Your Values are More Important than Your Organizational Tips

I was inspired by a blog post I recently read titled "Your Values are More Important than Your Schedule".  The author relates how much she loves creating a family schedule, and how bummed the failure of each schedule to work perfectly makes her.  But then she realizes that "A household schedule is a tool, nothing more, for putting your values into action. When the schedule falls apart one week, or two (I'm publishing next week, hopefully, some tips for creating family schedules) life itself doesn't fall apart because underneath that schedule are solid values. Which are more important than a good schedule in the first place."

This lead me to reflect on what my underlying values are, that can then be reflected in the organizational tools I use to get our lives rolling smoothly.

Renee at FLIMBY describes her values as being in a circle, with Jesus Christ at the center of it all.  Not sharing her Christology, I struggled to think of how to describe what lies at the very center for me.  The best I came up with was "Keeping Faith", which stands in for an idea I find hard to describe: being in Right Relationship with myself and the world around me, choosing truth, justice, hope, and love, while also keeping honor and righteousness.  It's a stance of positive outlook and choosing what is right.

Then I envisioned an inner ring of values that circle that core value.  And finally an outer ring of values.

Now, does this exercise help me get a chore schedule going?  Or decide how many extracurricular activities we can fit in to our schedule?  Balance the budget?

Yes and no.  But this is what underlies all the other choices, so keeping it out where I can see it will help me remember that everything else is just the walls, and this is the foundation.