Leadership Lab #12 | The Value of Knowing your Values

How values serve us when our world turns upside down.

The Value of Knowing your Values

When everything is is out of your control, all you have is who you decide to be.

Last December I was informed that the company I helped build was getting acquired. I identify strongly with my work (likely too strongly) and struggled with the reality that the role I had built much of my identity around was going to become something very different than what it had been.

I was angry. There was a small, petty part of me that wanted retribution for my loss. I soon realized that these feelings were just a negative reaction to uncertainty. Something that was once in my control quickly left it and I was lashing out hoping to get control back. I couldn't.

As a strategist, I tried to step back and construct a plan to make things end in my favor. Because it was all out of my control, I realized there was nothing I could plan for save one thing: the person that I wanted to be amidst the uncertainty.

This is the true value of knowing your values. When your world flips upside down and everything is out of your control, the only thing you can control is how you behave and who you decide to be. During these times knowing your values is your anchor to sanity. In lieu of reacting, either in opposition to the torrent of change or being overtaken by it, you have core integral principles that empower you to make decisions that are best for you.

The secret here: everything is almost always more out of your control than you realize. Acting in line with your values is always an ideal course of action.

1 Quote

Borrowed from from Tim Ferriss's 5 Bullet Friday:

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life."

-Albert Einstein

1 Question

Where are you planning to delay taking action? What action can you take to get started today?