My Core Values

My goals, for the most part of my life, have been set by invisible scripts that have been passed on to me. Those goals were based on expectations - from friends, family, society - to study well at school, to get an engineering seat, to get into an MBA institute... And then I joined the workforce. Here the goals are set at various frequencies - based on business needs... After a few years of going with the tide, I ask myself

What are MY goals based on MY needs?

And I set out to answer that question.  As a first step to understanding myself, I took up the values exercise to figure out what my core values are (in case you are thinking of trying to get yours, two links)

A few words that struck me strongly are -

Achievement Attitude Competence Determination Freedom

Inner peace Improvement Integrity Knowledge Learning

Meaning Personal Growth Result-oriented Sincerity Wisdom

From which I filtered out my top 5 core values which I could relate to few other values on the list and these core values made the moments of my life

1. Achievement (Competence)
2. Wisdom (Knowledge / Personal Growth / Improvement / Learning)
3. Determination (Result-oriented / Sincerity / Attitude)
4. Integrity (Inner peace / Freedom)
5. Meaning

• Achievement gives me a sense of fulfillment. Looking back, my proudest moments were moments of achievement - achieving success, achieving solution, achieving resolution, achieving trust, achieving milestones, achieving total failure and the like

• Wisdom gives me direction. The pursuit of wisdom engages me with the walks of my life - family, work, society, spirituality...

• Determination tells me I have free-will. I tells me I have beliefs I am willing to stand for. It helps me in making an keeping commitments

• Integrity gives me happiness. It gives me the inner peace that I have done my best at any point of time given my constraints with the information I possessed at that time

• Meaning saves me from complacency. The pursuit of meaning in everything I do, figuring out how the pieces fit with everything else keeps me going.

Coming up with this list frees me at a certain level. All my time and all my effort from now on need to go into these areas because these are the core values that define me.

I heard our HR director mention that one feels a sense deep sorrow and general dis-satisfaction in life when their core values are compromised. And I have started vouching for that since I have figured out what my core values are.