The Countdown – Day 20: Conflicting Moral Values

Your mind is a wonderful gadget. It’s so wonderful that it does stuff you didn’t ask it to do.

But, unfortunately, when you don’t know much about what your mind is getting up to, you miss out on a ton of benefits, and may even experience some set backs.

To give you an example:

Your mind doesn’t only process data, but refines its own thinking algorithms, processes your emotions and includes your values in its equations.

When it comes to setting goals, you may have conflicting factors that you’re not aware of. On one end you have the goals you want to reach and on the other you have the moral guidelines you feel obliged to adhere to.

Many, many of these moral judgments are picked up by your brain without you even knowing it!

It takes how others behave into consideration, what they say, how they treat you, what your parents brought you up to believe is good and bad, what you were taught in school, what your friends value, what celebrities promote, how religious authorities and intellectuals define morality, and so on.

The moral teachings you’re exposed to are often contradictory, but without a conscious filter to accept the good, reject the bad and resolve conflicting values, your morals are likely to offer you dilemmas rather than a clear destination to pursue.

Whenever you define a goal for yourself, your mind will automatically ask: “But is it the right thing to do?”

You may not be aware of this question (and, sadly, this is the common case), and your mind will either draw a blank, or offer conflicting answers: one that supports your goal and one that condemns it.

“You can’t do that. It’s too selfish.”

“But what’s wrong with being selfish? Don’t I have the right to pursue my own happiness?”

If you fail to resolve such conflicts, you won’t be able to make too much progress in life as you try to travel two separate roads.

For each of your goals, ask yourself: “Is this the right thing to do? And why?”

Don’t worry about arriving at the right answer. What matters is that you express your own views and to be consciously aware of the automatic thinking that goes on in your head, which you will need to consciously correct.

Don’t allow morality to compromise your happiness. That’s not the purpose of morality.

Morality is meant to help you advance in life without compromising your own, or other people’s, well-being.

Leading a moral life will help you experience greater joy, integrity and peace of mind.

If you feel like agreeing, but there’s a part of you that seems to disagree, then you’ve uncovered potentially conflicting values.

Think them through and let your conscious mind be involved in choosing the morals you wish to live by.

Your goals and happiness may be on hold because you’re not willing to think about your own values, and that’s not a good thing. 🙂