or similar activity will do. The main thing is to fulfill your desires. If your desires are fulfilled, then your values will be satisfied. And the puzzle will work out. Do not confuse it with a pretentious expression: just do what you like, and there will be success. For example, I like football in addition to music. I am young, but I will not build a football career anymore. At the age of 33, football players are already finishing their careers. How do I do what I like? I can create a football website, open a school, organize competitions, create a startup or sell sporting goods. All this is an activity that I would enjoy. I always thought I was lucky because I always knew what I wanted. But in fact, I only thought so. The desire to share knowledge in education or solve the problems of companies in consulting was a discovery for me. Moreover, I didn’t like education before, and complex problems scared me. Therefore, I made a conclusion for myself. First you need to understand your values and start trying everything one by one. If you try correctly, then desires will quickly make themselves felt, even if you do not fully understand your values and first try things randomly.
The problem is that there are other people’s values that confuse us. Society demonstrates and imposes other people’s values on us. For example, the values of prestige and status. For the status, you need expensive clothes, a car and a bought place in a queue for a new iPhone, so that everyone can see what a rich person you are. But if this is the case, then why does Warren Buffett drive a cheap car and have breakfast in McDonald’s, even though he is a billionaire? Something doesn’t end up here. But for him, status and prestige are not his values. Watch a documentary about him and you will understand everything. You can read Mark Manson’s «The Subtle Art of Indifference». This will help to start a fight with other people’s values. At least, it will reduce the weight of some familiar, but useless values. Today we live in a society where people don’t want to be happy, they want to be happier than others. For everyone to watch and admire. The conveyor of show-offs works at the speed of light, and it is very difficult to stop it. In such a culture, there is no time to analyze your values or look for an emotional response in your activities. Even if you wish, it is difficult to stop and make a conscious analysis. This is how we get people who take out a loan for an iPhone for 1,800 $ instead of training, which can change their lives. Don’t do that. I hope this chapter becomes a speed bump for your thoughts to slow down and analyze the basic values.
«A person can go beyond his own limits only by relying on his own true nature, and not on ambitions and artificial goals»
How to analyze your values?
The process is not easy. Not everyone can immediately catch the tendency for an emotional response from actions or thoughts about them. There are courses and books on the topic of finding your talents. They will help you delve into the topic and find new ways to get to the basic values and desires. Below there is a list of questions that will help you activate the necessary reasoning about your values.
1. Remember the moments when you were happy and experienced positive emotions. What was it about?
2. Remember when you were passionate about something that you lost control of time.
3. Remember when you did something during fatigue or in very uncomfortable conditions. What was that? Why did you find the strength?
4. What successes, deeds, results do you consider your achievements? What are you most proud of?
5. From what deeds, events or communication do you experience a surge of energy?
6. What do you not get tired of? What can you do at any time?
7. What kind of job or profession do you like? Why?
8. What is the most important thing for you in life? What are the principles of your life?
9. What does your ideal day and life look like? Where do you live, with whom, where do you work, what do you do in your free time?
10. What things do you want to have? Why do you need them? What needs are being covered?
11. What do you do in your free time? Why this one? Why do you value a hobby, and what does it give you?
12. What kind of business would you open? What value would you like to bring to customers?
13. In what field would you like to become an expert? For what?
14. What do you pay attention to when choosing a place of work? What prompted you to choose this profession and this field?
15. What goals do you want to achieve in the near future?
The answers to these questions will not give you a ready-made list of your values. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but you can already notice repetitions and trends of what you really like. Write down the answers in any form, compare them with the list of skills «what do you like to do» and «what do you do well, according to friends». Get more intersections or add to the list. If there are no obvious leaders, then you can try the «inner child» and «billionaire» techniques. Remember your childhood. When you didn’t think about success yet, but were sitting on your parents’ neck and doing what you like, without unnecessary thoughts. For example, in addition to football, I have always been fond of creating something. I liked to disassemble alarm clocks, tape recorders, toys and other things. From them I collected incomprehensible new mechanisms. Alarm clocks were a special buzz, they have a lot of details, and it’s very difficult to put them back together. My parents even had demands that I should not be given simple toys, otherwise I would be upset that they did not understand. Getting a computer in the ninth grade, I was sucked into the world of video and photo editing. Back then there was Paint and Movie Maker. I made shots with monkeys from videos, inserted the faces of classmates there and brought them to school on discs to laugh. I created maps for Counter Strike and installed everything where you can create something. In fact, nothing has changed now. I am driven by all the same processes. Only instead of alarm clocks, there is business, innovation, education and digital services. Although as a child, when asked who I wanted to be, I answered that I wanted to be a stuntman. I just really liked Jackie Chan. Remember what you could play for hours, what you did, what you dreamed about. Maybe then your desires were blocked by adults, they did not give you something to try, or there was no opportunity. Try to remember and find similar mechanics in adult activities.
If you don’t want to remember how poems were told on a stool as a child, then imagine yourself being Tony Stark. Imagine that you already have everything. You bought all the iPhones, houses, cars and islands. You showed it to everyone, got millions of likes and tons of envy. What will you do next? We dismiss charity and travel; these are endless affairs. Most likely, a dead end awaits you here. It turns out that people dream, but are not ready for wealth. Most of them can’t immediately answer what they will do. But if you think carefully and longer, then desires will begin to manifest. When I began to understand my desires and build my development vector around them, I began to get more pleasure from work, and it became easier for me to organize my life. I got rid of the focus and set priorities. Everything became clear.
I have devoted a lot to the topic of motivation and the definition of the path vector in this chapter, although the questions are to some extent philosophical, not practical. But it had to be done. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re going in the wrong direction. Don’t worry if you’re not sure where you’re going yet. Just go through the stages
