Letter 10

Hi folks, this week I want to keep writing off of letter 9. It was about avoidance and perseverance. Please read that blog to catch up to this one; they’re all connected to each other.

Before I start, I understand that this isn’t the kind of blog you’re looking for on this site. But under the surface, I want to compel you that these are so important; they’re the reasons why we’re motivated to grow and experience more in life. This camper is just the tool to meet the need and I hope these words help you in a small way.

The last blog and this one are based on adversity, perseverance, the development of character, values, purpose, growth and comfort. They were written in a notebook along a hike and each paragraph connects to the next. I’ll share paragraph 2 now and explain it in depth:

“The more we understand our true values, the clearer the road to the right path of the development of our character. The more we understand who we are not, the more we understand who we are instead. Understanding our values is about understanding how we are designed to respond under adversity. We have both negative and positive values and our goal is to more often invest in the positive ones when given the chance.

This is what I’m saying: when you’re in the face of something that’s more than you can handle, you can either lean on and invest in the development of your negative values, or you can decide to become the kind of person who can persevere instead.

You’ll need to give up your old self and step into uncertainty knowing that the harder road will always equip you with wisdom and the betterment of your positive values.”

Our core values are the basket of 5 or 6 motivations that we carry around with us every day. They motivate our decisions on how to respond and react and when to retract and when to proceed. If you were to ask a stranger about what their core values are they might go cross eyed because it’s not something that we give much thought to. Core values are mostly subconscious but they are so important to understand because they dictate the paths that we’ve chosen as well as the paths that we’re about to choose next.

If you were to ask someone who they are “who are you”, they might describe their hobbies, how they are seen by others, or the things that they identify themselves as like their accomplishments. It’s the same with seeking to understand our own values. By asking what our own values are we often only get to see the outcome of the motivation. But by asking about the counter-responses of our avoidance, we get the opportunity to back into understanding our values. “The more we understand who we are not, the more we understand who we are instead”. You find who you are by knowing who you’re not, first . You know who you are by knowing what you cannot sustain. You know what you cannot sustain by being courageous enough to try.

And courage is a value; it’s the tool you use to take the harder road or the road more unknown. We are all equipped with courage but it becomes a core value when we decide to summon it and strengthen it when we’re faced with a decision to go road left or go road right, knowing that road right has a vertical climb and road left starts with a flat path.

So today I want to just encourage you to ask yourself who you are not, in order to deduce out the person you’re designed to become. I want to encourage you to ask yourself how you’ve responded to challenges in the past. To become creative under pressure is a value, to become resourceful under pressure is a value, to become empathetic and seek to understand under pressure is a value, to become more socially courageous under pressure is a value. Honesty is a value.

If you’ve made it this far into the letter I want to say something that I hope builds you up and brightens your week ahead. You have a purpose. You are designed for greatness; not someone else’s definition of greatness, but your own. And only you know what the summit of the mountain of your best self looks like. I want to encourage you today that you’re worth it. You have a purpose and you’re doing great.

-M