Choices +Actions= Values A simple way to explain values to teens

I sat in the living room listening to my husband have a frank chat with our daughter last night about some of her recent behaviors last night.  I didn't intervene. I let him take the wheel.  This, I knew to be beneficial for them.  I don't always need to be the enforcer or the one who is solving the problems.  The issue is, if I am letting him solve them, I have to respect his process, which is often different than mine.  I may not have gave up that much control with Bubby, because he doesn't always understand Bubby the way I do. However, CJ is her father's daughter, for sure.  She may look like me, but she has his personality.  He understands her in ways I do not, as well as can read between the lines in ways I don't know how to.

There was a point I wanted to make, though. I did exercise all of my self control to not interject it.  I kept it 100% to myself, until now, because I will likely share this with them. lol

That point is:

There is no good or bad.  There are only choices. You make choices based at any given moment about what you value. Your values are not what you believe is right or wrong.  Your values are what you express by your actions. 

Right now, I am choosing to blog while I have lunch, instead of eating quickly and getting to my housework.  My actions are saying that, to me, in this moment , I value this blog over the 20 minutes I could be spending elsewhere.  It's not right.  It's not wrong.  It just is.  I will have consequences for that. Some positive,ie, I may help my daughter or someone else understand themselves, their choices and what matters to them most. Their are negative possible consequences,ie; I may not get everything that I need to done today.  By choosing this I am choosing those consequences.  Both the good and the bad.  Those were my choices, those are my consequences for my decisions and I am responsible for them.  We all do this everyday.  Every decision we make is a reflection of what we value and we have the ability to change more about our lives than we ever imagined if we stop and make our choices mindfully.  What we eat, what we wear, what we say, what we share, what we keep, these are all reflections of who we are and what we value. We aren't the past, or the future.  The only thing we can control is the present and we do that with our actions.

When I think of this concept part of the lyrics from The Dark Side Of The Moon-Eclipse come into my mind as an example of what I mean:

All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel.
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All you save.
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say.
All that you eat
And everyone you meet
All that you slight
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.