Introduction

A key lesson for this week is that successful people make decisions based upon their values. This is called value-based decision making. Unfortunately most people don’t give much thought to what their values are, how they got them, and if those are even the values they want to hold. 

We form our values between the ages of 0-9 through the socialization process ( our family, friends, neighborhood, religion, media, school, etc.). By the age of 9 your values are pretty much set. How you express the values changes as you age but the values remain set unless you have a significant emotional event. A significant emotional event can be the birth of a child, the death of a parent, recovery from drug addiction or something as simple as reading a book. An example of this would be a drug addict completely changing their life after the birth of their child or after finding God.  Research shows that most people don’t experience a significant emotion event strong enough to alter the values they formed by the age of 9.

So everything you experienced from the time you were born to the age of 9 formed your values. These values formed your attitude about things and influence your behavior. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People calls this the first creation. You are a product of your family, friends, schools, media, community, ect.. Until you take the proactive step of deciding for yourself who you want to be, you remain in the first creation.

The questions for this week are:

1) I want you to think back to when you were young. Can you recall an event in your life that you think shaped your values and influenced your attitudes about things to this day. For example, maybe your parents got a divorce and the experience was so intense that you no longer believe in marriage or love. Or maybe your family lost their home during the Great Recession and that experienced altered the way you saw school or money.

2) How do you think the economic and political events of today are influencing kids between 0-9 years of age and how do you think their behavior as adults will be like as a result of these experiences?

Rubric

You will earn 2.5 points for responding to all the questions above and 2.5 points for responding to another student’s responses to the questions.

When I was younger, my classmates have a better living than our family. This lead me to a discussion with my father and asked him to explain why we cannot afford many things. He said to me that it does not matter