Below is a small note from my personal journal -
Maintain your values irrespective of what others are doing, as it will help in the long run.
The ones who are not maintaining might find it difficult to adjust to new habits. People maintaining would have one less thing to worry about as you inculcated those habits way in advance.
- Example 1: Always be before time.
Irrespective of the occasion being social/formal, one must always be before time.
- For social events on time or 5 mins before works.
- For formal events on time means late.
If one follows this principle strictly this will become a habit and help them in long term and create a brand image for yourself.
- Example 2: Don’t be rude.
Irrespective of whether there is any incentive left or not, one should not be rude to someone.
After the deal is done and it didn’t work out, one should just carry on with their life and not put a dent on others.
You are already leaving their life, why put a mark that you were here? Why do you want them to think about you? How does that benefit you?
Vengeance is not the way to go forward in life. Even Batman realizes that his purpose is not vengeance but hope for other people.
This principle will help you remain peaceful mentally and not create enemies without any reasons.
Think about the second order consequences here (Butterfly effect).
People talk but even though knowing their opinions is most of the time irrelevant your one action will lead to creating a series of event which will slowly reach to the person where you wanted to create an impression.
Example: You being dishonest with X today will create an image of you being dishonest within the group of X. The members of this group will have separate groups and members of those group will further have more groups and so on. Therefore, your act on X might (most of the times it does) lead to your image of dishonesty being created in your whole environment. Once such image is created it is very difficult to clean it up.
One shall never let go the good values they inculcated over the years after they feel that they have achieved what they wanted to. The rationale is you reached that result because you were XYZ but if you don’t continue to follow those habits you might become (XYZ - 1) and that person cannot achieve what XYZ achieved. Some relaxation can be given but the core mindset should not be changed.
It takes years to build mindset and one should protect it at all times.
Example: There is not much harm in going out to party in where people drink and smoke (assuming one does not indulge in same), but the greater fear is the threat to the mindset being developed. You watch people smoke and drink around you and slowly your mind starts to feel that it is normal. Soon enough you reach a stage where you are just one step away from starting those habits.
From opening door to listening people to taking out time for people, everything is about mindset.
- The mindset of making the person in front of you feel special.
- The mindset of not being dishonest
- The mindset of not gaining at the cost of others.
- The mindset of helping people without any incentive or without them asking.
- The list can go on forever…
Hence maintaining one’s core value should be always one’s top priority, even though there would be events where you don’t want to participate but that is the cost you pay for inculcating the habit of protecting your values for the longer term.