Would you rather own a home or spend a year traveling the world? Have a steady paycheck or a flexible schedule? Put money away for retirement or splurge on an expensive gift? For many of you, the answer was obvious, but your answer depends on your values and beliefs.
If you value security and stability, you’re less likely to find splurges or a year of travel as appealing as someone who values variety. That’s how values and beliefs determine your decisions – and your decisions shape your life. So what’s the difference between values and beliefs? Once you truly understand the difference, you can leverage them to create a fulfilling life.
Values vs. beliefs
While we often talk about them interchangeably, there are some big differences between values and beliefs. Your values are the principles you live by. They’re the standards that you set for yourself about what is good, fair and meaningful in the world. They determine what you seek out and what you avoid, what you enjoy and what you find draining.
Your values directly influence your actions. They affect your behavior and character in your day-to-day life and are related to your needs. Whatever you feel is missing from your life – or is most important to you – is what you value. These things give us a better sense of fulfillment and well-being.
Your beliefs, on the other hand, are facts that you accept to be true, often without question. They’re formed throughout your life and are influenced by the way you were raised, positive and negative events in your life, the depth and scope of your knowledge, the past results of your decisions and your imagined plan for the future.
Beliefs are usually a generalization that affect your morals or values, mostly related to religion or culture. They are an acceptance that something is true or that something exists, even without concrete proof. These assumptions about the world grow from different sources.
Beliefs underlie and influence your values. You may believe that contributing something new and different will be what makes your mark on the world. The value that corresponds with that belief is creativity. You may believe that friendships and connections are more important than anything else. The underlying value there is loyalty.
In the debate over values vs. beliefs, one thing can get lost: they are not always healthy. Many of us have developed limiting beliefs during childhood and over our adult lives that we’re not even aware of. Limiting beliefs are thoughts like “I’m not deserving of love” or “I’ll never be good enough,” and they don’t represent your true values. You must surface these negative thoughts and replace them with empowering ones that speak to your real beliefs and values.
