There is a saying in my place that free advice is not free...lol, in my short journey on earth, if there is anything I have learnt it is that if you don't stand for anything then you fall for everything.
Life is a funny place where a lot of rules are laid down and we are supposed to follow them, society tells us what to do and how to behave most often and if we don't have a mind of our own or our core values we can easily be doing life using other people's script.
I strongly believe we all should live our lives on our terms, so far our terms are not hurting other people and it's not illegal. This brings me to the word core values. Core values are what you stand for or things you believe in and have helped to shape your life and your thought process.
For instance, one of your core values is honesty, it simply means anything you do in life just has to be done in honesty. Core value gives you a guideline of how to live your life or how to structure it.
I will use myself as an example. There were three stages I had to go through in life. There was a point in my life where I believed everything I read in the news, watched in movies and read on the internet. For example, if the media said it is good to walk naked on the street or have sex publicly. I'd thought that was the right thing to do.
Then from that stage, I moved to the second stage where I became indifferent. I got to a point where I consume knowledge and I'm like I'm not sure if this is true or not. What I did before was to believe everything I read but at this stage, I became a little aware and not sure if all the information I was consuming was accurate.
At this third stage, I have become self-aware and have my core values which were built by my faith and the kind of legacy I would like to be known for. So this time around I balance all information based on my belief system, and my core values and this helps me to know where I stand concerning any particular information.
This brings me back to what I said at the beginning of this post. If you don't stand for anything then you fall for everything. In life, we need to identify our beliefs and core values so as to be the best version of ourselves and not give in to societal pressure.
So my free advice to anyone trying to live life right is to be self-aware and stand for something, be accountable to what they stand for and not live a life based on other people's script.
Thank you for your time, this post is my entry for Hive Ghana weekly engagement activity.