· 10 min read

My Core Values

The fundamental operating system

In a previous blog post, I tried to explain why defining your core values is essential. These are some of my core values designed around my strengths and flaws. I have modified these multiple times.

I want things to be as “sorted” in the long term as possible without being super involved. I do not compromise on my values. They are my best bet. In this post, you’ll find some ways to have things sorted.

My core values


Authenticity: Being okay with not being perfect

To know that you’ll probably make some mistakes. But it’s gonna be okay.

  • Authenticity allows for confidence.
  • Authenticity allows for not having too many threads in your mind.
  • Authenticity allows you to accept who you truly are. And to accept who someone else truly is without putting filters.

There are many aspects to authenticity;

  1. knowing who you truly are: self-awareness
  2. acting in way that is truly you

This doesn’t mean you don’t change. Authenticity is an acceptance before the change and being able to change for yourself.

Therefore, it supports accepting and adapting to your changes.

Eg: You don’t have to be the same person you were when you were 5.

It’s a level of indescribable self-love. To truly care about oneself. It’s saying to yourself that you are imp to yourself. And worth taking care of.

Authenticity isn’t arrogance. It isn’t meant to put someone down. Other values, including Team work do apply and are very important. But authenticity is a comfort in your own skin.

For:

  • Phrases like: I do it for myself.
  • This isn’t everything. But things like dressing better, exercising, taking care of yourself is what you must do for yourself

nuance

Don’t talk about yourself badly. Specially when you havent done anything wrong. We are sometimes too critical of our past selves when we don’t remember the exact incidents.

Responsible for self: Full accountability for myself

IDENTITY: Responsible

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What does taking personal responsibility mean?

Taking personal responsibility for ourselves means knowing that whatever happens to us in our responsibility.

Why we should take personal responsibility?

If something is good or something is bad, we have a lot more control over the situation that we realise. This can be a strategy we need to adopt, something that we have been doing that needs to be changes or something that we had been escaping that we should do.

We don’t control what happens, we control how we respond. Often things we are faced with may not be our faults but it’s our responsibility to pick it up voluntarily.

The more voluntary responsibility we are able to pick up, the more powerful and in control we would feel even if some area of life has minor temporary set backs.

Also think of this in terms of relationships, stronger individuals make stronger families. Stronger families make stronger world. Taking on personal responsibility is ultimate decentralized command. Every individual is stronger then all of them can grow together forward.

So, at every moment of the day, everything that happens to you, live as though you are the only one responsible to deal with it. Cuz for the most part you really are.

What happens when we don’t pick up responsibility?

Not picking up responsibility is neither good to us and neither good to others. It’s wasted potential. It’s all the things that we could have done, all the good we could have accomplished that could make everyone lives better, but we instead choose the alternative.

It’s better to try and fail that to not try at all. 1> 0;

An experiment we can do to get started is: Take on and complete as many responsibilities/opportunities thrown towards you in a week and see what happens.

Role Models: Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), Jordan Peterson

For: Courage is proper action despite not being fully ready. If you are given an opportunity to be courageous, you are already prepared.

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Truth: Unhide the fog by becoming truth seeking missile

IDENTITY: Honest person, Truthful person

Everything that’s best happens in truth. If it isn’t truth, then it isn’t the best.

If you don’t know what to do, tell the truth.

Lying/Not telling the truth is the quickest way to hell. You base your decisions on what you perceive reality to be.

If your estimate of the world is wrong, you’ll make bad decisions.

The only way is to let go of the outcome aka you are not going to use your speech to get what you want, (cuz you actually don’t know what you want) rather you’ll tell the truth and assume whatever happens is the best thing regardless of how it looks. 2

While dealing with people, you have to ask people multiple times to make sure they tell you everything because often humans tell white lies to not hurt your feelings.

Role Models: Naval Ravikant, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Kapil Gupta, Mark Manson

Books: Lying by Sam Harris

FOR:

  • Authenticity: Being the same person when no one is watching.
  • Integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. Being whole and undivided.
  • Verbalize Thoughts

AGAINST:

  • Lieing
  • Deception
  • Hiding truth for short term gain aka to get what you want

Calmer: Breathe

IDENTITY: Peaceful person, Calm person

Happiness is a single player game. It is a skill that you develop and a choice that you make.

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Not wanting something is as good as having it.

The Backwards Law: Pursuing positive experience is a negative experience and accepting negative experience itself is a positive experience.

Being unhappy is inefficient.

Happiness/Peace is a skill that you develop and a choice that you make 3. You can choose to live a certain way that will lead to peace.

To have peace, your brain should be in controll in every situation. You have to be mentally tough.

You need to be peaceful if you want things to be good long term. Develop detachment (not wanting), be less judgemental and optimism. Aiming for peace requires a lot of recognizing, rethinking and flipping/unlearing almost everything.

If you don’t believe that you can achieve ultimate peace (Nirwana), you’ll have a hard time finding it.

Role Models: Naval Ravikant, Sam Harris, Kapil Gupta, Sadhguru

Books: Subtle at of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson

FOR:

  • Internal Locus of Control
  • Optimism
  • Rationality: allows for a next level thinking where decisions can be made from a birds 🦅 eye view and while knowing the long term effects.

Systems Thinking: Become an effortness executioner - ‘Everthing is undercontrol’

IDENTITY: Organized, Systems Thinker

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Rome wasn’t built in a day

Direction and long-term consistency are better than shortcuts.

Aims are good for setting up initial direction. But systems/processes are how you work towards them and beyond them.

Systems allow you to free up your mental RAM. Systems break problems down. They assure that as long as the systems are working right, the direction is right.

Systems can include by are not limited to: trained habits, routines, frameworks, automation, etc.

Role Models: Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, James Clear, Mark Manson, Ramit Sethi, Tim Ferriss, Naval Ravikant, Josh Kaufman

Books: Atomic Habits by James Clear

FOR:

  • Do-Something

Focus: of an eagle

IDENTITY: Focused person, Indistractable

If more information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs

If you don’t have attention, you don’t have time.

Less is more

Pay stupid games. Win stupid prices.

You are what you feed yourself. Inputs matter because not only do they encourage certain behaviors, but they impact your everyday experience.

Over the long term, you want “inputs” in your life to push yourself in the desired direction.

Some things to consider:

  • Information you consume.
  • People you interact with regularly.
  • Where and how you live. (#cleanYourRoom)

Role Models: Ryan Holiday

Books: Subtle at of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson, Stillness by Ryan Holiday

FOR:

  • Books
  • Truthful people

AGAINST:

  • Social Media
  • Addictions

Productive: Recognize the limited gift of time

IDENTITY: Productive

It’s not that we have a short time to live but we waste a lot of it

Being busy is a form of laziness.

We have a finite life. Though it is long enough to get important things done.

Your habits are reenforced. If you waste time regularly, you’ll continue to waste time.

Let’s suppose your time is worth minimum wage. Assume that to be 100Rs per hour. Let’s suppose you waste 6 hours a day. That’s 600Rs per day. 1,80,000 lakh rs per month. 21,60,000 rs per year. Over 10 years it’s 2 crore rs.

Plus this calculation 🧮 excludes compounding. Time spent early will compound.

Life is short. Speed of implementation matters a lot. Being impatient can be a good thing.

Be impatient with yourself and a bit patient with others.

Role Models: Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Ryan Holiday, Cal Newport

FOR:

  • Planning every hour of the day
  • Reducing context switching by Monotasking and Batch processing.

AGAINST:

  • Lying in bed all day
  • Social Approval
  • Status Game

Team Work: Node in a network

IDENTITY: Caring, Helpful

Treat others like you want to be treated

Seek to understand. Then to be understood.

Humans are a social animal. We are node in a network2. The way we act and interact in the network determines the life of everyone.

We stand on the shoulders of all those who came before us. And we are building a foundation for all those who will come after.

Plus who are we doing all this “core-values” for if we can’t even help and be there people around us. One cannot do it alone and it is worthless doing it alone.

There are multiple levels of “team work” and each requires a different approach.

  • Everyone else
  • Close Friends
  • Family and Partner

This also requires a level of self awareness and knowing how your interaction/quality of relationships can be improved.

One can be strict with himself but has to be patient with others. And remember that you are probably not right so listen to people carefully -> Openness.

Role Models: Avengers, Straw Hat Crew (One Piece), Jura Tempest Federation (That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime), Some family related parts of Peaky Blinders

FOR:

  • Trust
  • Care
  • Seek to understand then to be understood
  • Think Win-Win

AGAINST:

  • Drama Triangle
  • People Pleasing / Trying to impress
  • Betrayal

Playfulness: Antidote to boredom

What is playfulness?

Being playful means not being serious.

Being playful means interacting with the world softly and experimenting like it’s a play game.

Being playful is the antidote to the seriousness caused by all the other core values.

Why playfulness is needed? Isn’t peace enough?

Playfulness is not only good because it’s fun but it’s necessary. Life is short therefore it’s imp to have your cake and eat it too.

Playfulness increase output. Provides a level of comfort when dealing with chaos. A smile. A fun adventure no matter how hard things are.

Being playful gives meaning to other values:

  1. It makes Team become friends and therefore depends on bonds.
  2. It makes the search for truth a game and telling truth in a nice way a game too. Plus most truths are hilarious.
  3. It makes Inputs and Systems fun experiments. Leading to higher output

It’s just more fun to live playfully and interact with the world and make sense of it.

For:

  • Humor
  • Games
  • Being willing to break the rules

Against:

  • Being too serious

I am trying make these values my second nature by forming habits. The ideal goal is identity level change 4 but it will take time which is why I haven’t published my post on it.

Footnotes

  1. Illustration by Justin Gerald

  2. Jordan B Peterson 2

  3. Naval Ravikant

  4. Atomic Habits


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