Welcome back to the blog! I hope you had a wonderful time doing the little activity that I attached in the last post. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I suggest you read it before you read this one. Today’s post would not be as analytical as the previous ones, but it will be very informative if you try to really understand the hidden meaning of the words.
Exactly like our Emotions, another factor that influences our identity is our Values. Values are developed as we grow up, by looking at our parents and other elders, living in the environment, by copying our friends and many other factors. These values become a part of our everyday life and transform into Behaviors and Habits.
For example, when person ‘A’ is late to a meeting, because he/she was watching TV and forgot about it, they will honestly tell the people about what happened. Whereas, person ‘B’ might tell a fake story about the same situation to avoid humiliation. These reactions are coded in our mind so deeply, that whenever we come across such a situation, we immediately resort to the behavior that has been done before. If you have seen the sitcom Friends, you will remember Ross’s fake English accent. This can be done to reinforce a certain value that you have, like person ‘A’ (The Value of Honesty) or it can be done to avoid taking responsibility for a certain value that you have, like person ‘B’ (The Value of Indiscipline).
Why is it Important to understand YOUR Values?
You might have seen people who are very normal and open when they are with you alone, but act completely different whenever they are a part of a group. There are changes in their appearance, their way of talking and their whole attitude changes too. Why does this happen?
Since the beginning of mankind, we are used to live in tribes and communities. People were always together, facing the challenges life threw at them. So obviously, our natural inclination is to belong somewhere. It can be our family, our group of friends, relatives, the local street gang, anything literally. In the modern times, the situation has changed, but our natural inclination has not. Our mind believes its better to be with the group than to be alone. Of course, being a part of a community has it’s benefits, but we often do not notice what other effects it has on us.
People usually go against their own beliefs just to fit in with the group they are a part of. This was shown in an amazing experiment conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. He conducted an experiment with a few students the Swarthmore College in USA. He invited students in groups of 8 people to participate, where seven of them were actors and one of them was the actual subject. The actors were aware of the actual agenda, whereas the subject completely unaware looked at them as normal subjects. Multiple trials were conducted for the research. The participants were asked to sit in a row and were given cards. Each card had one line on it, followed by three other lines, named A,B and C. One of these three lines was of the exact same length as the first line given for reference. The other two lines were very clearly longer or shorter. The participants were asked to identify the line of the same length and read the answer out loud, one by one. They were seated in such an order that the actual subject always answered last. In the first two rounds, the actors gave the same answer as the subject, which was the correct one. In the trials conducted after this, the actors were deliberately asked to give a wrong answer to confuse the subject. When the subjects heard the answers given by others, they started to doubt themselves, even though they were right. By the time, they received an opportunity to answer, several subjects changed their answers and chose the wrong option.
Every group that we are a part of has an effect on us. Just to fit in that group, we resort to behaviors that don’t actually resonate with us. You might have noticed, that you drink more whenever you’re around a particular group of friends, but that’s not the case normally. Maybe you dress up nicely and put on a lot of make up when you’re meeting a particular friend, but that’s not the case when you’re meeting other friends. We change a part of ourselves just to be able to look good in someone’s eyes. Usually this starts as something very small and you may not even realize it’s importance. What if drink more once in a while? What if I dress up better and apply make up once in a while? But slowly these occasional behaviors start turning into habits and become a part of your daily life. And you know what will happen if you start drinking regularly and start pretending someone you are not. You will lose yourself and become what people want you to be. And what happens next? You start feeling depressed and disconnected to the events happening around you. You feel true happiness when you can be yourself without the fear of being judged by others.
“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am. ”
Thomas Cooley
To put in a different way, we try to fabricate our personality according to what we think people need to think about us. This is something called as People Pleasing. Everybody is a people pleaser at some or the other level. We all want to be liked by others. And that’s natural. But the problem is when this Want turns into an Obsession. That’s when you need some Self-Work. Because if it’s not done in time, it will cause a downward spiral.
Identifying your Values…
With so many things affecting how we act, how do we make sure our Actions are in accordance to our Identity? We can do that by identifying our real Values so that whatever we do feels right and joyous.
To real get in touch with yourself, you must tune out the noises that come from outside. The expectations, opinions and obligations of the society are these noises. These continuously affect us, but once you manage to tune them out, it can truly bring clarity to your life. Just like the water starts looking clearer and cleaner once you remove the impurities. Reflect on what gives you true joy and satisfaction. What action feels like a natural inclination and not an obligation to fit in somewhere. The goal is to be natural and true to yourself. At the end of this post, I’ll be attaching an activity which will help you identify and understand your true values.
One more thing that I would like to mention, is the part where we talked about tuning out the noises of the world. This is actually to understand yourself first, without any external influence. But it doesn’t mean that we have to ignore the outside world completely. We talked about the negative impact of groups. But there is also the other side to this coin. Communities can help you reinforce good Values or even develop them. Imagine that you’re a person who wants to develop the habit of reading because you like learning about new things (Curiosity/Learning is your value in this case). If you join a group that has people who are avid readers, it’ll become easier for you to develop the habit as you would want to fit in the group. We need to stick with the people who inspire us and encourage us to be better everyday.
What we need to learn, is the ability to use this natural inclination of ours, to bring positive changes in our lives which resonate with our values, and reduce the negative influences in our life which take us further away from our values. It is about creating balance between tuning out the noises of the world and learning good things from it at the same time. You will eventually develop a filter, which will start adopting behaviors and habits which will help you to grow.
I hope you liked today’s post! Whatever you read here, comes from reliable resources and my personal understanding of the topics. But I would like to remind you, that the activities that we do, are for Self Awareness and Self Discovery. They are not an alternative for Professional Help. In fact, they are to help you know whether or not you’re in need of professional help. Please keep that in mind.
Today’s activity has been attached below. Have fun doing it!
Love, Ninad.
The Eleos Project 