Identifying my personal values has been liberating and focusing. It allows me to assess if my actions, my choices, my decisions are in alignment with my values and when I find situations where they are misaligned, it forces me to consider whether I am being deliberate and thoughtful in deviating from those values or if these values are in conflict with what maybe the right thing to have done in certain circumstances. That self-reflection contributes to personal growth.
Disclaimer: The following are not values I claim to exemplify, rather values that I aspire to live by.
Courage
More specifically, emotional courage. Courage to challenge particularly when it’s uncomfortable. Courage to be comfortable being challenged. Courage to be candid, despite the discomfort. Courage to admit my mistakes. Courage to own up to my failures. Courage to be disliked. Courage to be unpopular when faced with the choice of being popular vs being honest. Courage to be vulnerable. Courage to step into the arena. Courage to admit, I don’t know.
Curiosity
Curiosity has driven (and continues to drive) humankind forward. In contemporary times, when Jeff Bezos advocates for wandering, or Steve Jobs advices students to “Stay hungry, stay foolish” or Reid Hoffman prescribes being “Infinite Learners”, or Satya Nadella emphasises on growth mindset in “Hit Refresh” as part of the cultural transformation at Microsoft (inspired by Carol Dweck’s work on that topic), the common cultural value that binds those pursuits together is curiosity. Persistent and active pursuit of your curiosity is tiring, even overwhelming, but it can be extremely rewarding to personal and professional growth. There are no proverbial swimlanes in the sea of curiosity.
Compassion
Compassion, for me, has been an active, deliberative, conscious attempt at empathizing and resolving to help others (and myself). That can feel disingenuous, since one expects to be naturally compassionate (or not) without being deliberate about it. I do believe some (bounded) cognitive empathy is essential to being compassionate and research suggests that the foundation of empathy is built early in life. So, this has personally been the hardest value for me to practice (late in adulthood). I believe compassion is essential to being emotionally courageous.