Chosen Values: The Difference Between Inherited and Chosen Meaning
I want to ask you something before we get into this.
How much of what you find meaningful in your life did you actually choose?
Not inherited or absorbed from the family you grew up in, the culture that surrounded you, the expectations that slowly shaped what you were supposed to care about. Actually chosen, through your own honest reckoning with who you are and what you believe this life is for.
I have encountered many expressions of faith throughout my life. I've meditated in Buddhist temples, been baptised in the church, celebrated Eid, observed Yom Kippur, shared in Diwali, Vaisakhi, Shogatsu, and Chinese New Year celebrations. Obviously there are some profound differences in theology, ritual and language. But I’ve also noticed the really human similarities.
The innately human moments. Communities orienting themselves around something larger than the day to day. People locating themselves inside something that feels like home. Trying to answer, in whatever language they have available to them, a question: what is any of this for?
For most of human history, that question had a ready-made answer. Meaning wasn't something you were expected to discover for yourself. It was woven into family, culture, religion, community and tradition. It existed long before you arrived. The question was real, but the answer was already waiting.
Today, many people, particularly in Western societies, live within a more secular culture. But secularism is often misunderstood. It isn't the rejection of religion. It is the idea that no single religious worldview should govern society, which means people are free to pursue meaning through faith, philosophy, community, service, family, creativity, or something else entirely.
Neither arrangement guarantees meaning. One may offer a ready-made answer. The other leaves the question more open. But the question itself remains either way.
This is where I think many conversations around the decline of religion miss something really important. The common argument goes like this: religion has declined, meaning declined with it, and modern substitutes like consumerism, productivity culture, and status rushed in to fill the gap.
I don't think secularism created a meaning crisis. I think it exposed one. Because when inherited answers become less dominant, we are forced to confront questions that were previously answered for us. What do I value? What kind of person do I want to be? What am I orienting my life towards? What makes a life worthwhile?
Religious people face these questions. Secular people face them too. But one of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming that because a belief or value feels deeply personal, it must have been consciously chosen, because often, it hasn't been.
Many of the things we care about arrive through our culture, family, social expectations, education, peer groups, or simply the era we happen to be living in. They become part of us long before we examine them. The religious person may inherit answers from a sacred text. The secular person may inherit answers from modern culture. Both can end up living according to values they never consciously chose.
Which means the real divide isn't between religion and secularism. It's between inherited meaning and examined meaning. Very few people seem to be talking about that.
Because the consequences of the absence of that conversation are not small. The persecution of people for who they love, the suppression of entire cultures, the weaponisation of shame and guilt against the vulnerable. These are not peripheral details of history. They are what happens when the idea takes hold that everyone must arrive at the same answer.
I think the truth is quite the opposite. The capacity to find your own meaning isn't a threat to harmony. It might actually be the foundation of it.
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan spent decades researching what actually drives human motivation. What they found was something that cuts against a lot of modern assumptions. What drives genuine wellbeing isn't achievement or approval. It's autonomy, connection, belonging, contribution and a sense of compassion. In other words, meaning. As something that requires honest examination to find.
Yet very few of us are ever taught how to explore meaning directly. We are taught how to build careers, pass exams, earn money, and be productive. All valuable. But far fewer people are ever encouraged to ask: what actually matters to me, and why? Where did those values come from? What kind of life would feel true rather than simply successful?
This is where meaning-based coaching sits. Not as a replacement for religion, philosophy, or any other framework. Not as another system telling you what to believe. But as a space to examine what you have inherited, notice what you have borrowed, and explore what genuinely remains when you look clearly at your own life.
The role of the coach is not to provide meaning. It is to create enough space for you to hear yourself clearly. Because whether you are religious or secular, traditional or modern, spiritual or sceptical, the question underneath is the same.
The meaning you currently orient your life around. Where did it come from? And where in your life is it truly yours?
If you are not sure, that might be worth paying attention to.
There is a difference between a life built by someone who knew you from the inside, and a life assembled from the outside by everything that told you who you were supposed to be.
At Logos Coaching, much of the work begins here.
If you would like to explore any of this further, you can get in touch here.
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