Life on Purpose: How your values guide the choices you make.

Creating a life outside of the uniform includes knowing who you are without the job title. Part of your identity is made up of your values which are supported and reinforced by the choices you make every day.

If you value a strong work ethic, being dependable and reliable, you’ll make the choice to show up to work every day and probably won’t be one to call in sick or take time off knowing it’ll create mandates for coworkers or can leave them unsafe working short staffed.

If you value family, spending time together, creating memories, being supportive of your kids’ sporting events, you may find this in conflict with your work ethic. You want time off to do things with your family, but you don’t want to leave coworkers short staffed or look like a lazy officer not showing up.

These are tough choices to make. Not only do your values influence the choices you make, but your choices can change your values over time as well.

If you value work ethic at the expense of family and never take time off, your brain questions if family time is really a value since your choices don’t support it. With enough repetition of the choices you make, your values change, and it becomes a lot easier to make excuses for why you’re not spending time with family. “I have to work. I have to provide for the family. I have bills to pay.”

Unfortunately, for many officers this results in divorce and a strained relationship with their kids on the few days a month they get to see them. You may even hear them say their family just didn’t support the career, they didn’t understand, or they knew what they signed up for when they got married. These excuses show how their values changed based on the choices they made over the years.

And it’s not just family time. You may have told yourself you value time in nature and going hunting. But after years of not making the time, you come to tell yourself it’s no longer a value. It’s no longer important to you so you let it fall away.

For many officers all that is left is the job because they’ve allowed hobbies, relaxation, fun, travel, family, and relationships to fall away.

To stop this from happening, the first step is to identify what you want your values to be. What values are important to you?

Here’s some values you may identify with.

Knowledge: To pursue and learn about new things and ideas; to search for truth, or information; to challenge what you think you already know; be open to different perspectives; be intellectually stimulated.

Accomplishment: To achieve your personal goals with a sense that you’ve done something of meaning, worth and value; to experience self-satisfaction when you rise to a challenge, accomplish a task, or solve a problem.

Recognition: To receive attention, notice, approval, or respect from others; to feel appreciated for your efforts; to receive positive feedback.

Creativity: To be free to develop new ideas, solutions to problems, improvements in products or procedures, or designs of things or plans; to be mentally challenged; to enjoy more right brain activities of art, music, movement, writing, building something with your hands or making delicious food.

Security: To feel safe; to have self-confidence; to trust people; to have job security and continuity of income; to have sufficient income or other assets to use as you wish; to be materially comfortable; to provide for yourself or family.

Integrity: To be consistently open, honest, ethical and genuine even when no one is watching.

Health (physical/mental): To feel energetic and free of physical pain from injury, disease, or infection; to feel free from worry and anxiety and of emotional blocks to success in all aspects of your life; to have peace of mind; to make healthy choices.

Good time and pleasure: To have fun, to enjoy yourself; to do things you like to do rather than only things you have to do.

Friendship: To have close friends; to join groups for companionship; to look forward to and enjoy social relations; to be accepted, valued and appreciated by your social group; to belong.

What else would you add to this list?
Write down your 3 most important values.

Moment of truth.

How do they actually show up in your life? What do your behaviors, actions, and attitudes tell someone about your values?

If you say you value integrity but when the boss isn’t around you don’t follow policy, does your actions actually support your value of being honest when no one’s watching? Do you gossip about coworkers but act differently to their face? Have you been honest on investigation questionnaires or worried about how it might affect an upcoming promotion? Do you need to make different choices to truly support integrity?

If you value relationships or friendships, what are you doing to nurture those friendships and make time for those people? Do you always say no you can’t see them because you’re too tired or too busy? What would you need to change or do to show others you value relationships?

After asking yourself these questions, you can see where you need to make different choices to start living your life based on your values and who you want to be. Just make sure these are your values and not the expectations of others.

To dig a little deeper, you can look at your personal values list and ask yourself where these values came from. Were these values passed down from your parents, teachers, coworkers, or society?

If you’re surrounded by coworkers who value going to the bar every night as their idea of fun and pleasure, you may think that’s what you need to do to fit in and make friends. But is this your definition of pleasure and fun or would you prefer going to the gym, bowling, playing pool while drinking a lemonade instead?

Does being an officer run in the family so you’ve been taught to value law enforcement, or have you heard having a state job is the best so you shouldn’t want to try for something else, something deemed less than?

Sometimes you can hold onto values because you don’t want to disappoint other people and tell them you don’t agree with them or that you have different values. But at the end of the day, you have to be happy with what you see when you look in the mirror. If that’s not the case, then it’s time to reassess your values and make changes.

Start small. Watch YouTube videos to learn something new. Spend an hour on your day off on your hobby that brings you pleasure and joy. Spend one on one time with your kids or partner. Schedule a date night with your spouse once a month. Use a sick day for your mental health to recharge and do something of value to you. Go for a walk or exercise for just 30 minutes a couple times a week. Try new healthy recipes.

Share your values with your loved ones so they can support you and understand why you’re making these choices. Ask about their values so you can do the same for them.

Don’t lose yourself to the job by letting it make all the choices for you. Live by your values and you’ll be living your life on purpose.