⚖️ My Core Values

Here are my five personal core values that I have identified as being most important for my life to represent. Publishing these makes me accountable to everyone who knows me. Everyone, keep me ethical! Keep me true!

🪞 Integrity

Integrity is treating others as I would want to be treated. It is behaving in private as I would in public. Integrity does not pay any attention to consequence, only, in doing the right thing. Integrity is staying true to what I understand to be fact. It is being honest by always giving the truth, regardless of retaliation. Integrity loves God first, others second, and me last. Integrity realizes that peace isn't about avoiding conflict on the outside, but rather eliminating conflict on the inside. It is being content in all things, situations, and events while continually investigating how to be and do better. Integrity acknowledges that the universe was created from nothing and by God. Integrity looks at all humans with equal inherent value. It understands that every human is a soul that will spend eternity in Heaven or Hell. Integrity is possessing inner joy by letting go of what I want for myself and embracing what God wants for me. Integrity has a reverse gear and makes every effort to right a wrong.

⏲️ Responsibility

Responsibility means exercising courageous ownership of personal problems, failures, and obligations. It means I share credit upon success because I am never a sole victor. It means I do not ignore my mistakes, instead I learn from them. Responsibility acquires and executes self-discipline that is borne out of persistent resolve to reach a goal. Responsibility is harnessing control of all of my emotions, and not just the ones I allow to be seen. It refuses to surrender my temporal emotions and feelings by lashing out, at the expense of the eternal consequences. Being responsible allows for pause to consider the bigger picture before acting. It is the deliberate and regular exercise of creating healthy habits to achieve goals, to grow myself, and to help others grow on their life's journey. Responsibility defends the weak and helpless and takes a stand for the right cause. Responsible living is recognizing the need for faithfulness to be:

🧮 Innovation

Innovation is being flexible and open-minded with how I think and solve questions. It is being creative by forcing myself to think outside the box with a fresh, new perspective. It is being resourceful with what I have to quickly invent a solution to the problem at hand. Furthermore, it is solving a difficulty with a thought towards the future! True innovation does not re-invent the wheel; it solves once and can be reused. Innovation is not only about the outcome, but also about the process that was used to conclude the outcome. Innovating is tiring, and sometimes issues are too big for me to handle by myself; so being innovative is also about knowing when to step back and let someone else have a turn. Innovation is about being the tourniquet to prevent a patient from bleeding out, and not being the injury that is killing the patient. Innovating requires objectivity and allowing me to get out of my own way to achieve the desired result. Innovation is about living the prepared lifestyle so that I am free to respond the right way when a crisis presents itself. Innovation is about being connected with only the things that matter the most, so that valuable energy and effort isn't wasted pursuing tangents and ill-fated ends.

📚 Studious

Being studious is about absorbing life as it happens, not just watching it happen. Absorbing life allows you to learn from what has happened in the past, what is happening in the present, and what may happen in the future. Absorbing an experience requires continuous effort to ask questions, understand the answers, and then reteach them to someone else. Being studious is not just about reading, writing, building, experimenting, training, watching or learning a specific thing or idea. It is about engaging with the people around you in ways that allow you to learn from others as well as allow you to teach what you are presently learning. Being studious is about training to be curious enough to find out the answers for yourself and learning the right questions to ask that solve problems. It is about exercising the will to try, even if I am afraid of failing or afraid of succeeding. It is about intentionally stretching my limits by inserting myself into uncomfortable or unpredictable situations. Being studious requires of me three separate steps:

⚖️ Economical

Being economical is about exercising moderation in everything I am, say, do, think, hear, watch, taste, feel, and smell. It is about being available to consider new opportunities for both large and small life changes. It is about being in a place so that I can be opportunistic of new, advantageous options. Likewise, it allows me to prioritize my goals and achieve my dreams. Being economical means being free of everything that holds my soul bound such as bitterness, addictions, grudges, hatred, or fear. It is about knowing that it is more profitable to forgive than to begrudge. It is about not being a slave to anyone or anything. Being Economical means living in moderation, so I can give more. Economical living is not being afraid to do the thing that needs to be done. Being economical means not living outside what I can comfortably afford after obligations and charity has been considered. It is about being good, kind, and gentle to everyone I meet so that the time I use with them is invested and not just spent. Economics is about exercising moderation, minimalism, and contentment in every aspect of life, not just finances. Being economical is about eliminating the eight big wastes in life:

🧭 I-RISE

I-RISE is a five letter initialism that represents my personal ethos (personal fundamental values) for how I understand that my life needs to be lived and which direction I know my life should go. I-RISE allows for the exercise of my first right as a human, which is freewill. I-RISE prioritizes and sets the boundaries of my goals, wishes, and dreams. I-RISE guards against unwanted outcomes by preventing addictive behaviors, bad habits, and immoral living by placing a better, more intelligent, wiser person than myself in the driver seat of the vehicle of my life. It does this because I-RISE was built on the Bible which understands the 'Human Condition' (sin, carnality, passions, desires, decisions, and humanity) better than any other book ever written. I-RISE accomplishes Biblical living without eliminating pleasures, fulfillment of desires, and exercising of passions. Indeed, it is not God's Will that all pleasures, desires, and passions be deemed sinful! Instead, it is God’s Will that these same things necessarily be given a place of priority second to God and to allow all items in our lives to be filtered and processed according to God’s natural and spiritual laws!

I-RISE recognizes the love of God, the certainty of death, and the truth of eternal life to plan for how the vehicle of my soul is to be steered and directed on the Road of Eternity.

Thanks for reading! I'm Curio, a creative writer, coder, and soon-to-be small business owner passionate about Open-Source and sharing unique ideas. Dive into more of my musings and reach out at me@jacobpeabody.com. Wishing you the best on your journey towards meaning!