“What is value?” A boss once asked this, and an answer that I’ve run across that I’m drawn to is, “Value is change in behaviour,” where I would modify to the following:
Value is sustained change in behaviour.
I recently finished reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, wherein he draws a connection between Aristotle, who’s credited with “We are what we frequently do”, and his thesis, where habits are, uhhh, what we frequently do 🙂 , so… from the perspective of identity, we are our habits.
Putting aside his break-down of a habit into 4 parts, and how we can work with each part to get a good habit to stick (or dissuade us from a bad habit), it all starts with identity, where a successful/sticky change in habits requires a desired change in identity: a determination of who you want to be.
Back to value.
For fun, let’s replace “identity” with the more abstract term “reality”, since I think this logic will still hold…
- If I realize my reality, and
- if I have determined a better/future reality, and
- if I can be nudged towards that better/future reality
(by acting out a difference in what I frequently do… a sustained change in behaviour), - I will perceive this as value.
Wouldn’t you?