A Navigation Tool.

A Navigational Tool.

A compass is a tool for finding direction. A simple compass is a magnetic needle mounted on a pivot or short pin. The needle, which can spin freely, always points north. The pivot is attached to a compass card. The compass card is marked with directions.

• People in China and Europe first learned how to make magnetic compasses during the 1100s. They discovered that when a magnetized bit of iron floated in the water, it pointed north. Sailors soon began to use compasses to navigate or find their way, at sea.

• In a world that is constantly evolving and taking new forms, it can be somewhat overwhelming trying to make sense of this thing called life. One of the things that rarely change in this world though and what can provide a guiding light for us throughout life is our core values.

• Core values are principles or beliefs that we hold most dear and that are of central importance in our life. When everything around us is changing, when the world is difficult to understand, and when we are riding up and down the emotional rollercoaster, our core values will always be there for us.

• They are important because they act as a compass to help us lead the amazing life that we want, no matter where we find ourselves in this world. It improves our decision-making, our productivity, our achievements and perhaps most importantly, our ability to love and be loved.

Core Values.

Belief.

• A belief is an idea that we hold as being true. It can be based on probabilities or matters of faith. It comes from different sources including our experiences or experiments, acceptance of cultural and societal norms (e.g., religion), or what other people say (e.g., Teachers or Mentors).

• An idea can sit in our minds until we accept it as truth and adopt it as part of our belief system. We evaluate and seek sound reasons or evidence for these potential beliefs in our way. Once we accept a belief as a truth, we are willing to defend it as part of our belief system.

• Values are stable long-lasting beliefs about what is important to us. They become standards by which we order our lives and make choices. A belief will develop into a value when our commitment to it grows, and we see it as being important.

• It is possible to categorise beliefs into different types of values – examples include values that relate to happiness, wealth, career success or family. We must be able to articulate our values to make clear, rational, responsible and consistent decisions.

Beliefs are so powerful that they shape how we feel about ourselves, others, and the world around us. Once we realize that our beliefs shape our reality and our beliefs can be changed, we start to change the reality of our lives.

Attitude.

Attitude creates our world and designs our destiny. It determines our success or failure in any venture in life. More ventures have been lost, withheld, and forfeited because of a bad attitude than any other cause. It is our way of thinking.

• It is a more powerful distinction in life than beauty, power, title, or social status. It is more important than wealth, and it can keep us poor. It is a servant that can open doors of life or close the gates of possibility. It can make beauty ugly and homeliness attractive.

• The distinguishing factor between a leader and a follower is attitude. It dictates our response to the presence and determines the quality of our future. We are our attitude, and our attitude is us. If we do not control our attitude, it will control us.

• Watch your attitude. It’s the first thing people notice about you. It is a magnet. What we think is what we attract. Faith is having a positive attitude about what we can do and not worrying at all about what we can’t do. The only difference between a good day and a bad day is our attitude.

• Ability is what we can do. Motivation determines what we do. Attitude determines how well we do it. Patience is not the ability to wait. Waiting is a fact of life. Patience is the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.

• Our mindset or mental conditioning determines our interpretation of and response to our environments. It is the manifestation of whom we think we are and a natural product of our integration of self-worth, self-concepts, and self-value.

We live our lives based on whom we think we are. The difference between the attitudes of a lion and a sheep determines their place in the scheme of the animal kingdom. 

If we believe in our heart that we are sheep, then we will stay in the confines that others have placed us in or our comfort zone. If we think that we are a lion, then we will venture beyond our man-made limitations and embark on a life that we were born to live.

Purpose.

Every manufacturer designs his product with the right components, engineered to fulfil the function that the product is created to perform. The purpose of a product dictates the mechanical and the engineering components required to fulfil the manufacturers intent.

• There is no greater gift we can give or receive than to honour our calling. It’s why we were born. And how we become most truly alive. Musicians must make music, artists must paint, dancers must dance, poets must write if they are ultimately to be at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be.

• Purpose = Gifts + Passion + Values. Giftsare not just our skills and talents, but what we love to do. Passion is something for which we feel a deep curiosity and interest. Values include our beliefs and what we consider to be most important.

• The purpose is what gets us out of bed every morning, it is why we sacrifice what we sacrifice and often entails something bigger than ourselves. If we don’t have a purpose, it is unlikely that we will find much meaning in our life.

• The original purpose for a product determines the design, composition, capacity, and potential. It is the reason for the creation of the product. For example, seeds produce plants and trees, and therefore they naturally possess the ability and capacity to perform this purpose.

• Fish are created to swim, and thus their ability and capacity to swim are built in their design and instincts. They never need to attend swimming school. Birds on the other hand were created for flight and naturally, come with the design and ability to fly. Birds never have to attend flight school.

• Whatever a creator establishes as the original purpose for his creation determines its natural, built-in design, its raw materials, capacity, natural talents, and potential.

• The heart of human excellence often begins to beat when we discover a pursuit that absorbs us, frees us, challenges us, or gives us a sense of meaning, joy, or passion. It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life.

Everyone has been made for some work and the desire for that work has been put in every heart. Finding ways to make life meaningful and purposeful and rewarding, doing the activities that we love and spending time with the people that we love is the meaning of this human experience called purpose.

Servanthood.

Most of us have experienced leaders who were all about themselves. Using the skills of others to reach their current position and then calling themselves a leader. These leaders who boast about being a leader are often a leader in title only, not a leader of people who chose to follow them willingly.

• Servanthood refers to the focus and commitment we have to the needs of the people we influence. It means giving others the information and resources they need to complete their work successfully, not to do their work for them.

• When we serve others, we gain followers through valuing, trusting, and respecting every person we meet. We listen attentively; I mean listen to what is being said. We solicit ideas, ask questions, want opinions, look for participation, and value all feedback.

• When we educate others through our words and actions, we mentor, lead by example, and help others achieve their goals. Through these selfless actions, we gain trust and loyalty. We bring out the feelings of self-worth in others, inspiring them to greater heights than they would have reached on their own.

• Contribution beyond ourselves keeps our life in check, where we form a good foundation to build our successes upon. When we just take from the world we live in and choose not to contribute to it, it keeps us in a state of surviving no matter how much we have or how much money we make.

• We can’t truly be of service to something unless it aligns with what truly matters to us, and it’s that alignment that allows us to give simply because it matters. A doctor who doesn’t value human life or human connection. A soldier who doesn’t value integrity or freedom. A writer who doesn’t value imagination or honesty is not in service to others.

• Sacrificing something that matters to us for something that matters more is certainly a noble act. Whether it’s a choice of work, love, friendship, location, or lifestyle it’s a choice that life gives all of us at different times. If we need to sacrifice something, do it because it matters to us and not because we want it to matter to others.

• Be of service because we want to be enthralled by the world, not because we want the world to be enthralled by us. We do what we do because it matters to us more than we can say.

It’s only by weaving heart, honesty, and vulnerability into our life, business, and actions that we get to be of genuine, valuable service, and that’s how we get to leave our fingerprints on the world.

Wisdom.

Wisdom does not come with age but rather, experience. There are many young people with more wisdom than the oldest people that we know. What makes someone wise is their ability to see broadly and clearly, to use good judgement and to be decisive when necessary.

• It is a great source of power. It’s through others’ stories of failure and success that we learn the most. It’s their experiences of things we have yet to witness that feed us the knowledge we need to fly high, to build upon what we already know.

• There is little in life that a wise mind can’t conquer. And it’s the sage-like guidance that inspires us to make our life that much better. Knowledge is knowing the tomato is a fruit and wisdom is not putting it in our fruit salad.

• It has a close relationship with sight-related words: foresight, insight, hindsight, reflection, enlightenment, visionary, etc. The wise person can see beyond the small issues and find a larger perspective; that is why they are so fascinating and useful.

• It is the knowledge that is guided by understanding; we must have the wisdom and the knowledge to understand why certain things happen in our lives and trust that our intuition will lead us over any obstacles that come our way.

• Wisdom is a mixture of experience, courage, and intelligence. We all want to be wise and make wise decisions because when we do, we’re tapping into the best of ourselves. Quite often, being wise is just giving enough time to think (isn’t it quite often the case that snap judgements turn out poorer results than considered decisions!).

Listening to wise counsel – to wise friends and mentors, who give us a more balanced perspective when we’re mulling over an idea – is a good way to tap into wiser choices. It’s wise to learn from experience, but it is wiser to learn from the experience of others.