My Key Life Principles

I attended a Search Inside Yourself session in 2017 and one activity in the session was to evaluate one’s core values. After pondering & introspecting for months, I finally had my list, which I am sharing below. The goal of sharing this is to provide some insight into who I am beyond the strategy decks, PRDs, and project meetings in my day to day work :)

I define “Principles” as those core values & beliefs that I live by, and if not adhered to, cause significant unhappiness and discontent within me. I refer to these guiding principles when making personal and professional decisions, especially the difficult ones.

Following are the top 5 principles for me (from almost over 500 potential options):

1. GROWTH

Tackling new challenges excites me and I don’t want to climb the same mountain twice. I usually know what I don’t know and have a strong desire (& ability) to learn & grow. After all, “the problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them”.

I adhere to this value by (i) observing & learning from people better than me (ii) utilizing the learning resources available online/offline (iii) learning from personal experiences & mistakes. I avoid (i) people who have negative outlook (ii) gossipers.

2. EMPATHY

I love to understand people & to work towards building long-term relations. I am drawn to people’s stories & observing individualistic behaviors, and I am a strong believer that “everyone has a unique story to tell, and there’s something to be learned from everyone.”

I adhere to this value by (i) focusing on deeper discussions with few rather than shallow discussions with many (ii) building trust & maintaining transparency (iii) going out of the way to help others wherever I can. I avoid (i) shallow networkers (ii) transactional people as much as I can.

3. RISK-TAKING

At 80, I want to look back and say that I had a happening life, not a comfortable one. Taking calculated risks significantly improves the rate of learning and adds excitement to life. For me, success at a task is better than failure, but failure is better than maintaining the status quo (or an incremental effort). I persevere through hard times with a “fail again, fail better” mindset.

I adhere to this value by (i) analyzing problems & evaluating potential solutions along with their risks & benefits (ii) pushing myself to follow a bold solution that falls high on the risk-reward spectrum.

4. INTEGRITY

I am not proud to say this but integrity was not my top value for some years when winning fast was more important to me than winning right. Only after slipping on this fundamental bedrock, and seeing some of my closest aides defaulting on this trait, I realized that this is very important to me.

I adhere to this value by doing the right thing (ALWAYS!) for the users, organization, and/or the team to make decisions, especially when situations get challenging.

5. IMPACT

Having more money is good, but it’s not the ultimate motivator for me. The ultimate motivator for me is solving meaningful problems that contribute to the umbrella goal of humankind — advancing humanity forward — even if it is minor in the grand scheme of the universe.

I adhere to this principle by picking meaningful mountains (problems) that garner my interest, contributing to them with the best of my abilities, and persevering through them till the resolution.