Our Family's Core Values

During the summer this past year, we read some chapters of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families by Stephen Covey with some of our neighbors, and were inspired to develop a set of family core values. Here's what we came up with after some fun brainstorming sessions together:

We had a few sessions--some at home, others in Vail at "Camp Connelly", another at Red Robin over bottomless fries and campfire sauce (yum!)--and asked questions like:

What words define our unique family culture?

What are our dreams and aspirations as a family?

Who are we, really?

We generated a lot of words, and voted on them, Olympic style (eliminating the lowest scores, then voting again and repeating the process until we had our list).

This process also segued, at some point, into a list of places we'd like to travel to together:

That travel list made me all starry-eyed. I put it away in the summer and forgot about it, without realizing just how much it would shape our plans for the coming year...

I find that lists, even ones that we tuck away and almost forget about (I discovered this list in the above photo again just today!), have a subconscious effect of generating action, maybe even serendipity, what The Alchemist describes as the "universe conspiring in your favor." Years ago I made a vision board, and POOF--what seemed like far-off dreams (pictures of Vail, Norway and many other places I'd never been) manifested in our lives in surprising ways (we began spending summers in Vail; Mark's work required a trip to Scandinavia, etc.).

But that's another topic. Back to our core values...

We chose FUN, because we're cheesy-goofy, and we like to have traditions and dance parties and trampoline jumps and Chinese fire drills and, well, just quirky fun. 

TRAVEL (we were on the fence between this word and "adventure," but Gryffy insisted on "travel," and we want our kids to have as much ownership of these words as possible, so "travel" won out).

TEAM, because we function best together, and there's no one we'd rather be with than each other.

CREATIVE, for all our individual creative pursuits, and the creativity we bring to our family life.

LOVING, with snuggles and kind words and genuine care.

LOYAL, putting our family first and having each others' backs.

Next, we tried to find creative ways for these words to flow together visually.

Then I created a poster on Photoshop of our words displayed over one of our best memories (a black and white photo I took of the Hagia Sophia), and colored certain letters so that a hidden word would appear that knit them all together: FAMILY.

We recite our core values each Sunday to begin Family Night with our hands stacked, yelling "Connelly!" at the end, and then we sing the family rules that the kids also chose last year at "Camp Connelly," and put to a tune they learned for the Greek alphabet ("ATTITUDE, ORDER, RESPONSIBILITY, PEACE and ASKING are our laws").

We have the poster displayed for us to see every time we walk inside the front door, reminding us who we are, together. It's been great to review these words in the New Year as we contemplate the values we want to guide our lives.

This is Us: