It’s been said that the most important thing in life is to decide what is important. Using your personal values as a touchstone to navigate through the inevitable challenges of working towards your goals is critical. The term “values” may seem overused—and abused—but don’t let that disillusion you. Your values represent what is most meaningful to you about work, relationships and life in general. Acting from your values will give you a solid foundation that can inspire, strengthen and renew you every step of the way.

Without a strong sense of your values to guide you, it’s easy to get caught up in other people’s agendas. While it’s noble and necessary to support others, it’s critical not to lose your way in service of someone else’s needs.

Working with your values is a continuous process. Think of your values as your “truth and meaning” metre. While there will be fluctuations in things that matter to you most at different points in your life, your core values are not likely to change.

These checkpoints can help guide you to a deeper understanding of what you value most:

1. Know your beliefs

Beliefs drive all behaviour. Beliefs run our lives in ways that we are often unaware of. You have beliefs about everything—success, work, money, relationships and, most importantly, who you are and what you are capable of. The more you connect your actions to your beliefs, the more power you will have to make changes in your experience.

2. Cultivate greater self-awareness

Think of self-awareness as your power tool. Becoming more self-aware requires a commitment to honest self-assessment. It can be challenging to not only tolerate the emotional discomfort of looking at our behaviour truthfully, but to do it without harsh self-judgment. Developing a more mindful approach will support you in doing this important on-going process.

3. Expand your emotional repertoire

The road to success isn’t just paved with ambition and determination. You’ll need a bigger briefcase of feelings to support your efforts and connect you to others. It’s a cliché but find your passion. Activate your curiosity about the unknown. Hone your confidence through honest self-evaluation. Practise patience—it will serve you well in all circumstances. And regardless of your personality, develop your people skills by engaging empathy and demonstrating gratitude.

4. Wherever you are, be all there

It’s easy to get scattered and unfocussed these days. Problem is our focus is more on doing than being. Full attention is a rare quality and most people will sense your interest and caring when they receive it. Staying “present” will also help activate your conscious awareness, regardless of the situation.

5. Don’t get hooked by comparisons

There’s nothing more distracting and emotionally debilitating than getting bogged down in envy and jealousy. It is one thing to admire and adopt the positive qualities of others—but don’t put yourself down in the process. We are all unique.

6. Manage fear

Fear is learned. We’re not born afraid. It is parents, teachers, friends and the culture in general that teach fear—often in subtle ways. While fear can have a protective quality, mostly its insidious grip prevents us from taking actions that can benefit us. Fear wears many disguises and because emotional contagion is real—we must safeguard against “catching” it from others.

7. Don’t attach “results” to every action you take

Sometimes the path to success can feel like a race. We get lost in judging every activity as progress or regression. This kind of thinking often brings on anxiety and doubt. Assume that there will be “failures” and missteps along the way—all are a welcome part of the learning process.

8. Stay humble

There’s no shortage of boasting and self-promotion out there. Humility can seem soft or passive in the face of it. Don’t buy into those ideas. Humility is grounding and promotes appreciation.

9. Don’t succumb to cynicism

Cynicism can become a default feeling and worldview. Energetically it is draining, for you and others. Pursuing your goals will undoubtedly mean you will meet challenges and have setbacks. Don’t join the cynic’s club when that happens. Assess your situation positively and regroup using your highest level of thinking and most resourceful emotions.

10. Prioritise peace

Too many people postpone peace. In the hustle and bustle of life, it’s easy to relegate times of peace to an occasional vacation. Staying on the path to achieving your goals requires time spent in quiet reflection. Rest and relaxation is essential. Make space in your life for peace—and it will find you.

Any path toward professional success will have its twists and turns, but when you’re standing on the foundation you’ve built—you’ll keep your balance.

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I’ve noticed that we’ve become an increasingly cynical society, complaining about anything to anyone who will listen. Cynicism has become our second nature. We have become such masterful complainers that we complain incessantly.

We fret about our aches, pains and illnesses, our bad luck, our difficult spouses, and our disobedient children. We criticise the attitude of our colleagues, the carelessness of our employees, the highhandedness of our clients, the aloofness of our neighbours—oh, we even complain about our neighbouring countries. We lament about our incompetent MPs, our ineffective governments, the opportunistic opposition parties, the corrupt politicians, the irresponsible film stars, the greedy sportsmen, the unethical media, the declining economy and on and on. We wail about our past, our present and even our future.

We spare no one, not even God! Indeed, the believers among us whine and whimper the most to the ‘almighty’ for creating an unfair world.

We have become such masterful complainers that we complain incessantly

Complaining is pointless

But have you thought about what you’re really achieving by all your complaining?  If you reflect a bit, you will realise that complaining is pointless—it achieves nothing good.

And no, it’s not harmless either. Repeated complaining rewires your brain, making you more inclined to complain. Overdone, complaining can destroy your life. Every time you complain about something or someone, you feed your inner cynic, which becomes stronger and stronger—until it starts dominating your entire thought process. If this continues, soon you can’t see anything good in your life. The world begins to appear as a hopeless place and you react strongly to every little uncomfortable event, labelling it as terrible, awful, mean and so on. And because misery loves company, it is easy to find other complainers to empathise with your ‘hopeless’ worldview. Social media, for instance, has become a favourite place for airing your grievances—you find many who will ‘like’ and ‘share’ your posts encouraging you and inviting others to join the bandwagon.

Most of our complaints are about things over which we have no control—the corrupt politicians, the pathetic state of our roads, the declining economy. When we complain about these things, we simply add to the noise out there while feeding the negativity in our minds. What’s worse, cynicism often makes what is easy look difficult.

Most of our complaints are about things over which we have no control

Are you exaggerating?

The cynics are so obsessed with complaining about the thorns that they miss the beauty of the rose. When we grumble about our personal problems, it keeps us focussed on what’s wrong, blocking any possibility of a solution coming to us. Also, we tend to get attached to our problems because they become a way to attract attention from others. This makes us exaggerate the issues that are troubling us. But people close to habitual complainers tend to get fed up sooner or later and then try to avoid them.

Theoretical Physicist Stephen Hawking says, “People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.” Here is a man who could claim every right to complain given his grave physical condition, and he says that complaining doesn’t work.

I have found that a good rule to follow, when a complaining thought arises is to check whether the problem is within your small circle of influence or is it just in the larger circle of concern, about which you can do nothing. If it is the former, stop right there and do whatever you can to address the issue; if it’s the latter, stop right there and go about your life. In either case, put an end to your whining. You’ll see what you’ve been missing.

The post So What Are You Complaining About Today? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Sometimes this habit works in your favour. More often it does not, and the result can be very sad, even traumatic. It is probably the single most important factor in the estrangement between parents and children and between spouses. It has an equally powerful effect on business relationships with subordinates, peers, and bosses.

Are you curious about what this habit is? I thought you might be!

How we see the world

We all think we see the world as it is. We’re wrong.
We see the world as we are. Let me repeat that: We never see the world as it is. We always see it as we are.

Poonam woke up early, as was her wont, and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. She relished this first cup in the solitude of the early morning. She noticed that there was a plate, as well as a knife and fork, in the sink. Her husband had had a late-night snack. “Why doesn’t he rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher?” she thought angrily. “He knows how much I hate a dirty sink. He just doesn’t care.” All of her husband’s manifest faults, from failing to sort his laundry to watching all the cricket games, flooded into her head, and she picked up the plate with such force that it struck the faucet and broke. “He just doesn’t care,” she muttered to herself, and her morning tea did not bring any comfort.

We never see the world as it is. We always see it as we are

There were still anger lines on her face when she went to work, and she noticed that her assistant had left the draft of a new proposal on her desk. Pages two and three were transposed. She pried the staple loose, rearranged the disordered pages, and stapled it again.

“Why don’t people care?”

“Why doesn’t he care enough to do a good job?” she fumed, and called him in to berate him. He was sullen and left work early. When she needed an explanation of an intricate calculation, he was not there, and her boss tartly told her to find out and report back. She worked late and was just turning into her driveway when she noticed that her neighbour was leaving her front door. He was walking across the lawn to his house, and she scowled. She did not like people walking on the grass, especially not now when the yard was freshly seeded. “Why don’t people care?” she seethed. Poonam was a good worker and very diligent, but so many of her colleagues were complaining about her that her boss made her sit down with an executive coach he engaged for her. It was either that or a pink slip.

She accepted with ill humour. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she stated flatly. “It’s just that I really care about things and they don’t.” She looked at the coach defiantly. He took detailed notes and said little.

She did not like people walking on the grass, especially not now when the yard was freshly seeded

When they met again, the coach had done his homework. “Did you know that your husband has taken on another job?” he queried. “He has a consulting gig with a start-up and hopes to save enough so you can take the Antarctic cruise you always wanted this December. He didn’t have time for dinner, so he just grabbed what he found in the fridge and went right off to sleep.”

She hadn’t known it. She also hadn’t known that her assistant had put in an all-nighter so that she would have something in writing before her meeting with her boss or that her neighbour had called to drop off fresh tomatoes from the first batch that ripened in his backyard.

“You are too wedded to the idea that you care and they don’t,” the coach told her gently. “What you really mean is that they don’t always do exactly what you want them to do, and you misinterpret this. If you don’t work with me to change your attitude, you may not be with this company much longer.” He debated whether to tell her that she might not be married either but decided against it.

Poonam thought her finicky demands were a sign of her caring and drive for perfection

Context is important

Poonam thought her finicky demands were a sign of her caring and drive for perfection and saw everyone around her through that narrow lens.

So does this mean that she has to let go of her standards and accept work she considers shoddy? Should she reconcile herself to stacks of dirty dishes in the sink, sloppily put-together pre- presentations, and well-worn paths across her front lawn?

Not at all. It does mean that she has to see each occurrence in context. It emphatically means that she cannot label people based on her limited views. It means that she cannot let others’ noncompliance with her demands affect her emotional equanimity. And finally it means that she has to work at achieving a satisfactory compromise with the important people in her life-at home and at work.

The funny thing about life is that the more you expect the best of people and give them room to be themselves without suffocating them with your expectations, the more they will surprise you. The late Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch got it exactly right when he admonished listeners of his “Last Lecture” to never give up on people because, sooner or later, they will astonish you. Just try this and see for yourself.

You see the world as you are, not as it is.

The more you expect the best of people ad give them room to be themselves, the more they will surprise you

What are you noticing?

You observe things about people all the time. Just start recording exactly what you observe. For example, it’s Sunday and your son comes down bleary-eyed after breakfast is over. Do you notice the eagerness in his voice as he tells you about the super movie he saw last night, or do you observe that, once again, he has not made his bed and has come down without brushing his teeth?

You meet a stranger at an office party. Do you try to figure out his ‘importance’ and the strength of his relationships with your boss, or do you notice the genuine twinkle in his eye and his obvious good nature? Do you notice that his shoes are scuffed or that he graciously compliments the waitress and makes her smile? Does your nose turn up because the table settings don’t match, or do you acknowledge the effort your hostess is making to welcome you?

In short, with people and situations, do you focus on their weaknesses and what is ‘wrong,’ or do you appreciate their strengths and what is ‘right’? Most people, including you, do both. What is important is to find out in which direction you are tilting.

Now try this. Pick any person with whom you have an ongoing relationship and do not particularly like. It could be an in-law or a disagreeable co-worker or a pompous parent in the PTA. Look for at least two traits in that person that you like and admire. Persist until you find them. Compliment that person on these traits and be sincere. If you cannot be sincere, don’t do it.

Repeat this with other offensive people in your life.

See what happens to your life and your relationships with these individuals.

Excerpted with permission from Happiness at Work by Srikumar S Rao. Published by Tata McGraw Hill

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