Vision for my life: “When the game is up, I want to be able to look back at a well lived life, guided by curiosity, punctuated with discovery and adventure.”
In my previous blog, I introduced my vision for my life. Now on to the next step of conscious approach to lofty goals: Principles/Values. They help define one’s personality — self-image and approach; they help guide in one’s pursuits and inform one’s actions.
If one is not guided by a set of values, one may have to resort to thinking from first principles on most decisions which will make decision-making effort intensive and onerous. This will necessarily draw out disproportionate share of the one’s energy reserve and in turn, this will either make decision making more error prone or limit the number of decisions one is able to make. On the other hand, one may not think much before making decisions and this obviously can’t be good. Instead, if one is guided by a set of values that align with that person’s natural inclinations, it becomes easier for that person to make decisions — lesser energy is spent — more likelihood for better decisions. As such, consciously or otherwise, it is likely that we do tend to get guided by a set of values anyway — my submission here is to have a conscious view of this set — critical view on each of these values -> understanding why a principle makes sense in your context and what kind of value it could accrue. Limiting the number of principles is equally critical as one too many values may blunt out and/or limit the sharpness of one’s self-image. Also, incompatible set of values can confuse actions and self-negate or offset value creation.
They also help simplify life, in general — they make our judgments easier and consistent and also help build conviction alongside.
Ultimately it comes to making decision-making more efficient and release energy to get on with actions. Our actions are always constrained by time and energy — so, optimizing the use of these limited resources should be a critical consideration in our pursuits. It just makes sense that we build a system or a method that helps us in optimizing these resources. Clarifying and fixing a set of values is definitely a step in this direction.
Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way — Stephen Covey
After reflection on my life this far and my aspirations for my future, here is my list of values that I have arrived at:
- Integrity
- Candour
- Curiosity
- Compounding
- Long-term orientation
Some of these (candour and integrity) came naturally to me as I am probably made that way. I have been relying on them most of my life and they definitely served me well. The remaining values are acquisitions in the last few years (long-term orientation, curiosity) to few months (compounding).
Values and principles belong in the frontal cortex region of our brain — they help us pursue the hard path when it is the right thing to do.
If all of this sounds very theoretical and pedantic, you are not alone. I felt exactly the same way as I embarked on this path several months ago, now. I had been so busy in my life for such a long time that I did not give any serious thought to the conscious approach — being busy seemed to be more important than anyone else. I have come across few young folks who seem to be well on the conscious path right from very early in their lives. At first, I was baffled and then confused with where they get their conviction from. Taken in by curiosity, I thought (and read) about this quite a bit. While I still can’t explain much of why this happens, it is clear to me that the reservoir of conviction is available for everyone to dip into. Either our personal circumstances come in the way and/or we are generally too caught up keeping up with the society’s established paths of perceived progress or keeping up with the Joneses. Most of us struggle to break out of this perceived “hold” and this includes me. But this can’t be an excuse for not trying. I believe power of values comes in full import when we negotiate tough situations in life. These are the times when we rely on our value system to anchor our actions — we rely on the “compass” of our principles to help guide our actions. It is my belief that conviction in our values tend to increase with their repeated use and eventually we develop an intuitive feel for the power of our value system.
Principles are more important than the money or my title — Muhammad Ali
In conclusion, values help us
- optimize on our time and energy while making decisions and executing actions
- define a consistent image of us in our and other’s minds
- serve as a compass in guiding us particularly when we face tough situations
- to an extent, free us from expectations of our actions
