Values, Morals, Beliefs blah..

If you think I will make an attempt to differentiate, or elaborate on any of these, I won't. You can safely read the rest of the post. Only yesterday I had a discussion with a friend about how one feels right after reading a book by Ayn Rand (I mean Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). We did mutually agree that for atleast a week, the reader moves into a Self critical and People perceptive mode. One tries to map actions of other people to the characters in the book, in order to stereotype them into Howard Roark, or Dagny Taggart. To try and evaluate your own actions and thoughts just to try and identify with the protagonist, because she does exalt them, and for atleast a week as I said, you believe her too.

So, my week ended a while ago, and today I am attending a workshop called MPG, by BW, to cut the crap, the first task of the day has been identifying the 5 key "Values" that I live by. Not those that I want to live by (Health-Weight Loss), and not those other expect me to live by, but those I actually do live by. Now this is easier said than done, because, the values I finally settled on are different from those I marked given a list of 30 values and asked to choose my top 5. So, feedback from peers, manager, self assessment, instinct and introspection, all went into these top 5. I can't say I'm completely satisfied, but then I did a fair amount of thinking, and I'll settle with these. So, whats the point?

The point is that today I realized that some things I don't really care to pay much heed to consciously, actually drive many decisions I make. On the other hand, there are values I am expected to live by, but I don't really.

Making decisions is far easier, and frequently, even the most important decisions you make don't make you question the reasons you made them. Now, that I have a pack of cards with names of common "values" written on them, I can actually take some time to think what each of these means to me. Pick a card and think what it means to me and if my actions are aligned with this value or is it totally unrelated.

Add to that a cool leather folder and 2 days in a conference room rather than on my seat, working, this workshop seems fruitful already! Ok, lunch break over, update later.

(Btw, I'm told this is one of the most expensive employee training programs in the world, but then, who said freedom comes cheap!)

End of Day 1 Update:

Day 1 ended with handing over my managers opinions about me, and lot of things about me, like skill levels required and existing skill levels in a variety of things, Talent, critical skills, communication, leadership.. the works. Add that to the review I got from a peer, and lots of introspection, the biggest outcome is that person I project myself to be, is not really what my values suggest, or what I would like to be. Apart from that, My manager and I disagree on a wode array of things, something I need to discuss in a meeting with him, and let him know that my priorities are not as mechanical as his expectations... More after day 2..

Labels: Education, Life