Choose Wisely! Your Values

Career is a composite set of big or small choices we make. Choosing your major at graduation or specialization later, your first job, organization, sector, industry, location, role, function all set foundation for your future. Whether you choose to opt for preparing and attempting some prestigious program at some prominent school/University like CAT, JEE, NEET or some full scholarship program in reputed foreign universities. Or you go for job related competitive exams like UPSC, PCS.We choose what we value or what is important to us. There is a list of things we ascribe value to. Like, health, money, comfort, friendship, educational grades, family relations, honesty, truth, respect, recognition and so on. There may be negative values too..such as greed and graft.Values are byproducts of our belief system. Belief is attached to faith. Religion, if understood in right sense and spirit, provides a good foundation of faith and thus beliefs and adjoining values. If not interested in religion then one has to build from scratch, brick by brick, the foundation of one's beliefs and hence values.Many a times, we tend to pretend our adherence to some values like concern for environmental degradation, but we hardly practice these. These are termed as fancy values. Our concern must be authenticated values i.e. values we really value!Once we have chosen a set of suitable/appealing but authentic values for us, we must practice these. As Gandhiji did. He chose truth, non violence, equality, equity among many values for himself after lots of experiments. Finally, he chose Truth and Non Violence as his principles.The basic difference between values and principles is that values, when in conflict, may be compromised. Whereas, a principle is non compromisable at any cost. For example, business and family may be both your values. You have an opportunity where you are bound to evade a very important family event if you want to get a business deal closed. This situation leads to value conflict. And here comes the role of value priority, you will choose the value which ranks upper in your value set.Therefore; choices make us what we are. Choices are governed by underlying hierarchy of values (which originate from beliefs/faith). So, one must choose values wisely.