Importance of Personal Values

Human psychology says, In every situation, humans act and react as per their core personal values. In nutshell, the values one believe makes the person. What exactly are these values? How it is connected with Personal Development? Lets see,

What is a Personal Value?

Personal Values are beliefs or principles. Upon some of these Personal Values, people build their life consciously or unconsciously. These beliefs or principles becomes the core ideology of a person when he starts to adopt it. We are made up of various values and unknowingly we prioritise them. All our decisions are depends on our personal values and their prioritisation.

Personal values differs for each person and everyone in the world are set of different personal values in different proportion. This difference makes every person so unique. It inadvertently affects every decision they make and so we could see people make different choices in same situations. One's core values form his/her mental picture and the mental picture will reflect in their decision.

Personal Values Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Why Personal Values?

Animals live on their instincts and change depends on their situation. They take decisions on their instincts alone. But when humans start to think, their decisions were based on analysis. Most of the time, the emotional decisions are hard, not because of the lack of data we have in hand, but the clash between two values they believe.

While taking each decision, you are growing a value and at some point of time, the value charges you to take action when presented a situation. Even if not conscious, it happens unconsciously. So Personal values are part of us and we are driven by them. In other words, it makes the humans as thinking animals and it creates a society on a collective values the individuals possess.

How Personal Values affects individual?

A child starts to copy the values of its parents or with whom it spends most of the time. But, over time, it can start to create its own values based on circumstances. A kid may be from a conservative background, but later he/she can adopt a liberal lifestyle. A fine example is portrayed in "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by the Author Robert Kiyosaki. He mentioned that, in some point of time, he took advice from both but implemented what he thought best. There comes the analysis part. He analysed and did what he thought right and that decisions grew the Rich Dad Values in him which made him super successful.

So the values you believe and adopt, shape your life. Also it plays an important role in reflecting your self confidence. When you do what you believe, you choose a path and start your journey. When you are forced to do opposite of what you believe or you choose actions which doesn't reflect your values but oppose them, subconsciously you are shrinking the belief.

Personal Values - Decisions Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Right or Wrong, following the values by action, increase you happiness and satisfaction. On the other hand, if you do things oppose your values, you feel guilty. Each time, the action taken doesn't reflect your values, you damage the value you believe and it will directly affect your happiness and confidence.

The unpleasantness caused, will lead some people to distract their mind from actual problem. They fall for some short term happiness to overcome. But, until the root cause is identified and fixed, we have to face the same situations again and again. This is not the growth path. One should either align his/her lifestyle with his/her core values or at-least change the values to suit the lifestyle. The second one is tough but not impossible. At-least, in long run, they will find happiness.

How to identify my core values?

Brian Tracy suggests a method to identify what core values you like. Write an eulogy on what your friends and family will say about you. Its a good starting point and it will tell you what kind of life you want to live. For what, you want to remembered for and what is the legacy you want to leave. Think about it and what you get will be your desired core values. Now self access, what will your friends/family say about you now. The gap between these two is the journey you have to take.

The beginning of a journey

Once you identified your personal values, you can prioritise them in an order and the top most is the one that portrays you. That value should be the one you can even sacrifice your life for. Once the values are identified and prioritised, it is going to form your life. There should not any compromises.

Now you can start align your life based on the values. When you have to take the decisions, you can check which one align with your values. It is a long journey and once it is started you will feel happy when your life is in harmony with your values. You start to feel confident level and happiness raising.

This is the journey in which you will start to acquire what is needed for your life. The skills, things and even people who support your values will find you on their own (universe call it as Law of Attraction). You will witness that you are a speed learner when comes to acquiring the skills and you are surrounded by the people you want to live with.

The journey itself is the benefit

Another one important thing about it is, when your desired personal values start growing in you, you will feel the peace of mind. Our life is like a building. When you set the base as strong as possible, the building will be strong. Our personal values are the base of our life. When you set the values as strong as possible, the life will be unshakeable whatever happens. Because you trust your values, you build your self confidence. When your self confidence is high, your mind will be always calm. When you train your mind to be calm, you can take any decision and turn any situation to your advantage.

So the journey we begin with the values, doesn't have any end benefits, but you will start to reap the benefits when you go further each day.

Cautions

One important caution is there. When you choose a value, you make it as your highest priority. You should not leverage it or compromise it for any other thing. Universe has a law. It will reward you, when you embrace the value. But if you betray the value, you have to face the consequences. So you have to be very careful when choosing your personal values.

You may find yourself in cross roads sometime. When two of your values clashes, you have to choose the higher one. That is why we prioritised it. Changing the order in later point of time, will affect your life. Following the preset prioritisation is easy, but if you want to change it in later point of time, the change comes with its own price.

The End?

Building our life is a never ending journey. Our path may differs but the journey continues. Whether you build it on top of best values and live a wonderful life or on top of fear and live a mediocre life is in your hands. Choose your own personal values and make your lifestyle, instead of let others choose your life.

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A simple guide on how to back on track if you lose interest in your own goals.

Ever set a goal and after sometime lost interest in the Goal? Then this post is for you.

People set their own goal, then why do they lose interest in their own goal? 

There are multiple reasons why people lose interest in their own goal. Some of the major reasons are,

Lets see them one by one,

1. Impractical Goal Setting:

The Goals set when our hopes are too high, are mostly impractical to achieve. After listening to a motivational speech or reading a motivational blog/book, your hope level will be high. The goals set at that time, will be high and you will try to push yourself at your best, by not taking the limitations. You will have a self thought that "I can do anything". 

That is probably true and you will have unmatched energy at that time. But after some days, if you cannot keep up your energy, you will feel the limitations draining your energy, you will start to think about the goal as not practical one. Once you convinced your subconscious mind that it's too impractical to achieve, you tend to lose your interest in that goal and move to something else. 

Let's take an example, One day Mr. X had a nice chat with one of his friends and was in a  good mood. He also watched a motivational video. He decided to set the course of his life upwards and become a millionaire. He sat down and created a Goal for that like "I will become a Millionaire in a Year". Then he started preparing monthly, weekly and daily targets for the goal (Goal Setting). He started to follow the targets religiously for a few days or even a few weeks.

After some time, he analyzed and found that the plan he created is not suitable for his current routine and he is unable to cope-up. Sometimes he is unable to do his daily targets which results in him announcing his day as failure to achieve his grand target. These circumstances may feed his subconscious mind, that he cannot achieve his targets and eventually it leads to him to lose interest in his goal.

One thing he missed is, the truth, that achieving a big goal is not gonna be a cake walk and there should be some sacrifices. Most of the time, the initial plan backfires and one should always alter the plans on the go (Improvisation).

There are two approaches to fix it.

1. One can re-analyse, when not in high hopes and remodel the Goal to fit to our current situation.

In Mr. X's case, he can analyze again and check why he is not able to complete the daily targets. Are they too impossible to do? If so, then he needs to set more practical tasks/targets to achieve. 

if something is not working out, change the plan to different action items to achieve the Goal.

2. One can re-analyse but stick with the impractical route

Sounds funny? But it will also work, if you train your mind to see the results. The best example is Elon Musk.

"If you give yourself 30 days to clean your home, it will take you 30 days.

But if you give yourself 3 hours, it will take 3 hours.

The same applies to your goals, ambitions, and potential." - Elon Musk

As said by Elon Musk, if you give enough of yourself to your goal, you can accomplish it in less time, or even if you may not achieve it you would have achieved what others can't even think of. For this second option, you have to train your mind, not to be distracted or discouraged with the obstacles and the fear of failure. 

2. Too Many distractions

One of the reasons we fail to achieve our goal is distractions. People are good at planning, they plan, organise and set targets. But when it comes to completing the targets, most of them failed. Why?

The major reason is “too many distractions”. There is a constant race between Instant Gratification and Delayed Gratification. 

Instant Gratification 

A short happiness of fulfilling an immediate desire, like watching a movie, spending money on the things which makes us happy for a short time.

Delayed Gratification 

A long-term Satisfaction we get after achieving something, like investing money for the future, learning new skills or completing a goal successfully as per the defined target. 

Instant Gratification is powerful and so people who couldn’t resist it, are often distracted by other pleasure activities and lose their time and energy. The desire to induce the Instant Gratification activities usually keep on growing and one wont get the feeling of satisfaction. It's kind of feeding the fire. It will always ask for more. The more you give, the bigger the fire becomes. 

On the other hand, the activities which lead us to delayed gratification, may not give instant pleasure and sometimes may be boring, but in long run, it will give better results. People who can’t control their urge to mediate pleasure, fail to see the results and lose their interest in their daily targets. 

Some of the activities that can cause Instant Gratification - Checking Mails, Spending more time in watching entertainment videos and Social Media, Binge watching Movies/Series.

How to fix it?

First, we have to understand that the pleasure we get in instant gratification won't last longer and the urge will continue forever. The Second step is trying to stick with the schedule. Checking Mails and Leisure time is needed, but give them a smaller window. Give them the last place in the schedule. Give first priority to the tasks in hand and make those leisure activities as a reward for your work. No work means No reward - Make it as a rule and follow it strictly. Self Discipline plays a major role in achieving it.

Read Brian Tracy’s Eat The Frog and James Clear’s Atomic Habits. These are some of the best time investments you can make if you want to overcome bad habits and be productive with your time.

3. Having multiple goals at a time:

Another Major problem for losing interest in your goal is, having multiple goals at the same time. Some people set multiple Goals and are unable to pursue any of them. We may think that achieving multiple goals is possible. But in reality, you won't achieve any of them. In other words, if you focus on only one thing at a time, you will give your 100% at that work and your success rate will be high.

As long as you can have the bandwidth to complete all your defined targets for all your goals, you can have multiple goals. But you also have to take into consideration other factors, like personal life, work-life balance and your social life. You shouldn’t over-burn yourself. 

One may think “Why shouldn’t I?, As long as I am comfortable with it”. Over-burying yourself in a long run, may cause depression and other personal problems, which may affect your mental health as well as your primary focus on Goals. So, in the end, you may not be able to achieve any of your goals. So it is better to have one goal at a time and pursue it.

Apart from these, there may be other reasons for losing your interest in your goals. The goal may not align to your interest and may not suitable at this moment. Please share if you want to add any other reason and also share your feedback.

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A short note on Being Positive:

How come be positive in a negative situation?

You mean to say that we shouldn't worry whatever happens?

Positive thinking is just only taking positives and neglecting negatives in our life. In that case, are we not being blind for the negativity around us?

These are some of the questions, we face when we think about positivity. Aren't these true? or is there a misconception in understanding about being positive?

As a learner about positivity, I also had these questions and still searching the answers for many follow up questions. This post is to give what I understood so far. 

Image by Luisella Planeta LOVE PEACE 💛💙 from Pixabay

Being positive neither means turning blind eye on the negativity around us nor not to worry about our situation. Being positive means, taking advantage of every situation and try to find opportunity or way out of nasty situations. 

Life is not a smooth boat ride. It may be simple sometimes and complex many times. Problems occur and life may become complex in a minute. Financial problems, Health issues, Relationship problems, you can name n number of issues in the world. How come one can be positive at such situations? Is it means, we have to accept whatever happens as fate? or have to wait for anyone to save us?

No one is gonna save you until you want to save yourself. The first thing one can do to save himself/herself is to believe in self. Again a jargon used by may positivity coaches? Absolutely NOT.

Being positive means, accepting the situation and trying to act according to that, means, according to the the current situation/problems, trying to figure out what is the available best course of action we can do to change the situation/problems. Sometimes you can find a way to solve the problems, sometimes you have to live with them but can ease the pain. 

It may be a bit rougher than you thought, if you landed in this page for some magic to solve all your problems. Being positive doesn't work in that way. 

For example, lets take the boat ride again. Boat rides may be smoother sometimes, but harder at the time of storm. Worrying when its harder is not gonna make it smoother. But trying the possible ways to sustain in storm makes you alive. The steps you take at the time of storm is not gonna guarantee that the storm will disappear or you can be safe for sure. But believing, the storm may go out of our way anytime and preparing for best solution available at current situation is called Being optimistic. Once you passed that problem, it becomes smaller and it becomes part of you legend. 

As Napoleon said, 

A genius is the man who can do the average thing, when all those around him are going crazy.

 Be the genius and Be positive.

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Everyone starts as a rookie in their field but how some selective people reach the top and others disappear in the crowd? 

While thinking about it, I remembered two different stories from different eras but both are part of a war.

The first story is about famous Achilles from Iliad. He is considered as one of the greatest hero in greek mythology. When he was a child, his mother dipped him in the river Styx which is supposed to give the powers of invulnerability. She dipped him by holding his feet and apart from his feet all other parts of his body became invulnerable. 

He became a fearsome warrior and known for greater victories. In Greek Mythology, when he entered the Trojan War, he did amazing things but got killed by a wound to his heel which is the only vulnerable part in his body. 

The second story is from World War 2, in which SRG(Statistical research group), a research group at Columbia University helped the Army to fix the military problems. One of the encountered problem was, increasing the armor for planes. The data was collected from the planes returned from fight. The planes had maximum shots on fuselage. So the Miltary wanted to strengthern those parts where the planes got hit heavily.

But Abrham Wald, a member of SRG proposed a different solution, to increase the armor around the engine which had the least hits. He explained further that the data derived is from the planes returned and not included the planes lost in the fight. There is a fair chance that the engine part is weakest and the planes get hit in the engine may not be able to return but others returned. In other words, you can find people who get hit in hands and legs in the wards but not the people who are shot in the head. 

What these two stories tells us? Becoming strong is not on focusing our strengths but to strenghthern our weak points.

People who do that from the early stage, self analyse themselves and turn their weakness into strength. So when the opportunity hits, they can utilize it without a second thought. 

But vast majority of people don't want to discuss about the weakness. They hate to accept the weakness and try to cover it. In initial stages, it is even possible but later one may not even able to recover from it and it may cause serious troubles in both personal and professional lives.

When we think, if we accept something as our weakness, the society will look down on us, we accept the fear of rejection and let it ruin our chance to fix it permenantly.

So I think the first point in becoming great in any field is accepting that we are not great but trying to become one, by fixing our weakness one after another. 

There is a Chinese Proverb which goes as

"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever."

"I am so Busy on the presentation, I will workout tomorrow", "It won't take much time, I will do it just before deadline", "Calling this person will take so much time, I will call when I have free time". These are very usual thoughts we have on daily basis. But do we know, by allowing these thought and delaying our activities, we fall into the habit of delaying? 

What is Procrastination?

The habit of delaying our activity or task is called procrastination. Some people may have a thought, 'Why it is bad? Anyway I am going to complete that task in the end or I am gonna call that person when I am free. What is bad about it?'. 

The task we delay today either becomes Urgent task or negligible task. If it becomes urgent, it creates stress and if it becomes negligible, its importance is lost. Either way, we are losing our health or one step towards our goal.

Lets see with an example,

If you have an exam which you must pass in the end of month, but you procrastinate the preparation, you will feel very much stressed at the near of the exam. Initially the preparation task will be in 'Important not so urgent' zone but will fall under 'Important and Extremely urgent' and you will feel lot of pressure. It may affect both your grades and health due to lot of pressure. 

If you are a blogger, and you set a task to blog consistently. But when it comes to blogging, you procrastinate. Over a period of time, your daily task will lose its importance and you have to start everything from the scratch. 

Procrastination makes us lose our health, our opportunities, our Goal and our success. Once it becomes  a habit, we fail to acknowledge it and it may drift us backwards in our professional as well as personal life without our knowledge.

How to overcome it?

Overcoming procrastination is not a one time war, Its everyday war. 

Habits are the formula for success. Habits make people's characteristics and define people who they are. If you want to change your life, as a first thing you have to work on your habits. 

Every successful individual is different and so their success stories. Following their footprint may not be a good practice to be successful but identifying the pattern among them and following that pattern may help you to achieve your goals (Thanks Morgan Housel for this wisdom). When we try to identify these patterns among the successful people, most of them have some habits which helps them in their success stories. 

Here I have consolidated 13 habits of successful people. If you can adopt as much as possible from the list, you can truly see the change in your life. Without further delay, lets see them.

13 Amazing Habits of Successful People

1. Early Birds

Many successful people are having the habit of rising early. Not all the people who raise early are successful, but most of the successful people raise early and start their morning routines. Rising early in the morning has its own benefits. When you wake up in the morning early, that is your first victory, you have managed to score the first goal and it will give you a satisfaction in the morning. 

Another psychological fact is, early risers will have a pride on that and it will boost their self esteem level. And you will have enough time to plan, workout and organize for the day. It means you are already ahead of the world of commoners, you started your day as an achiever.

(Checkout my article to know more about my thoughts on getting up early)

2. Take care of your Mind

Taking care of mind is another common habit between successful people. Let it be doing meditation or practicing Mindfulness, they spend sometime to reboot their mind. A clear, focused mind is an important key to success. You cannot achieve anything with a cluttered, unfocused mind. They have clear goals in mind and not letting anything spoil it. 

They are aware and trained their mind that sometimes plans won't work out, uncertain things will happen but its just another day and not the end of the  world. As Napoleon the Great said, "A Genius is the man who can do average thing when all around him are going crazy". So train your mind to be calm and take care of your mental health.

3. Health is Wealth

Whatever you want to do, body is an important instrument. Successful people realize that and they take care of their body very well. Yoga, Exercise, Meditation, Healthy Diets and enough sleep, they integrate something in their life style to make sure their body is in good condition. Stay healthy and fit to get more energy and you can achieve more. 

4. Read Read Read

Successful people know that learning is a continuous process and should not be stopped. Ordinary people tend to think that the learning process is over once graduated or settled with a job. That is where successful people distinguish themselves from the crowd. They never stop the learning process and not only limited to their reading to their job interests. In a world, where ideas are respetced much, knowledge in various fields gives you an edge over others. When asked how he learned to build rockets, Elon Musk answered as 'I read Books'. What a powerful answer!!! So if you want to do something others think impossible, read a lot. You won't know where you can get an idea to connect the dots.

5. Focused Thinking

When hearing this term, most people will think, its just another word for mind related thing. No, its not. Focused thinking means knowing what one really wants and concentrate on that one goal. One of the common behaviour of successful people are, they know what they want and they work towards it one step at a time. As quoted by David Allen "You can do anything but not everything". Knowing what not to do is equally important as knowing what to do. People who wander between multiple targets wont complete any of them. To be successful, set your target and focus yourself to that single target.

6. Pursue your own goal

Successful people get inspired by others but pave their own path. As we discussed in the Intro, everyone's situations are different and one's solution may not be applicable to others. So they choose and chase their own goal instead of copying others. Think what is good for you, what is your strength, set your own goal, and pursue it.  

7. A minute saved is a minute earned

Another trait of successful people is, Quality Time Management. People who effectively manage their time, get the best of theirselves everyday. The achievers know this and plan what to do, what can wait and what should be delegated. People who knows this formula, make their time for themselves first and people who don't, spend their time for other's works. You need not to be selfish, but must have a clarity of what is important for you and what can wait. Even the wealthiest person in this world can't buy an extra minute for himself and that is why time is valued more than money, "A minute saved is a minute earned".

8. Positive attitude

Having a positive attitude is a characteristic of many achievers or we can tell that people with positive attitude achieve more. Yes, its not one of the habits, but it is the most important character to be successful. Because Positive Attitude helps people to look the problems as a growing opportunity. Hunger is painful but it is an indication that we need fuel to energize our body and if we start to ask, why we need to energize? Because our body is growing. Problems are like hunger. Positive people saw the result of it as it is needed for the body growth and negative people saw it as a pain. The perception differs because of the attitude. If you want to grow in life, change your perception.

9. Networking

Networking is one of the skill many successful people develop. Networking is gaining relationship with mutual benefits. There is a proverb "If you want to go fast go alone. If you want go long, go as a crowd". If you help people, people will help you and the benefits of growing together is, as the network grow, the growth will be exponential. Concentrate on your network if you want to grow large.

10. Practice Gratitude

Be grateful and thank others, is the mantra of many successful people. There are researches stating that grateful people often have less stress compared to others. There are excercises like writing down 3 grateful things on a daily basis boost one's happiness and make them optimistic. It is one of the easiest way to become positive. "Wahei Takeda" is a great example of how gratitude makes a person more positive and help in Maro-up(a concept of having pure heart). He is called as "Warren Buffet of Japan" and strongly believed that gratitude helps us to purify our heart and it attracts success.  

Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life. - Oprah Winfrey.

11. Grab the opportunity

Being positive and being grateful may create opportunities. But one should be always ready to grab them when they appear. Successful people always look for opportunities even in worst situation. When most people struck by the fear of market crash in 2008, Warren Buffet made billions from the crash. What others saw was a problem, what he saw was an opportunity. Opportunities will be presented infront of you, all you need is to grab it without fear or hesitation; Sieze the opportunity.

12. Comfort Zone Pit

People who doesn't want to spend their entire life in a small pit called comfort zone, achieve more. Comfort Zone is a place where you feel settled, relaxed and not stretching much. Sounds Good. right? But it silently kills your skills and make you as it's slave for life long. To achieve real growth, your potentials should be tested again and again, you have to learn something new to cross the barricades in your life. That is not going to happen in the comfort zone. If you want to grow, get out of your comfort zone, learn something new, try something you fear and grow.

13. Unplug

When fed more than what we need, we find it difficult to digest, whatever it is. Social Media, Data, Advices, even motivational stuffs, if we get more than we need, we feel stressed. So unplug yourself often. You have so much data and you already know most of the things. Go for an outing, be away from the digital world, even if you want, don't read anything, give sometime to digest the things you already have it in your mind. Best way to unplug is a morning walk without any gadgets in a park where you can connect yourself with a nature. You can find your own way to unplug, but do it regularly. When you return, you will feel a surge of energy inside you.

"We make our habits and then our habits make us." - Dryden

 So choose your habits carefully and Learn the good ones.

Happy Growing!!!
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Books are considered as a portal to another world. We not only read, but live and get some experience from every book. With every book we read, we are imparted with some knowledge and leaves an impact in our life. 

So, as a try, I am reviewing the books which I enjoyed or I think which will be helpful. I hope you guys will also enjoy these books. 

Recently I have read "You, Only Better" by Nicholas Bate. I have read many Self Development books, but this one is surely different from others. His style of writing, the practical approach and of course the hand drawn  illustrations are really awesome. 

The core of this book is not 'how to do things'. Unlike other books, he explains 'How to do right things' in this book 'You, Only Better'. He explains about different aspects in our life, which are all important and teach us how to improve ourselves in all of them. 

I don't want to give any spoilers but will give a glimpse of what is covered in this book.

What you can get from this book "You, Only Better"?

Nicholas Bate explains how you can excel in different aspects of your life and have a wonderful work-life balance. He gives various illustrations, all are hand written to explain his concepts. He also explains how you can increase your productivity, how to set you goals and achieve them.

What I liked?

I liked the narration and the way he organized the topics. Every chapter is built on the previous one. And while reading these kind of books, some of us will have our own set of questions. So he explained the concepts using examples and even tried to answer some logical questions, which we may have, at the end of each chapter, which is really awesome. Its kind of FAQ. 

I hope this much is enough and I will let you get your answers and experience directly from "You, Only Better" and Nicholas Bate. You can get the book from below link,

Hope you will enjoy the book and share your thoughts with me.