What compass is guiding your choices?
- Tamara Mihályi
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
Just like a great machine, an artistic masterpiece, an amazing meal – we have ingredients that build and govern our Lives from the foundations up: Values, principles and beliefs.
Self-Awareness practice is key to personal evolution.
It helps us find clarity and anchors, like a finetuned Moral Compass, to navigate dynamic Life situations, making the best decisions we can.
The most fundamental compass I always encourage in all conversations around Life Vision, Personal Growth, increasing quality of Leadership: to consider and get clear on the most important Values we navigate choices by.
In all the information, noise, pressure we can face at any point, to have something we can reliably and clear-mindedly reach for.
If that's the only clear thing at the time of our decision process, it can already be immensely helpful for the next, potentially optimal step.
VALUES
You may like to choose nouns or adjectives for this.
Examples: Freedom - free, Creativity - creative, Humility - humble, Confidence - confident...
Self-reflection questions can be:
"What do I truly value?"
"What do I find meaningful?"
PRINCIPLES
You derive your guiding principles from your Values.
If you value Honesty, you'll have a correlating principle that governs your behaviour and perception: it'll be steering you towards being honest and value those who are too.
Self-reflection questions can be:
"What kind of behaviours do I fundamentally like/accept/honour related to my Values?"
"What is the ideal Character I want to embody?"
Principles hold a transcendent quality, a strong bond with our Moral Compass.
BELIEFS
Based on one general definition "belief is mental acceptance of a claim as likely true while principle is a fundamental assumption".
(Covey* sees values and beliefs as subjective, internal, malleable.)
To prevent overthinking categorization, we can simply go by leading verbs that help us express our internal state and thought processes.
Feel free to adapt words that best help you find YOUR meaning and meaningful answers for yourself:
"What do I believe in?"
"What do I value?"
"What are morally acceptable/unacceptable/honourable things and qualities for me?"
"Where do I see discrepancy in my current circumstances?"
"Where do I choose to make new/different choices to reflect my Values more faithfully?"
Crystallising a Vision for our Life areas, lifestyle design (the expression of T. Ferriss), the Ikigai concept, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs... all are organically connected, and can help with this process.
Finding Meaning, whether subconsciously yearned for or consciously explored, seems to be common in all of us humans.
When in the middle of our daily tasks, we may not consider being on a planet orbiting a star.
Yet, any dissatisfaction, frustration can lead to questions like "is this meaningful to me?" or "why am I doing this?" or "why did I say this?"
A spectrum of emotions guiding us to what we feel is acceptable, fair, what we enjoy doing and what we don't, what ideas we resonate or disagree with.
Then passing our responses through our conscious Awareness-filters.
Like a puzzle.
A process of Self-discovery.
Freedom, Fairness, Integrity are my main navigation points.
When a stronger emotional response is triggered, practising Self-reflection I check in if the event/ behaviour/words seem contrary to or aligned with any of these.
We all have a long list of what we value. Various degrees to it too.
The invitation here is to have your most important steering points readily available, to utilise them not only at intense decision points, but when envisioning the Future and planning the realisation of it. Increasing Self-/Awareness.
Core Values help prioritise choices.
More questions you can ask yourself as #selfreflection:
What is important in your current season of Life?
What are your current primary Core Values you discern & prioritise by?
How can you honour your primary Core Values more in your daily choices? Where do you see/feel incoherence between them?
With optimising your choices, what is the positive difference that you believe can be achieved on potentially all levels: mental-emotional-physical-spiritual?
We can increase our level of Self-/Awareness: we observe, adjust, iterate.
Representing the Values we stand for in the best way we can.
We start with ourselves – and lead by example.
Recommended Resources
List of books I regularly recommend. They were helpful in my own Wayfinding.
Dr. Joe Dispenza Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One
H. García and F. Miralles Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
*Stephen R. Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Eckart Tolle The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Shad Helmstetter What to Say When You Talk to Your Self
Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Workweek
Carol Dweck Mindset. Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential. This book is quoted by many others and is one of the most fundamental concept descriptions on Fixed vs. Growth Mindset and how they influence our level of Success.
Greg McKeown Essentialism. The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. About optimal energy investment for highest yield and disciplined thinking as a way of living.
James Clear Atomic Habits
BJ Fogg Tiny Habits
Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit. Why we do what we do in Life and Business. or Why we do what we do and how to change
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