A personal creed is like a North Star or a compass that dictates how you show up in the world. And most people don’t know it, but it can be one of the most powerful and effective, yet simple life hacks that exist. This can be a profound spiritual practice and/or an impactful personal development exercise.
A personal creed is a concept or principle that reflects your core values, that you hold yourself in alignment with and accountable to. It could show up in the form of a short statement or one single word or a concise idea. This is a thing that you want to be an embodiment of. Maybe something that you want to live up to. It dictates how you show up in the world. It guides you to be who you want to be in life. Before you panic about the inauthenticity of trying to BE someone, you should know that part of authenticity is deciding who you want to be and why. True authenticity involves stripping away "fake" goals and who you think you must or should be; so as to make your ideal self a reflection of your genuine values. If your ideal self-aligns with your authentic core, the opposition between being who you are and being who you want to be disappears.
A creed could be literally anything. So long as it is something that YOU are powerfully aligned with. To give you a list of examples, it could me: Softness, integrity, safe harbor, strength, do unto others as I would have them do unto me, empowerment, put a dent in the universe, leadership, connection over ego, open minded, warmth, respect worthy, responsible, one thing at a time, follow through, poise, actively engaged, patience, present, family first, pay attention, be of service, thrive not survive, disciplined, respond don’t react, integrity over image, consistency, the buck stops here, be a goldfish, empathy, I am captain, gentle, right priority, do it afraid, keep the spark alive, be like (fill in the blank with someone or something you want to emulate), proactivity, curiosity is key, etc. This list could be literally endless. Your creed must be something that is in alignment with your personal development and that you really believe will bring about improvement and that you deeply value.
You may already have an idea of what you want your creed to be. If not, think about what trait(s) you want to embody. How you want to feel in life. Is there something you have not yet mastered, but very much want to master? Who do you admire most and what for? Consider what you think might turn things around in a positive direction. When you picture your best self, what creed would hold you strong to that direction? How might you challenge yourself in a way that feels healthy and needed?
You could pick a creed to govern your life in general. And/or you could pick a creed to govern different elements of your life. For example, a man may pick “ownership” to govern his life in general, “be a safe harbor” to govern his relationships with women, “brotherhood” to govern his relationships with men, “wear a velvet glove” to govern his career and the list goes on. Also, sometimes creeds serve you for your entire life while others are seasonal. They serve a specific purpose at a specific time.
Once you pick whatever that creed is going to be, you live up to that creed and hold yourself to it every minute of every day. As if you are making every micro-moment of your life, all your thoughts, words, decisions, behaviors and actions a reflection of that creed. This simplifies the process of showing up in your life the way you want to show up. Everything you say and everything you do is going to be measured against your creed. If you don’t know what to do, you are going to consider what you must do in order to live up to your creed.
So that you understand this, I’ll give you two examples, imagine that Jeoffrey has been struggling a lot in his relationship with being in the back seat of his life and he has slipped into a flipped polarity dynamic with his wife who is now stressed out and resentful. Jeoffrey thought hard about what Creed he wanted to use as a North Star. He landed on: Be Like George Washington. For Jeoffrey, who was a history buff, George Washington embodied so many of the things he wanted to embody as a man and in his relationship. Courageous leadership, self-restraint, the health of things in his care above his own status, being an active driver of what he wanted to see happen, intentionality, initiative etc. So, Jeoffrey started to live with being a George Washington as his creed. He considered: When would George Washington wake up, and what would he immediately do? As a result, Jeoffrey started waking up earlier to get ahead of the family, so he could direct them through the process of getting dressed, fed and off to school/work. He started dressing better because when he was tempted to put on the same T-shirt multiple days in a row, he remembered that George Washington would have taken more pride in himself. When his wife got mad at him, he asked himself “how would George Washington handle this?” As a result, he didn’t shy away from the conflict. And he kept himself under emotional control. He imagined himself to be the leader in the scenario and so, he took it upon himself to figure out what she was in pain about and to propose a solution to the pain rather than the surface issue hiding the pain. When he was at work, he imagined how George Washington would act if he suddenly got body transplanted into his (Jeoffrey’s) body. This made him take way more initiative at work. When he went to the grocery store, and he was faced with the decision about what toothbrush to buy, he asked himself, which one would George Washington buy? Basically, with everything from tiny to big and at all moments of the day, he held himself accountable to the creed of: Be like George Washington. Because Jeoffrey picked a person to personify as his creed, rather than a trait like leadership, he did need to differentiate between becoming exactly like that person, including the negative traits. For example, Jeoffrey knew that George Washington was a workaholic who was unavailable to his partner and also had a raging hot temper. These traits are not what he wanted to emulate in his life or in his relationship. Rather, it was George Washington’s positive traits that he wanted to bring in. And those “presidential qualities” he felt would bring his self-respect and marriage down a better road. Consequently, it did exactly that. It led to him being promoted and also to his marriage improving so much so that his wife was convinced that her prayers had been answered and she had experienced a walk-in by her perfect guy.
Emily settled on the creed softness. She has come to a point in her life where she is fed up to the max with being locked into this go-getter, armored, hard way of being. She has paid a heavy toll for it and is now chronically ill. So, she wants to live according to the creed softness. Every day, she tries to embody softness. She asks herself “how could this be softer”? How could I say this softer? How could I do this softer? When she has choices to make, she asks herself: Is it softer or harder? Will it make me softer or will it make me harder? She gravitates towards softness. She chooses softness. She used to wake up with an alarm, she doesn’t do that anymore. She has researched softer ways to communicate to other people. She has decked out her apartment with things that are soft and soft colors and things that put her is a safe and therefore soft mode. When she is faced with the decision to take one route to go somewhere vs. another, she thinks about which route feels softer and takes that route. For her, softer is really about a state of being. So, she lives according to staying in alignment with that state of being. Emily is much happier now and many of the symptoms she had been experiencing have been dissipating. Emily feels horrified when she thinks of ever going back to the state she was stuck in before.
The practice of living according to a creed greatly simplifies the process of self-development. It has an uncanny way of stripping the complexity out of life, while accelerating personal growth and life improvement. And when you do this for long enough, it will become habitual to the point that it is second nature, you will no longer have to intentionally work on it. So what’s your creed gonna be?
