are frustrated? God is deeply relational and intends for us to get our needs met relationally. Jesus perfectly meets our needs through our relationship with Him and His Body, the people of the Church.
However, at times our beliefs can direct us toward ineffective ways of getting our needs met; ie. Serving in church so I can feel “good enough” or “fit in” instead of gratitude for what Jesus did for me. Put on gentleness and ask yourself if you should challenge any of these beliefs. (We are generally gentler with others than we are ourselves, making us our own worst enemy. Talk to yourself and think of yourself like you would talk to or think about a dear friend.)
When you talk about or think about yourself, what attitude do you notice? Do you need to set aside one kind of attitude and adopt another?
From “Conquering Codependency”, Pat Springle writes “our beliefs represent the filters through which we interpret the situations we encounter. Some of these interpretations are conscious reflections; most however, are based on unconscious habits. These beliefs trigger thoughts, which in turn lead to emotions which drive actions.”
This process of evaluating beliefs can take a long time to work through. Many times, successfully renewing our beliefs is the result of living a belief enough times that the truth begins to feel real. It is the transition from objective truth to subjective truth. The more we lean into bringing our beliefs into alignment with God’s Word, the faster this process goes. Those who highly esteem personal growth will realize Christian spiritual maturity much faster than those who passively wait for spurred growth.
In summary, you need to understand why you do the things you do, held against the truth of God’s Word, before you can effectively articulate your values. Evaluating your schedule is a great way to think critically about what you do and why. Once you recognize effective and ineffective ways of meeting your needs, you can start to articulate your values.
Values
Much of our satisfaction in life comes from living within our values. Value systems develop out of culture, especially our family of origin, relationships, past hurts, and discipleship toward God's Kingdom. For example, someone’s value of “family time is important to me” may be satisfied by regularly scheduled family time, free of tension, where each member of the family feels connected, enjoyed as a person, and enjoying the company of others. When this value is frustrated, they may experience dissatisfaction. If “family time” is met with arguments, contention, and unresolved hurt feelings, the value is not met and inevitably frustration ensues. Given this pattern goes on long enough, it leads to deeper feelings of resentment and even hopelessness.
Do you have areas in your life that seem to lead to constant frustration? What is the value that is not being met? Why is it not being met?
Try This Exercise
Write down all activities that are important to you, in no particular order. Maybe all these things were found on your calendar. (Maybe some things need to be added!) For example, one of my values is "being a good spouse." Notice the use of adjectives "good" spouse. Write out notes about the adjectives you use and why being a "good" spouse, not just "a" spouse, is important. For me, being a good spouse means I am actively seeking to meet my husband where he is emotionally, edifying him, honoring him, praying for him, and encouraging him.
Next, if there are categories that emerge, group them. Then rank the items or categories by importance, starting with the one thing that must be done before all the others can be met. For me, being a good wife and mother are my top items, which are grouped.
Once that item is completed, what must be done next? Identify orders that if they do not get done, it may bother you, but you can go on for a time without it happening.
For me, after being a good wife and mother, I find high value in being a homemaker and cultivating beauty. Those two things are grouped together. These are areas I can express, in tangible ways, my love for others and manifest heavenly kingdom on earth. It is the place where my family and friends are invited to rest, to worship, and enjoy our lives.
Next, emotional health, personal growth, and meaningful rest are grouped together. It has taken me a long time to realize these are my lynch pin items by which none of the rest are possible over a long period of time.
Discipleship and cultivating community are next in order for me. They are my outward expressions and overflow of the first three groups being realized.
I hope that sharing my values helps you to formulate your own. It has taken me a long time to be able to articulate my list so clearly, and eventually you will too!
Principles
By living a principled life you can successfully avoid much frustration. This simply means that you have rules you intentionally and thoughtfully create and live by that support your value system. The value “family is important to me” can be supported by actions such as scheduling family time, having some suggestions for how to spend that time, intentionally creating a warm and inviting space, and protecting that scheduled time by not overscheduling and ensuring other obligations do not interfere.
The emerging principle could look something like “I will prioritize and protect family time.”
So how will you live out that principle? The way you carry it out may look like: “I will invite my family weekly to two hours of uninterrupted family time and provide two or three ideas for ways we can spend time together. I will express my value toward spending time with them so they understand how much it means to me.”
When a pattern of unsuccessful efforts to meet a value emerges, that is when you want to reach out for assistance to a mentor or counselor. Sometimes we need a hand developing effective principles for satisfying lives. Things like long term illness, addiction, poverty, and other circumstances can make this challenging to accomplish successfully. And sometimes God will plant the answer in the place outside your comfort zone, especially if you are learning to grow in relational community.
Principled living will inevitably lead to the discovery of a concept called opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the price you pay to honor your values by obeying your principle. Opportunity cost may look like not attending a sports game so you can spend time with family in order to honor your value of “family first.” Or it may look like turning down the opportunity to work overtime so you can maintain your commitment to family plans. Not living by principles leads to regret. Regret follows violation of values, and the greater the remorse, the higher the ranking of that value.
Beliefs (conscious and unconscious) with value and principle create a formula by which you get needs met. Accurate and God-ward beliefs lead to renewed thinking, which leads to sanctified emotions, which lead to actions that honor our values.
Big Questions, Emotional, and Mental Mapping: Putting Beliefs, Values and Principles To Work For You
In this exercise, you are playing the role of yourself, your very honest friend, a mentor, and asking the Holy Spirit to join this practice. You will need a large sheet of paper, highlighters, pens, post it notes, and various other stationery as you see fit. As a guiding principle, after writing things down from your own perspective, you will want to evaluate it like your best friend would and like a mentor would. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you and help you see these different angles.
At the top, write down what it is you are feeling/ about what?
a. What are the components that make me feel that way?
b. What secondary feelings am I having?
c. Why am I feeling this way?
What are the beliefs that make me feel this way?
What is the spectrum of responses/actions I can take to resolve point 1?
a. Draw a line with “do nothing/make no changes” in the center. On one end of the line, write down what is the most extreme response someone could have in response to this feeling? On the other end of the line, write down the opposite extreme response someone could have in response to this feeling.
b. Generate intermediate points on the line that are various degrees of one extreme or the other. The middle “do nothing/make no changes” center should be the middle of the spectrum of responses. The following represents someone who is feeling lonely.
c. Under each option, write down thoughts, ideas, possible outcomes. Highlight ones that stand out as viable steps toward resolving your feeling or problem.
With each highlighted option, map out what that would look like. What will it cost you? What will you have to overcome? What do you think the outcome will be? Where will you need help? Are there false beliefs at play? Be very specific.
Are there individual components that contribute to the success or failure of each option? Be very specific.
Write a “What If” column. Create a statement that embodies each of the highlighted options that you are being drawn toward as viable solutions.
Ask questions of each statement you write. These can be as micro or as macro as you want. As you ask questions, you will see next steps emerge.
Ask if there are principles you are not living by that lead to the violation of values. What do you need to do or change in order to uphold that value?
Ask what are the opportunity costs associated with upholding that value? Are there things that conflict with your goals? What do you need to change?
Go through the entire map and identify your immediate next steps that will lead you to solving your problem. On your calendar, schedule time for these steps to be taken.
When the problem will take years to navigate, generate and write down principles that will support the values associated with your goal. It is important to write them down because it removes ambiguity. Regret follows violation of values, and the greater the remorse, the higher the ranking of that value. Make an effort to identify all the opportunity costs associated with achieving the goal. Ie, to be a stay at home mom, I will need to put my career on pause for several years. This will challenge my professional growth and my earnings potential. Jesus taught to count the costs of following Him, so we should most certainly approach our entire lives with the wisdom that we cannot be all things to all people at all times. What do I want to do/be to whom when?
To generate a plan for a larger, years long goal, create another line drawing that will contain all the steps needed to arrive at your destination. Sometimes jotting down all the steps then putting them in sequential order is helpful.
To generate intermediate steps, put yourself in your own shoes in the future. You need to do “C”. What are the “A” and “B” steps? Write down “what am I assuming?” and create a list below it of things you assume about the scenario. (this is a great place to ask for advice/second set of eyes) Are there assumptions that are true and accurate or are there variables? Weave loose plans for those variables.
Experiencing “dead ends” in mapping: when all the ideas run out
a. Everything in life has phases. Careers, friendships, family life, organizations, our faith walk, our maturity. Identify things that are phases and ask if there is a phase transition occurring. What needs to be let go? What needs to be taken up?
b. What coping tools and skills are you using? Is it time to level up skills by reading a book, going to a conference, seeking mentorship, or seeing a therapist? Different seasons call for different skillsets. By prioritizing developing healthy coping tools and skills, you will be actively undermining idols from developing in your life while continuing to grow and mature.
Seeking Wisdom
Leveraging these tools to assist with making big decisions or processing emotions can bring wonderful depths of peace. God promises to give us wisdom if we ask for it (James 1:5) and by writing down our thoughts, we are freeing up mental space to explore things more deeply. Our souls want to be understood but our minds only have so much bandwidth. When we can step back from our labors, examine our processing and realize next steps that align with our values, we will inevitably live lives that have purpose, satisfaction, and mission.
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