Now that you’ve gotten a brief overview of what a worldview is, I want you to consider how worldview thinking affects your everyday life. This week, you will be writing a short paper outlining portions of your worldview. But, what does this mean for real life?

If your worldview is the underlying foundation for everything you believe, and if our beliefs lead us to action, we can view it like this:

Worldview –>

Beliefs –>

Values –>

Choices –>

Behavior –>

Consequences

Consequences can be both positive and negative. So let’s look through an example of how this might look in real life based on some of my own life choices.

So my worldview says that education is important. This informs my beliefs – everyone should get some kind of education, but not all education happens in the classroom. These beliefs shape my values. I am a college professor, but I don’t think that everyone should go to college. College isn’t the only way to get an education, despite what the American media may try to say..

Can you see how this plays out? Every part of our worldviews can follow this chart. Actually, we can follow it backward too. Say you have a consequence and you want to know what led to it. Follow the chart.

Imagine you and a friend get in a fight and the friend storms off (consequence). You are bewildered by what just happened so you start to think back about the argument. The conversation had started off in a friendly way, but as you think back on it, your friend started to fidget uncomfortably when you brought up the upcoming presidential election. In fact, they tried to change the subject several times (behavior). As you think back to every conversation you’ve ever had with this friend about politics, it hits you that they always change the subject (choice). The only time you’ve ever had a full conversation about politics with this friend was during your US History class, when they told your professor that they had been raised to believe that politics are highly personal and should NEVER be spoken about with anyone other than your spouse or children, because friendships and acquaintances have been ruined by this topic (values, beliefs, worldview).

How do you see this playing out in your life? Can you find examples moving through this flowchart both ways?

https://youtu.be/VXnSE0uvwzM