How My Values Influence Me

Throughout my life I have never really taken the time to think about what my values are and how they influence me. Growing up I learned many things from my family and those around me; the importance of honesty, balance, creativity, independence, kindness, thoughtfulness, integrity, and so on. Within this piece I will explore what some of these things mean to me, and how they will affect me as I continue to move through the nursing program and into a career in nursing.
As depicted in my mandala, one area that I value the most is kindness and thoughtfulness. I have decided to group these values together because they mean very similar things to me, and I consider them to be very interrelated. In my day to day life I think through what I am going to say or do before I actually do it, because I believe that others deserve to be treated with kindness, as I would like to be treated. Growing up, being kind and thoughtful has been something that is important in my family. My mother has continuously modeled these values for me, causing them to become my values as well. It is because I have been taught to be kind and thoughtful that I often find that I not only act for myself, but I base my actions around others as well. For example, I wouldn’t …show more content…
In an article titled ‘Nurses’ professional and personal values’ written by Michal Rassin (2008), it is stated that the better people are educated, the more they value their independence and imagination over things like conformism. Within the nursing practice independence and imagination are values that could lead to new ideas and solutions (Rassin, 2008). An educated, independent, and imaginative person would have the tools to come up with new ideas that may go against the norm, but work well (Rassin, 2008). In addition to this, because I value my own independence so much, I can sympathize with people that have lost