I took a training class in Inspiring Trust yesterday as part of a series of 3-hour courses to earn a “Supervisory Challenge” certificate that is offered by the institution that employes me.
One of the exercises in the class was to look at a list of about 70 values, mark the ones that are important to you, then pick the top 5, your core values.
Identifying my values, much less the core 5 was the hardest thing that was asked of me yesterday. I looked at the list, and many of the ideas resonated with me, but when I tried to examine “Is this a value I hold, that I try to adhere to, and expect of others?” part of my brain would jump in “Well, it might be, if anything mattered” or “You can’t achieve that anyway, who are you kidding?”
And thus depression reared its ugly head in my training class, and I stared blankly at the list for a few minutes, unable to check off any of them as important to me- because in that moment none of them was achievable, in my mind, and none of them mattered all that much.
This list of words had me stuck and frustrated.
Stuck, I looked ahead in the handout, and realized the next two exercises were based on working with the 5 core values we identified, so I picked 5 at near random, so I wasn’t just sitting idle, and committed to myself to go back and review that list later. I feel identifying my values will help me, not only for that class, and as a supervisor, but would help me in dealing with situations in general. I was distressed that I couldn’t identify them, and then irritated once I figured out it was my depression acting up.
Today I’m a bit more calm about the whole thing, but not yet at a good mental place to review that list.
Maybe next week.
