Do you ‘believe’ that hard work will lead to a successful career ?
What are our beliefs and values ? Where do we get them from?
Do you believe in Love at first sight ? Do you believe that knowledge is power ? Do you value honesty over luxury? Do you value transparency over secrecy ? Notice how the words beliefs and values are used here. I am sure you must have heard one of these sentences somewhere or the other.
Believe — to accept or regard (something) as true
Value — something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable
Very often these are used together and yet they are not the same.Beliefs are assumptions that are pre-validated(by someone known to us and passed on to us) or we validate these over course of time.Some, we pick up from our upbringing and many others we form over our life trajectory and from our surroundings (education, workplace, friends, place of residence etc.). Values on the other hand have roots in our needs. Every human being has needs which are formed in early childhood. Needs do not change in a person unless there is a huge life changing event.Examples of values are honesty, kindness, openness, equality, freedom, respect etc. Together(beliefs and values) these form our personality. Changing these will lead to change in our personalities.I wasn’t aware of this until sometime back when I started seeing a pattern.From childhood I was always taught to work hard and my hard work was rewarded by my favorite toy or something that I liked. Any form of entertainment beyond the restricted hours during weekdays and weekends did not give any favorable results. My working parents modeled this behavior as well. I formed the belief that — I must work hard to earn a reward. This worked out for me very well and I held on to this belief. Also I value honesty, openness and freedom over many other values.
What keeps Peter motivated? Are your beliefs helping you or letting you down?
Fast forward many years into the corporate world, I realized that besides hard work, there are many factors that come into play. I felt let down by my beliefs. It reminded me of a scene in the movie The Office Space where the character Peter Gibbons gets promoted to a manager in an IT company(when all other employees of the same company are getting laid off as part of a takeover). What is his skill you may ask ? Peter says that even if he works hard he does not get an extra dime, so he does not have any motivation to work harder and he works hardly 15 minutes in the entire week !!( See Peter attending the interview here.). It made me contemplate if I should rewire my belief to — Only ‘smart’ work is rewarded. I really wish that changing my beliefs would be effortless like changing clothes.I had more questions than answers — Will I be the same person ? How will I see the people around me who still work hard and think that they should be adequately rewarded/compensated? How will my behavior change to reflect this new belief ? Of course I am still in this dilemma and unable to decide.
Uncompromising values — Would you like to be the ‘dark’ Spider-Man or the ‘friendly neighborhood’ Spider-Man ?
If you have seen the movie Spider-Man 3, the lead character Peter Parker/Spider-Man starts donning a black costume which is to show that he is a different person. He looks hipper, cooler and somewhat evil as well. People around him find this quite strange, especially the friends and family. Changing your beliefs and values has the same effect on us. We may behave in a way where our outer self and inner self are not aligned. We are always part of a group, a community, a team or an organization and there are times when our values do not match the values of the group and in some cases have opposite values as well. During those times, we may pretend to have a different behavior while in the group. However I think that this not a sustainable mechanism. I had many such instances and felt quite out of place in the group and slowly I excused myself from there as I could not keep pretending all the time. Of course there are desperate times when we bend the interpretation to suit our values and that is only for seasoned players and not recommended for amateurs(like me).
So what do I do?
What if you want to keep your beliefs and values ? Be in a place/group that is closer to your values. If you value transparency then find a place where transparency is valued. Being open in a place where there is lots of secrecy will not help . It’s basic human need to be respected and valued for who we are (Esteem need) . It’s also a good idea to validate our beliefs time and again and see if they still hold good based on our recent experiences. Also as individuals we should learn to appreciate the different beliefs in others and respect them as well . Who knows we may even learn something from them and they may help us validate our beliefs. Again there is no good or bad here. Usually we all like to have people with similar beliefs and values in our close company. You may even notice that some of your closest friends have similar values like you.
So what type of beliefs and values do you have ? Are they holding you back ? Are you even aware of them ? Thanks for reading.
“Open your arms to change but don’t let go of your values.” Dalai Lama