Hello Aluxers and welcome to the article version of the Sunday Motivational Video, last week we promised we will take a look at core values for success so here it is.
Our goal for today is to help you understand what values are, how to identify yours and how to use them in the future.
There are different kinds of values such as social, personal, universal, moral, spiritual, cultural etc. In order for you to take the most value out of this, we will jumble all of them together and pick the ones we found yield the highest return towards a well-lived life!
Values when put to work make up for a good life!
Before we jump into the list, this is all you need to know:
Values are decision filters in life!
When it comes to making a choice, your values determine the option you’ll go for.
This is very different from Goals or Objectives. When you set a goal, your focus is shifted towards the outcome, towards external things. On the other hand, VALUES shift the focus on who you are as a person and what are your internal rules you’ll use to navigate the world.
Values have a moral interpretation of HOW We do things.
This is a very important difference that people who skip the intros to these videos will miss.
If you don’t feel like reading this long piece, here’s the video version:
Here are the 10 most important core values for success:
1.
Keep your word & Being Accountable
This isn’t about you becoming Hokage or anything like that..
It simply means that you do what you say you’ll do.
We live in a time where talking is cheap, even free, where words, plans, goals, don’t mean anything, nobody is held accountable for what they say or even what they do.
In this world, be different!
There’s a great quote by Jon Stewart that goes like this:
“If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values; they’re hobbies.”
Deliver on your promises.
Inspire others through your actions.
Let the world know that you are reliable, that those around you can count on you to show up when you say you will.
Be strong enough to admit when you got it wrong and don’t just say you’ll try to do better.
Even if it means embarrassment or feeling ashamed.
2.
Tell the truth or at least Don’t lie
The actual value people use for this is HONESTY, but honestly, this term gets thrown around so much it bears almost no meaning in professional conversations.
So instead, we replaced it with chapter 8 from Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for life.
This one is the natural progression of the previous value we just mentioned.
Here’s our fundamental take on this:
Lies – no matter their size – create Chaos!
Truth restores Order!
The more chaos you have in your life, in your relationship, in your business, the more stress, unhappiness.. Unpredictability.. it breeds.
People get haunted by Chaos they create their entire lives, never being able to escape it.
And don’t try to play the game.. Don’t half truths, don’t neglect to tell the truth when it was your duty to do so. If you can’t be the bearer of the light of truth and least try not to lie.
3.
Don’t give up
The correct terms here are “resilience” or “perseverance”.
You’re watching this because you’re looking for that extra edge, that secret sauce towards success right?! We’re speaking from personal experience here: the main reason why we succeeded is because we didn’t give up when things got hard. That’s when we became more focused, more discipline and more creative.
Life is always testing how badly you want it, how much are you willing to put up with before the reward. Most people don’t make it. Most people quit. Most people think the obstacle is too big. Are you like most people?
Not giving up doesn’t mean keep doing what you’re currently doing and obviously not moving in the right direction, but we’ll touch on this at number 8.
If this is really the life you chose for yourself, if just by listening to this your blood flows just a bit faster…
How can you give up on something you want so bad?
If the reward is everything you’ve ever wanted, how can anyone say the effort isn’t worth it?
If it isn’t worth it, it means you wanted the wrong things..
4.
Be Hungry
We still feel it in ourselves, you probably feel it two. There’s a hunger within you, a thirst for more, this feeling like this isn’t what your life is supposed to be…
This hunger you feel is part of who you are, this hunger will push you to work harder than your competitor, to work longer hours, to wake up one hour earlier… this hunger will push you to make an extra phone call.. To send and extra email.. To apply to one more job, go to one more interview…
People who don’t have this hunger simply can not compete with those who do. This is especially true if you were born in a poor country.. Because you know what it’s like TO WANT and NOT HAVE. How do you expect anyone who was born “having” to want it more than you do…
The moment you lose the hunger, you’re no longer the predator, you become the prey!
5.
Find Out > Not Knowing
A lot of people suffer from “WHAT IF” syndrome. What if I fail? What if they make fun of me. What if all my fears of not being good enough get confirmed? These are hard things to deal with.. But life is supposed to force you to grow and you can’t do it from comfort.
The risk of ridicule is worth the prize of success.
You actually appreciate it more when you’ve earned it! This is why participation trophies don’t work. It takes away from the need to compete. If everyone gets a first place badge, why would anyone work hard to be the best they can be.. The more you think of yourself as a fragile snowflake, the more you’re missing the avalanche coming down the mountain towards you.
Look back on your life right now.. You probably regret not doing more.. Not starting sooner… not telling that cute girl in class how you feel about her.. These regrets keep replaying in your mind while you lay in bed at night, thinking… simulating what reality would’ve been like if you did things differently.. Truth is you didn’t! The lesson is to not repeat this mistake again.
Some people don’t go to the doctor because they believe what they don’t know can’t hurt them..
Sorry to break it to you.. But cancer doesn’t care what you believe… but the choice you’re making could mean the difference between life and death.
Finding out correlates to the 2nd value we mentioned, the one related to the truth.. Finding out means bringing truth back into your life; even if it’s not the answer you want it, at least you know and can move forward without the curse of “WHAT IF”.
We’re half-way into our selection of core values for success and you’re already getting excited.
6.
Vision
Some people have this, some people don’t. Those who don’t.. End up working for other people.
Vision is the power to see things that can be created!
People with vision see how things could be, while everyone else sees things the way they are.
To the normal person they seem magical.. Looking at the likes of Elon or Steve Jobs, it’s easy to think of them as having some external ability that you lack.
On a personal level, we’ve always thought about it as an ability to connect dots in creative ways.. Sometimes even ahead of the present.
Fundamentally, it boils down to cause and effect: If I do this -> then this happens!
A trained person can simulate the future and figure out their best course of actions instead of going head first and figuring it out on the spot.
Without vision, all you have is the present; and the present soon becomes the past!
7.
Authenticity or Finding your own voice
How many of you have seen this quote by Oscar Wild going around on facebook, tumblr, pinterest or instagram:
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken!
Ughhhh! Where do we even begin..
What if you’re not that of a great person? What if you’re actually an asshole? Or lazy? Or unhealthy? Should you not try to emulate more inspiring people just for the sake of being “yourself”? What’s so great about this self that we’re so eager to put on a pedestal?
Screw that version of yourself… truth be told.. Nobody is screwing you anyway, so what do you have to lose.
Here’s how we’ve always looked at this:
Be like other people, until you can be better than them!
Every great artist first masters the fundamentals and then uses them in their own unique way.
Picasso had figured out how to win at art by the time he was 15. Just look at this painting called Science and Charity:
He literally got bored with being like everyone else, so he began doing his own thing, being himself.
Too many people try to skip ahead but end up exposed as pretenders.
In order to push the finish line further, you first need to get to the original finish line!
We are the sum of every positive and negative influence we’ve had throughout our lives. Take all these pieces and build something great!
8.
Openness to change & Willingness to adapt
As much as we would love to get into Plato’s “The Last Days of Socrates”,the fundamental truths of Descartes or Nietzsche, we would probably need a 40 minute video to do so on this point alone. So the best alternative we found to get the message swiftly to you ALuxers, is this Bear Grills meme:
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
This is true in business, in life and whatever situation you might find yourself in that requires you to be creative for your wellbeing.
The person who’s unable to read his environment and modify his own behavior accordingly is a goner. Natural and life is brutal in this regard.
But it doesn’t stop there. In the words of David Goggins:
Surviving doesn’t make you a winner! It makes you a cockroach!
And although there are plenty of cockroaches on this earth, you don’t see them pushing the world forward, they’re not planting food, they’re not creating art, they’re not documenting society and we would all be be shocked if we found out cockroaches have their own space-program.
There’s this legendary moment when Nokia was being acquired by Microsoft when Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia said: “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”.
That statement, to this day is haunting us as a constant reminder of the need to constantly change. Just doing nothing wrong isn’t enough. There’s always someone coming after what you have who wants it just as much as you did in the beginning. The advantage you had yesterday, will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow.
You either lead the change or be devoured by it!
9.
Be a sponge & a magnet
Translated into common words: Absorb Knowledge & Attract People
The moment you stop learning, that’s when things start to go downhill for you.
A thousand years ago, only the church knew how to read and write and this knowledge was used to influence history. Only the rich were privy to the tools and ideas captured in books treasured inside sky-high towers. This knowledge allowed them to conquer and spread quickly throughout the world. Ironically, the same knowledge today is the one that’s pointing out just how outdated their ideologies are.
Getting back to the point, you no longer have the excuse of valuable information being kept from you. You can just google it. You’re absorbing the knowledge from this piece of content right now and it’s making you smarter. Your reality changes because of the things you’ve learned today and choose to implement tomorrow.
You feel lost, because you chose to watch all the seasons of How I Met Your Mother – despite everyone telling you about the horrible ending – instead of using that time to work on yourself.
Be a sponge for knowledge, for information that has value, because this allows you to connect it in creative ways that create even more value.
The second half of this core-values point we’re trying to make is attracting high quality people towards you. We know you wish your friends were cooler, more successful or celebrities, but guess what.. Successful people hang out with other successful people, celebrities hang our with celebrities and you.. You hang out with them, not even by choice, but by circumstance.
This is a very valuable point to highlight.
Your friends should be BY CHOICE, not by CIRCUMSTANCE!
On Monday we published a video about WHY you don’t make any new friends which you can check out by clicking in the top right corner. We recommend you watch it.
10.
Excellence
Believe it or not, it just didn’t make sense to shoot for a list of 15 for this one, so Excellence is our last core value.
Very few people know what excellence stands for. Some might believe it’s the best of the best.
In the words of Beyonce’s husband, Shawn Carter,
Excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over again!
Hitting the very top once isn’t excellence, getting lucky isn’t excellence.
There’s a standard you need to set for yourself in terms of quality, in terms of performance and delivering on expectations. What kind of standards have you set for yourself? Is excellence one of your core values?
Every one of these Sunday Motivational videos falls under our own excellence criteria. Yes there are definitely other people out there that maybe have better visuals, better animations, but there’s no-one out there that’s been delivering this much value, at this high level consistently for the past 5 years the way we’ve been able to do, which is why you’re here today.
Because you’re expecting value and we can not let you down.
You’re expecting us to deliver it in a way that’s easy to understand and relate to your own life, and we can’t let you down.
Which brings us to today’s question: How many of these values do you honestly abide by? Write it down in the comments! We promised not to bullshit you with sounds-good-doesn’t-work information, so be truthful. At least then you have a real place to start from!
This wraps up our take on the 10 most important core values for success! Hope you found it a valuable read.
