How to Cultivate your Environmental Values to Transform your Lifestyle.
This article focus on environmental values as a driver to transform your lifestyle. Value is defined by Oyserman (2015) as an internalized cognitive structure that guides choices by evolving a sense of basic principles of right and wrong(e.g. moral values), a sense of priorities (e.g. personal achievement versus group good), and creating a willingness to make meaning and see a pattern (e.g. trust versus distrust). Further, you can view values in a conventional way like honesty, integrity, service, dedication, and trustworthiness, among others, or you can view values in a special way like environmental, financial, religious, etc. Religious and cultural values got to do with faiths, beliefs and context. They usually influence how you select your particular values.
Values could be intrinsic weightings like love, truth, and passion Values could have instrumental weightings like responsibility, ambition and dedication. Values define who you are and how you interact with your natural environment. They are the compass map to what you do throughout your life.
Each individual has a different set of values as influenced by particular circumstances. Values like sustainability, biospheric and hedonic values could be considered unique; but how do you leverage on these to discover your personal climate action potentials? Conventionally, you must search your heart and mind for what you hold dear regarding environmental protection and planetary boundaries.
The first line of action in rediscovering yourself and cultuvate your envirionmental values is to redefine or review the existing value profile. by opening your mind and bringing out your core environmental interests, desires and challenges, you are setting the stage to unleach your climate action plans. indeed, by Interrogating your mind, you give t meaning and purpose to those interests and desires you hold dear. you are expected to now priorities you intests and desires. however, in prioritizing those areas of importance into areas of direct influence, you need to ask yourself what legacy you like to leave behind and what generation will you want to see in the future? What environment would you like to live? Once you have these answers, then honestly reaffirm your commitment to your values. Develop internal conviction on the principles you select as top values. Make them the compass that gives you direction anytime, anywhere, and whatever the case!
Below is a tool to get you started. It has a minimum of ten potential values as a guide; You need to rate each value as having a super high, high, medium, low or extremely low value.
You can rank your potential values in the order of relevance using the tool. Then tilt your habit and attitude to spark a tipping point process that could change your lifestyle. You will also need to expand your horizon to integrate conventional values into your catalogue of environmental values. For Instance, you can incorporate values like integrity and transparency in dealing with your expenditure, consumption and savings on reducing wastages. This will have a tipping point effect on how you consume, relax and work. With this simple tool, you can make your values environmentally-oriented capable of driving your lifestyle transformtion.
Living for the Future 