My Core Values Summary from Feb 2023

I have 7 core values and these help me live authentically, get the most out of life and be a peaceful cheerful and charming person in the process.

The core of my core values in Clarity. Clarity refers to clarity of thought. I aim to have clear thinking in every moments. Towards this aim, I adopt habits and patterns that help such as being truthful, developing observability via Data Collection and Meditation and seeking truth by understanding biases, fallacies and loaded language. My core values also help me with clarity and setting a proper realistic vision for myself. Overall, clarity is about truth and a proper vision.

My second core value is Responsibility. Responsibility helps me be stronger instead of weaker. I believe weakness leads to problems and this includes any and all times of weakness. Responsibility like clarity is a continuous process. We choose to act strongly in face of difficulty is a plus plus towards responsibility. We should start with taking responsibility of ourself completely (which includes taking care of our physical/mental heath/ our finances) and then responsibility of things around us (empowering others, helping family, the baton), in this order. We often act in ways that make us move towards a downward path. But we always have the choice.

Clarity and Responsibility are my fundamental values. These values form the basis of the next 3 values that are very implementation focused and can be easily measured. The last 2 values, fulfill the larger purpose and the missing peace of living a great life.

My third value is Inputs. Inputs refer to optimizing all the inputs we face in day to day life, the things that capture our attention. We often act in ways that make us move towards a downward path. A lot of times this is because we get inputs from our environment that push us. In the modern world, we have a lot of abundance. This abundance brings us problems because they try to replace many natural things. Social media trying to replace social life makes us feel lonely. Processed food makes us unhealthy. Porn makes us depressed, lonely and hedonistic. News makes us think what “recent” and whats “someone’s opinion” is more important than “tried-and-true“ and what’s “fact“. We keep using our willpower against these modern inputs, we need strong boundaries. Doing so would eliminate things that makes us worse and as a result we get a little stronger. To become even stronger, we can incorporate ancient weapons: fasting, meditation and exercise, all of which are aimed to voluntarily experience short term pain but have maximal long term benefits.

Now that we have eliminated stupid things and added good things, we can move towards automation and goal achievement via Systems. The core value 4. Systems accelerate progress towards our goals. By being methodical, we can achieve anything with much more clarity and ease. By creating habits, routines, taking on training (and sometimes retraining), semi-automated systems (like kanban) and automated systems of the modern world, we optimize what’s left from inputs and makes sure everything runs smoothly. This provides logarithmic big O in terms of effort put in compared to exponential positive results.

My fifth core value is Time. Time and attention are our non-renewable resources. Clarity, inputs and systems regain our attention. Our attention saves us time and we need time because we have a finite life. Our lives are average 80 years. The way we can make the most of this life is by spending it properly on the things that make the most impact and not wasting it. By being mindful about our mortality, we get clarity, we remove things that aren’t useful and we optimize and nurture things that are important to us. At the same time, we can also increase our time, taking steps towards our longevity. Time allows us to do more of what we want to do.

With all the above, we achieve a greater level of peace. And now, we aim to accelerate that peace further with last two core values: team and adventure.

The 6th core value is Team. “Team” is about understanding the dynamics between yourself and people around you. This dynamic is sometimes a dichotomy. You want to help others yet not so much that they keep relying on you. You want to do things yourself yet you something should rely on others. “Team” makes us let of over reliance on ourselves and trust the knowledge of instincts of others. (Though we should always verify. #dichotomy). A large part of life would be with people. We are social animals to the core and we love to live in tribes. And we love to “Love” too. Being around people make us happy, people make us (or demand from us) the best version of ourself and in-turn this leads to best version of themselves. If you didn’t get any of what was written here, start here relationships with people around you make you more cheerful happy person. #Win-Win

The last core value is Adventure. Adventure is about the heroes journey. We get excited by video games, by movies and by books. We love listening to stories (especially real life ones) where people who faced challenges were able to overcome it. That’s adventure. Adventure gives us calling to something that is bigger than we are. And ideally, if one has clarity, takes care of responsibility, is focused, organized, fast and has a team, that’s perfect addition to well formed adventure cuz all of them are tools and weapons in terms of facing the BOSS. The unknown. Our adventure starts when we decide to face the dragon of unknown. And this leads us to courage. So, if you are facing a problem that seems large or you are seeing something that frightened you, take your weapons, do you pushups, face that monster with all the knowledge under your belt. Only you can do it! So be your hero!

My first 2 core values give me the right direction. The next 3 values accelerate the progress towards them. And the final 2, bring the greatest the world has to offer. Overall, these 7 makes me healthier, wealthier, wiser and the best version of myself for the world and therefore they are best bet is very situations.