Welcome to ValuesCrafting

What kind of world do you want to live in?

I know the world I want.

A world where people are treated with love, dignity, respect, kindness, understanding, and trust. Where we tell the truth, keep our word, respect our differences, and take responsibility for our choices.

I believe everyone deserves to live in that world. Including you. Including me.

But we don’t create that world by saying we believe in those things.

We create it by how we live.

People believe what we do more than what we say. Our values become visible in the choices we make—especially when living them is difficult.

How do I respond when someone is unkind? What does integrity require when doing the right thing costs me something? Who do I choose to be when life doesn’t go the way I hoped?

Every day, through our words and actions, we are creating the world we ourselves must live in.

That is why I write ValuesCrafting.

For more than 55 years, people have trusted me with the questions that arise when life gets complicated. I’ve listened to people make difficult decisions, lead others, navigate relationships, face loss, start over, and wonder what comes next.

Different lives. Different circumstances. But underneath them, I kept encountering the same fundamental question:

Given what I believe, how do I want to live?

I believe every person matters. Every person has the capacity to choose how they will live, regardless of education, experience, status, or circumstance. And because we have that capacity, our choices carry responsibility.

The principles I write about are not complicated: human worth, love, dignity, trust, respect, integrity, responsibility, purpose.

Living them can be.

That’s where discernment begins.

Most weeks, ValuesCrafting takes something that happens in an ordinary life and looks at it closely. A difficult conversation. A decision we can’t quite make. Someone who disappoints us. A loss that changes the life we thought we were going to have. Or one of those seemingly small choices that turns out not to be small at all.

We ask what our values require of us—not in theory, but here, now, in this life.

I bring stories, questions, observations, and more than half a century of listening to people wrestle with what matters.

I won’t decide your how for you.

But I do insist that the what and the why matter.

Because I believe we are here for a reason. Our lives have purpose. We matter to one another. And the thousands of choices that make up an ordinary life eventually become the person we are—and help shape the world around us.

That gives each of us both an opportunity and a responsibility.

So, what kind of world do you want to live in?

Don’t just wish for it.

Live in a way that creates it.

Welcome to ValuesCrafting.

Susan

If you'd like to know more about the person behind ValuesCrafting, I invite you to visit my About page. It’s the story of how ValuesCrafting came to be—and why I believe people are far more capable and wiser than they often realize.