We make decisions all the time. Early in the morning we have to decide should we sleep more or jump out of the bed. Should we make serious face pretending that we are busy or just make a smile to significant other?
Should we punish someone for bad behaviour, or may be not?
Decisions, decision, decisions….
But how to make decisions?
Roy Disney once told the following: “It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”
It’s amazing how much pressure and stress it takes off your shoulders when, in advance, you have laid out the values you will adhere to in your life. If done in advance, then when faced with difficult decisions or choices to make, you will find that these hard decisions are already made for you…
All of us can get sucked into justifying a wrong decision for what we have convinced ourselves is the right reason – our fears, our worries, our desires, etc will always look for ways to rationalize and muddy the waters between right and wrong. But if we take those emotions out of the equation, and only allow ourselves to ask the question, “Is what I’m deciding here a reflection of the values I say I stand for?” we’ll find that the waters clear and the decision is no longer hard.
Core values dictate behaviour and action. Core values help people to understand what is right or wrong.
When we say the world about core value, we give the world the sense what are we standing for. We articulate the reason why we are doing what we doing.
For more than 30 years I was involved in Ukrainian SWIFT banking community. In our community we thought that what we have in common with other bankers and members of the SWIFT cooperative in the world are our common values which provide foundation for all our decisions.
Ukrainian SWIFT community discussed SWIFT values that we always shared: Excellence, Community and Innovation. However, during the last developments in the world we feel that it is right to declare our core value:
FREEDOM
Ukrainian flags you can see in many countries and places you never see them before because the yellow blue flag became a symbol of freedom.
From the movie The Great Dictator (1940):
“If enough good people come together, we can do anything.
For those who can hear me I say: Do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass & dictators die. And the power they took from the people will return to the people.
Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes! Men who despise you, enslave you. Who regiment your lives. Tell you what to do, what to think, and what to feel. Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate. Only the unloved hate.
Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th chapter of St. Luke, it is written: The kingdom of God is within man. Not one man nor a group of men, but in all men.
In you! You the people have the power. The power to create machines. The power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world. A decent world. That will give men a chance to work. That will give you the future.
By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie. They do not fulfill that promise. They never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people.
Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world. To do away with national barriers. To do away with greed, with hate & intolerance.
Let us fight for a world of reason. A world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness."
Join us: BE FREE.
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