When Foundations Are Shaken

When one of the major factors that influenced your value system no longer remains, when its foundation has been so shaken that some claimed truths about it no longer hold true to you, what do you do?

How do you rebuild?
How do you rebuild your foundations?
How do you redefine your value system?
How do you re-establish what feels lost?
Where do you restart?
And on what do you now begin to live, to stand, and to shape what you believe about yourself and about life in general?

These questions came to me as I processed the many changes I went through in my life and examined the belief systems I held. I followed them all the way to their roots, tracing what I thought, what I was told, and what shaped me.

The Roots of What We Believe

The reality is we are all products of what we have been taught, told, seen, experienced, or heard, through family, culture, faith, hearsay, and the media.

In other words, if we do not question our foundations, if we do not examine how and why our beliefs were formed, we become products of lineage, history, and culture that we may not fully understand, and in some cases, may not even agree with.

And even when we do agree, we should be able to affirm to ourselves why, whilst also recognising our unconscious biases.

A Simple Example

I believe in marriage.
I believe that marriage should be monogamous. Anything contrary to that would baffle me.

But where did that belief come from?
Is it through my religious upbringing?
Through observing my parents' marriage?
Through my own experience of love, where I felt like I could only love one person at a time?

Now imagine if I didn't hold that belief at all.
Imagine if I didn't understand the concept of marriage.
Imagine if I didn't want to get married.
Imagine if my happiness didn't depend on being tied to anyone for life.
Imagine!

The reality is that for many of us, these realisations come late. By then, every choice, every decision, every path we've taken has been governed by what we were told to believe, by what was echoed to us as normal, whatever "normal" means.

Living Within Systems

Don't misunderstand me: you cannot live in this world and try to be entirely outside of it. That's almost delusional.

Here's what I mean.
If you are living within a system, you can pretend the system does not exist, but it still shapes you.
Even if you try to live ignorantly or apart from it, you remain part of it, unless you completely isolate yourself, which in my opinion is a very hard life to live.

Every choice, every decision, everything that someone else does impacts you in some way.

What sets each individual apart is their ability to think, reason, and choose.
The power and freedom of choice is always in our hands.
And as the saying goes, paraphrased, "A decision not to choose is already a choice made."

When Beliefs Collapse

What do we do when the belief systems we've held for years without question suddenly feel like lies?
When they send us spiralling into what we might call an identity crisis because those beliefs once defined us?

How do we bring stability back to our foundations?
How do we rebuild when what we stood upon no longer holds?

The Answer

The answer came to me.
It was simple, though not always easy:

You do not need to create outside of yourself, or depend on a system outside of yourself.

We can create our own standards based on who we are, what works for us, what we are about, and what we want to represent.

I do not need any organisation, body, or entity to dictate the standards by which I live, because we each have an inner compass.
A voice within us that tells us when something aligns or misaligns with our purpose.

When we are true to that inner compass, we are free to be our authentic selves, regardless of outside opinions or pressures.

The Truth About the Values We Carry

Not all values are consciously chosen.
Some are absorbed without our permission.
Some are taught through silence, control, or fear.
Some are shaped by environments where survival mattered more than truth.

We do not need to remain in inherited values that cage us.
We do not need to continue to build on foundations that harm us.
We are free to question what we've been given and to rebuild with intention.

A Personal Philosophy

Not all inherited values are bad, far from it.
But I hold a simple philosophy through which I check every value:

If the answer is "yes" to any of these, something is broken somewhere.

As humans, yes, we are animals, but we are also the most intelligent of them all.
Why bring anyone down just so we can survive?
Why kill to stay alive, when we could simply agree not to kill each other at all?

The Shared Struggle

The very things that bind us together as humans, our needs and our wants, are the same things that tear us apart.

We can argue for centuries and fight for millennia.
These struggles have been passed down again and again.

And yet, we say we want change.
But there can be no change without first examining what was, why it was, and why it should no longer be.

Some of us have inherited fears from thousands of years ago that no longer exist in our present, yet we live as if they do.
We perpetuate those fears, and the world continues to feel heavy and hostile.

We become the history we've been shaped by, not the reality of who we truly are or what we truly observe and feel.

Truth becomes unwelcome, especially if it is uncomfortable.
But uncomfortable does not mean bad, it means uncertain.
And must uncertainty always be feared?
Why can't it be studied, even embraced?

The Risk of Not Examining

When we do not examine our values, we risk living by patterns that are not our own.
We risk living in value systems where:
Control is valued more than honest care.
Profit is valued more than personal or human dignity.
Power is valued more than the core of what makes us human, our shared humanity.

Freedom to Choose, Ability to Act

To rebuild, we must first recognise that we have both the freedom to choose and the ability to act.

Freedom to choose means we do not need anyone's permission to decide how we want to live.
Ability to act means we can move in alignment with that decision, step by step.

For example, if I want to create a value system for how I manage my finances, I might decide:
I will not live my life in debt.
That is my freedom to choose.

Then I exercise my ability to act by creating a budget plan and reminding myself of this chosen value when tempted to spend outside of it.
Each time I honour that choice, I strengthen my foundation.

This same process applies to every area of life:
Spirituality, what do I believe?
Relationships, what do I need and offer?
Work and career, what do I stand for professionally?
Family, what am I building, teaching, and modelling?
Identity and self-worth, who am I becoming?

We all have the right, the will, and the ability to define our own world. Whatever definition we give it, we live inside the results, positive or not so positive. Every action has a ripple effect.

The Reflection of What We Create

Every action, every decision, every creation carries the imprint of our values.

The systems we build are reflections of us.
The tools we design, the policies we enforce, the relationships we shape, all reveal what we value and what we fear.

If we do not consciously define our values, they will be defined for us.
And what we create will reflect someone else's vision of the world.

Choosing Differently and Rebuilding With Intention

We do not need to remain in inherited values that cage us.
We do not need to continue to build on foundations that harm us.

We can define what matters, and in doing so, we can build differently.
Everything we create, every decision, every relationship, every boundary, will carry the imprint of that truth.

This is how change begins.
First within us, then in the world around us.

Six Years Later

I first wrote these words six years ago, not knowing they would grow into so much more.
At the time, I was simply trying to make sense of my own shifting foundations.

Now I can see how this reflection became a seed.
It shaped the work that followed, deepening into writings and stories that help others explore these same questions.

It threads through HUBlueprint in many ways.
Humanity Unlocked: The Blueprint is a story set in a world that mirrors our own, exploring what happens when systems are built on unexamined values and unquestioned power. It asks us to consider what kind of world we are truly creating, and what it might take to rebuild differently.

The Humanity of Leadership looks at leadership not as a prize or position, but as shared responsibility. It challenges the idea of leaders as superheroes and instead asks what could happen if leadership was rooted in dignity, transparency, and care. It reminds us that leaders are human first, and that true strength must be shared.

Closing Thought

The world we create, in our homes, our communities, our policies, and our relationships, will always reflect the values we hold.

If we want to build differently, we must first look inward.
Because every foundation begins within us.