Core values are central to the way we exist in the world.

They have something in common with other values...such as personal values...family values...or professional values. But they are specifically different from those value systems in important ways.

All values...including core values...are strong desires that move us to act in certain ways...either to keep something we cherish or to get something we yearn for.

In our system of personal values...we may want to keep our health...and take the right action to do that. Or we may want to get better health...so we change our diet...we exercise in order to achieve that.

Our professional values...what we want to get or keep...reflect how we want to make our contribution and be remembered. So an actor may want to get an important role to keep his name famous and to make a contribution to dramatic art...for which he will be remembered. Think of Charlton Heston in Ben Hur...it's a timeless classic. A senator may want to keep her senate seat as a base from which she can get to be president.

Personal and professional values are usually conscious and we express them in goals that we set and plans we make to achieve those goals. So we write resumes and go to job interviews to get ahead professionally...or we buy a juicer to begin dieting for better health.

But core values are different in three ways...

First...With personal and professional values...we care about the outcome...because we have designed the outcome consciously...a new job...better health...the presidency.

With core values...we cherish them and live by them without caring about the outcome. The early Christian martyrs kept to their new faith despite the fact they could be fed to the lions.

Second...Core values are largely unconscious...we have them without really being aware of them.

Third...Unlike the consciously developed strategies to achieve personal and professional values...the strategies we use to express our core values may seem contradictory. For example...

Many people who have helpfulness as a core value have had the experience of wishing to do someone good...and took action on that value to be of help...only to be told to mind their own business...after their intrusion made a situation worse. "I was just trying to help" they say.

So the strategies people use...to live out their unconscious core values...may be in direct opposition to their core value. Like the female minister who wanted to heal women of the effects of sexual abuse...by praying over the women while fondling their genitals. Her value was excellent...her strategy...(sexual battery)...was completely irrational.

About the Author

Thomas Drummond, Ph.D. is trained in clinical, developmental, and neuropsychology. For more than 20 years he has worked with priests and religious who crossed sexual boundaries and lost their ministries. To learn more about how core values can derail ministry visit http://www.boundaries-for-effective-ministry.org/core-values.html