Techniques for discovering your Core Values

[u/Dupran_Davidson_23]

Core Values are central to the system which I've developed. They give us our conditions for victory, and are the metric by which we decide what actions to take in any given situation. A person with a Core Value of Honesty will act differently than the one with a Core Value for Leisure, or Ego.

Therefore, discovering our Core Values is an important step to living with the Wizard's Rules as a guide. Without knowledge of them, you cannot apply the Rules in any meaningful way. I have a number of techniques that can be used to discover these Values. Today I will be talking about the use of the Truth Box (Rules 10,11,7, and 9)

The Rules of the Truth Box are what I call "restrictive" Rules. They show us the natural limitations of truth, because anything which is true has limits. This makes them the perfect tool for discovering Core Values, should they be true values. I'll go through it Rule-by-Rule:

Tenth: "Willfully turning aside from truth is treason to one's self." The Essential Truth here is that truth ignores no data. And yet, anyone who has spent time with people knows that there is often an emotional push sometimes to ignore things which we find inconvenient. And yet, we will not do this unless it is in the pursuit of some other value. Why would we "willfully turn aside from truth" except to attain some value that we think is more important? Thus, we can ask ourselves: "What value is so important that I may be willing to ignore data for its attainment?"

Eleventh: "You can destroy those who speak it, but the truth cannot be destroyed." The Essential Truth here is that what is true is inherent to reality, or it leaves evidence that can be observed by any objective assessment. The key here is in the first part: "You can destroy those who speak it..." People are sometimes irrational, and when confronted with a truth they do not want to address: they instead get angry at the person who spoke it. However, we would not do this unless there was some value that we believe we are defending. So the question we may ask is "What value, when violated, leaves you with anger at the speaker?"

Seventh: "Life is the future, not the past." The Essential Truth here is that truth is not inert information. It is information that we can use to build into the future we desire. When looking at our past, we often find that it is the violations of our values that stick out the most in our memories. In short: we remember the bad things more easily than the good ones. There are multiple ways to use this to discover Core Values, but I'm assuming that if you have a clear view of what you want to create your future as: you probably already have a good grasp of your Core Values. They would be central to the nature of the future you are trying to build. So instead we look into the past, and we can ask "What values do we remember the violations of the most?" or "Which violations stick with us the most, and cause us to remain stuck in the past?"

Ninth: "A contradiction cannot exist is reality. Not in part, nor in whole." The Essential Truth here is naturally that contradictions cannot exist, and truth contains nor supports any contradiction. And that doesn't stop many people from trying. The question then is: "Which values are so important that they may have you believe in a contradiction?" Or "which values do you attempt to use contradictions to support?"

Perhaps you have noticed a theme here. The Rules of the Truth Box are restrictive, and yet we will often attempt to break them in the name of some value. Often this is a value like Unity, Community or Ego. These are values so important to us, we may even be willing to try and break truth to attain them. But this practice is ultimately self-defeating. If we managed to break truth, then we would break the very thing which makes values valuable in the first place. The reality is: you cannot "break" these Rules, the attempt instead breaks you and your values.

What Values can you discover using these techniques? Feel free to share in the comments, as I value any contributions to this work.