President Bush on How to Prioritize and Know Your Values

President George Walker Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Barbara Pierce Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush. President Bush served as the forty-third president of the United States.

President Bush’s path to the White House was not always obvious—he had stints in the military, business, and baseball before a sudden launch to national prominence in his late forties. In the space of a single decade, he won four major elections, including the governorship of Texas.

Core values are the fundamental beliefs and guiding principles that steer someone in their professional life or personal life. Organizations can also have core values, which serve as the common goals and guidelines that inform company culture, product development, and the overall work environment.

Common values include family, loyalty, kindness, personal development, and professionalism. Your professional and personal values may overlap or be completely different.

Following your list of values helps with decision-making and challenges in your daily life. For example, if you don’t know whether an opportunity makes sense for your career path, ask yourself whether it aligns with your different values. You can take a similar approach when making big life decisions.
Use your top values to set goals and reach your full potential. If your primary value is learning, for example, you may choose to prioritize reading a certain number of books on historical subjects in a given year.

Regardless of where you are in life, President Bush believes you need to make your priorities clear. However, before you can do that, you need to know your values. His list of core values includes his family members, friends, and faith. Knowing this helped him decide how to spend his time.

“In setting those kinds of priorities, it helps you reorganize the rest of your life,” he says. “People often ask, ‘You were so busy as president. How [could] you possibly be a good father or a good friend?’ I set that as a priority. I wanted to make sure my daughters knew that I loved them more than I loved what I was doing on a daily basis, which meant that was a priority.”

In times of stress, leaders must stay true to their core values. Here’s how President Bush lives his values:

• He approaches situations with humility. No matter how powerful of a leader you become, you must be humble enough to recognize your weaknesses. What’s more, if you’re going to be a successful leader, you have to focus on the success of others, not yourself. “You can’t lead if you’re self-centered. If the whole definition of success, in your mind, is whether or not you yourself succeed, you’ll be a bad leader,” President Bush says. “If your definition of success is that others do well and you do well alongside them, you’ll be a good leader.”
• He’s punctual. Being on time is not just key to efficiency. Punctuality “shows that the organization is not slovenly or sloppy as to how they address an issue,” President Bush says. Timeliness ensures that “the analysis is sharp.”
• He practices discipline. Overcoming any serious challenge requires discipline. “It takes focus. It takes will. It takes concentration,” President Bush says. “It’s important to analyze your habits to determine whether or not they create a lack of discipline. But like many things in life, it’s something you have to determine to do yourself.”

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