Living by values

 Recently, I have been pondering upon dealing with the ups and downs of life with stability and figuring out the right way to do it. Turns out that there's no right way out here, but there are things that we can control and understand. Let us first understand what are values in its most fundamental sense?

So if we go by the dictionary definition, "a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life" are values. Basically it's what a person thinks is important in his or her life. When we go through life, in its very beginning our values and principles are taught to us by our parents and teachers. We live by it for most of our lives, but there are life experiences and other aspects of society that might shift our beliefs on what's important to our lives. For an example, I personally believe that hardwork is the key to success and now there are other individuals that have gotten successful without a lot of hardwork. Now my belief about hardwork can shift completely or partially depending on the life experiences I have seen. But at this point, I have started believing that consistent hardwork still is the key to success and maybe the examples I might have seen would be a one off or an exception to the principle. Point being there's a certain belief about hardwork that I still have. On another front for an example a healthy relationship, I never had any particular belief about it before but today there's a certain belief that relationship is work also and its not just the usual hota hai chalta hai. There are important boundaries, open communication, trustworthiness that are all important from the relationship standpoint and that does require time. I have failed in a couple of them so I now know that relationship is work and fun both. The important point here is to understand that values are simply standards of behaviour that's acceptable. 

Have you seen the big companies in the world, for an example Amazon, they have 16 leadership principles that they value the most. Similarly even google holds 10 values on their website. I was just comparing the principles of Amazon and Google.  One primary principle that both these tech giants believes is to focus on the user and all else will follow. At amazon the same principle is called as Customer Obsession . A similar principle would be there in a lot of companies but that research is for another day. Google has a principle fast is better than slow and Amazon has a principle of bias for action, so in a way a lot of these companies do value very similar principles and that's why both of these companies are very successful. So at the end of it all it's the values that drive you to success and not the success driving us to values. 

Now why are these values so important? In an ever changing world, where one day you can be super successful and the very next day you can fail it's important to understand the principles that lead you motivated in the most adverse circumstances. When elders, teachers or the right guidance is not there, I certainly believe moving to principles will help and reliably so as they wouldn't change whether Its a storm or whether its a bright sunny day, it will be a guidance for leading life the way you want. 

I want to end up by saying that just make a list of 5-6 principles in life that you wouldn't compromise on no matter what happens in life and keeping those principles as the basis you would take the important decisions in your life. 

These are the values or principles that guide me:

At work: 

* Hard work is the key. 

* Ownership is owning your mistakes but at the same time owning your successes. 

* Whatever you do think in terms of providing value and not just taking value. 

* Speak through knowledge not through opinions like here. 

Relationship: 

* Spend quality time

* Be vulnerable and open about your life. 

* Trust the other and be loyal still. 

* Hard conversations are all about communicating things the right way. 

* Relationship is not all fun, it's work also, and if done the work, fun will be a by product. 

PS: I am no guru but these are simply opinions that I want to share.