Personal Growth| 0 - Introduction and Values

Introduction

This series on Personal Growth is my attempt to capture and share my personal growth and development experience for my future reference and also to maybe positively impact another person or two.

My journey of personal growth and development started when I joined AIESEC, a student-run social organization, back in my university days. AIESEC is about developing future leaders out of today's youth and, since its founding in 1948, have boasted world leaders, Nobel peace prize winners and awesome people.

AIESEC helped me find and strengthen some of my personal values which is to positively impact the society around me and being the best version of myself today than I was yesterday.

What are Values?

Values are your fundamental beliefs that guide you in your day-to-day life and serve as a broad guideline in all situations. You may have values as an individual, values as a parent, values as a functioning member of society etc. Values have major influence on a person's behavior and attitude and a persons' general outlook on life.

Why are your values important?

I believe that to truly know someone, you need to know their values - this also applies to your sense of self. I believe that the growing trend of depression and feeling lost is due to individuals not being able to identify their personal values. Not being able to identify your value and lead your life on them feels like travelling through life on an open sea without a map or a guiding North Star. Sooner or later, it just becomes a feeling of frustration and defeat which then becomes the norm in the individuals life.

Having your values clearly defined will also make your life so much simpler. Should I get that high pay job in a role that I hate or the lower paying job in a role that I love? Should I spend my bonus on the new iPhone or to travel to a different country?
Should I spend Chinese New Year / Hari Raya / Hari Deepavali with my family or use the public holiday to party in Bali? Neither is correct or wrong, it just depends on how you use your values to make the difficult decisions in life.

When finding friends, life partners or even a job, being able to identify the values that the friend/life partners/ company/etc is also important because the shared values are what drives people closer together. Usually when I go on first dates, I like to point out the most adventurous/weirdest things I've done - like eating raw horse meat or running around naked in the snow while singing 小薇 - because I want to know if my date shares my value of always being curious and trying everything once.

Its also important when finding jobs because it will determine whether the company is worth developing yourself in for years to come or whether it is just a stepping stone in your life's journey. I'm currently working a decent paying job in an Oil and Gas startup company but because the company has grown tremendously in the past 2.5 years I've been here and have lost the fun, challenging, craziness of a startup, I feel like it's time for me to move on because the company's value of only making profit does not align with my value of positively impact society.

The successes and deals we close do not excite me and if I stayed any longer in the company, my demotivation will start to show in my work and the company will not have me working at 100% which is a lose-lose for both parties. As of writing this article, I'm now serving my notice to move to a career in education that will pay me much lower than what I'm earning now but would hopefully make me happier and give me more meaning to my day-to-day job.

My Personal Values

So, what are some of my core values? The values that make me who I am today and the same values that make me write this article and this series even if no one else reads them. Here are some of them

1. Create a positive impact on society and leave it better than it was before
   

2. Wakeup every morning being a better person than I was yesterday

3. Appreciate and experience life and God's creations at its fullest - be curious and try everything at least once

4. There is no such thing as weird, only unique or interesting - everyone else is just boring
   

An example of how my values have guided my life is in determining my career path. I know I want to have a career that will positively impact society, which was why I initially wanted to be a doctor to save lives, then an environment engineer to improve living conditions, finally I've found my way to education to help people lead more amazing lives and giving them more opportunities in life.

How to find your values?

Self-introspection

Perhaps the most obvious, but arguably the most difficult, method is through self-introspection. It is about having an honest conversation with yourself and listening to yourself. Many times we're faced with a difficult situation, we would either just push it off, or ignore it all together instead of making a conscious decision and learning from it.

When was the last time you sat alone, no music, no screens, no people, no outside distractions and just talk to yourself and ask yourself the difficult questions of what do you want, why is your life the way it is now, where do you want to be and how can you get there? Being able to have conversations with yourself is the first way to discovering your values and what you stand for. Of course the world will seem like a strange, difficult place if your own mind feels like a strange confusing place.

Today, I try to make it a point to have at least 10min of quiet time at the start and end of each day to write down my thoughts, my lessons learnt and my gratitude. I think its a useful exercise to see whether you are growing together with your values or maybe not enough, and I'll probably want to write about this more in the future.

Travelling

Travelling allows you to see the world as more than our little bubble. Too often we get stuck in our little bubble, we know the world is much bigger, but we get very comfortable in our bubble and find no reason to change. Getting out of that bubble will allow a change in perspective to know if you need to change something for the better or worse.

Back in High School, I felt lost and confused about what I wanted to do with my life. I made it to the final round of the ASEAN scholarship and failed so I was frustrated for awhile. An opportunity arose for me to volunteer in Shanghai to raise funds for orphans who lost their parents to AIDs. I had to fight with my principal to allow me to skip a month of classes for the program but in the I got it and it was the most life changing moment I've ever had. Working with an international team of like-minded youths and also interacting with these orphans who went through so much difficulty in their lives was what gave me my first value of wanting to change the world for the better.

So travelling may end up helping you discover a value you didn't know you wanted or have.

Meeting New People

You are the average of your 5 people you spend the most time with - some random guy that gets quoted a lot

I think many young people in our 20s - early 30s are going through a phase of exploration and discovery and it is expected that we and our closest friends may evolve in different directions and want different things. So I think its important to actively try to meet newer people - I'm not saying to ditch your old friends, but maybe its time to discover new ones. Sometimes you meet someone new and you just hit it off with them and sometimes you don't, I believe this is because there may be a sync or conflict in values. This will allow you to discover values you may not have known you had.

TL;DR Values are important guiding beliefs. To find yours, put yourself in new/uncomfortable situations and introspect on it to discover new values, discard old ones, or fortify existing ones.

---

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and manage to learn a thing or to. Maybe its useful and may help you identify your values, or maybe its a load of gibberish and you had a good laugh from it. Either way, I hope it has managed to impact you in some positive way.

Please do share your values or feedback on my post in the comments below. Thank!