Personal Values Development Paper

Personal Values Development Paper

Personal values and ethical standards are almost like your DNA, individually yours.

There are so many people with different values and ethical standards that there may be some that are similar to yours, however, I believe that there are no two exactly alike. People's ethics and values are instilled by ones culture, background and environment. In my family, traditional values were very important to our upbringing. The concepts of religion, family, unity, honesty, and education were instilled at an early age. We were taught to obey and that the first duty of a child was to make our parents proud. I learned very early in my life about diversity, being one of six children brought up by the same set of parents and in the same environment with the same values how differently our values and ethics are.

As far back as I can remember my parents instilled into us that religion was the uttermost important thing in life. First was God and church then your family, every night we were reminded to say our prayers, to pray for our family, friends and those less fortunate than us. Without fail every Wednesday we attended bible study and every Sunday we attended church service. If for some reason we failed to come home on time to make bible study we were not allowed to go out or talk on the phone until we attended Sunday service or if we failed to make it to Sunday service we were not allowed to go out or talk on the phone until we attended Wednesday night bible study.

As children we had no problem attending services, however as teenagers my two older brothers and I started to have a little bit of a problem with this attending church twice a week thing. I remember accusing my parents of chuffing religion down our throats. Without surprise my parents responded with "As long as you live under this roof and we are supplying your food and clothing you will follow our rules", amazingly they did decide to leave the decision to each of us as to when we wanted to go to church as long as we attended one service a week.

I believe, this is why today as adults my brothers and I all attended church services (some more than others) and all have some type of relationship with God.

It was also instilled into us, that family is very valuable and keeping the unity of family extremely important. My parents took great strides to make sure that there was no sibling rivalry, no jealously, no favoritism among any of us. Me being the only girl out of six children did not have the luxury of being the "family princess" as many thought. Sure I was treated a little different because I was a girl, but I was never put above any of my brothers we all received equally. Funny thing though that today I am treated like the "family princess" by my parents, my brothers and their wife's. I guess my parents knew what they were doing back then, I might not have been able to handle the title of "family princess" without turning out to be a big spoiled rotten person.

Honesty and loyalty were other values that my parents were very big on. If we were caught in a lie not only did we have to sit and listen to what the bible said about lying but we also had to listen to a sermon from one of our parents about how lying is wrong and will never get any good results from lying, and no matter how bad the truth was it was always better to tell the truth. And that was followed by a punishment, the severity of the punishment depended on the severity of the lie. Now as an adult I have no tolerance for people that lie. As a supervisor I have heard every excuse imaginable for being late to work, being out from work or needing to leave early from work. I learned to be open with my employees so very time I hire a new employee I make it a point to mention that I will not tolerate any lying and would rather them call in and tell me "Boss I had a little to much to drink last night" rather than them calling in and telling me that they are sick. I also stress to them that once maybe even twice I will tolerate that as an excuse after that I will start to think they may have a problem and address it. I do not expect my employees to follow something I do not follow for example, we all have a little to much to drink once in awhile and I have gone to work with a nasty hangover and when asked