At some point, it’s important to ask whether the life you’re living is truly your own or one shaped by other people’s expectations. That kind of reflection often leads to a closer look at your personal values — the beliefs that shape how you think, make choices, and show up in the world. But just because something is held as a value doesn’t always mean it’s being used in a healthy or helpful way.
Sometimes, values are shaped by fear, pressure, or the desire to please others. They can even be used to justify inappropriate behavior that’s rigid or harmful. So it’s important to take a closer look. Are the values you’re holding onto really virtuous, or are they functioning more like vices in disguise?
key takeaways
Pursuing Virtues: Virtues can be achieved by finding a balanced midpoint between two vices that can change based on unique circumstances.
Anxiety Can Distort Values: Anxiety can lead to unhealthy behavior when discomfort is avoided rather than faced, emphasizing the importance of staying aligned with your values during challenging moments.
Strive for Growth with Compassion: Recognizing and addressing vices requires self-awareness, accountability, and compassion, with a commitment to improving behavior and fostering wellbeing for yourself and others.
TRAITS THAT HELP OR HINDER GROWTH
Clarifying Vices and Virtues
A good starting point is to ask: how do we distinguish a virtue from a vice?
A virtue is the balanced midpoint between two vices.
This is what Aristotle called the “golden mean.” Confucius had a similar philosophy, and both taught that virtuous behavior avoids both excesses and deficiencies of particular qualities. We should strive to move away from the extremes in the pursuit of a healthier, more balanced way of being.
When thinking about how vice can become justified as virtue, consider someone who’s spent much of their life being taken advantage of.
They may come to value assertiveness as a way to move away from the vice of passivity. But without experience or skill, they might overcorrect, slipping into the vice of aggression as an excessive form of assertiveness.
This is understandable and even to be expected in practicing new behavior. And if they seek to develop healthy assertiveness, they’ll make efforts to move closer to the balanced middle between the two extremes.
But this is challenging! Life experiences can contribute to the development of vices that are hard to shake. Emotional injuries we still feel the need to protect can make us cling to those excesses that pull us away from the golden mean.
Vices may become inappropriately justified for their protective quality at the expense of taking others into healthy consideration.
Unless we’re willing to examine the conditions that shaped such vices, it becomes much harder to change and move toward true virtue.
✹ Don't Miss: If you haven’t yet explored whether your current path aligns with your true values, see Breaking Free From the Script: How to Live with Intention and Purpose.
WHEN FEAR SHAPES DECISIONS
The Influence of Anxiety on Our Values
When we’re acting from a place of anxiety, we’re more likely to respond in ways that aren’t helpful.
A 2015 study found that anxiety can increase unethical behavior, as people become more prone to self-serving decisions aimed at minimizing risk. But this isn’t necessarily a problem with anxiety itself — it’s more about our difficulty in tolerating discomfort, or the body’s limited ability to contain it well. We all have our limits before anxiety shifts from practical to problematic.
What this means is that we have a responsibility to contemplate the type of person we want to be when things get difficult.
If the goal is simply to avoid anxiety, it becomes far too easy to justify vices under the banner of self-protection.
Instead of acting with courage, we may grow passive or reckless.
Instead of being open-minded, we might shut down or lack discernment.
Rather than being self-controlled, we’re impulsive or rigidly suppressed.
✸ Next Read: For more on identifying who you want to be in anxious moments, read Who Do You Admire? How to Use Role-Models to Overcome Anxiety.
Of course, none of us are expected to act perfectly in everything we do. We all have our struggles — times when we make mistakes, fall short, or act in ways that don’t align with our values. But the work is in taking responsibility for those moments and making honest efforts to move toward healthier action.
If you’ve been justifying or ignoring behavior that doesn’t reflect the person you want to be, now is the time to recommit to change.
Compassion for ourselves is essential, but so is a steady commitment to growth. That’s what supports a life of wellbeing no matter what challenges arise.
