Intention

CHAPTER 17When Values Conflict

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

—Walt Whitman

We hope you've now identified some of the values that drive you and perhaps some actions that are better aligned with those values. But you probably realize that some of your identified values actually conflict with each other. You value achievement and so work very hard at your job, but you also value your family. You’re often torn between spending time with them and being present at work. What do you do?

The Benefits of Value Tension

Weirdly enough, the tension that you feel between opposing values can be a good thing, and here are three reasons why:

• First, tension between our values helps us to build our agency and identity in our formative years. Psychologist Seth Schwartz and his team at the University of Miami have argued that an essential part of the process of becoming an adult, which stretches deep into the 20s (or beyond), is finding resolutions to internal value conflicts. This helps us do something called individualization—the process of creating our own identities.¹
• Second, value conflict stretches our cognitive limits. Research from Princeton University on the neural correlates (associated brain patterns or activity) of moral conflict shows that solving these conflicts is hard.² It requires brain circuitry that supports more cognitive and more emotional processes—at the intersection of value conflict. Our internal ...