Human beings are wanderers by nature and curiosity is ever-present in our veins. This curiosity pushes us to take a closer look at the stuff we are genuinely interested in and the people who persist the longest gain specific knowledge in that field that could be used to improve the financial, spiritual, or physical aspects of their lives.
As humans get more curious they tread on many different paths and tend to lose themselves along the way. So it is always necessary to pick up virtues along the way which you should use to measure yourself or in other words, to help keep a check on your actions and decisions. These virtues or rules to live by, which are set by yourself, will be like the flags kept along the way of a forest trial to help the hiker be on the right path.
Many people don’t have their virtues figured out or haven’t given themselves a chance to reflect on their lives to set these virtues for themselves. To give you guys a starting point, I would like to give you my list of three virtues I have set for myself which I will always follow no matter which path I choose in life.
In this post you will find
1. Loyalty:
Loyalty is the only thing that no man can demand or buy or force. It is a feeling, a special bond that is formed with another person and lives in us till the end of our lives. No words are spoken regarding this and it is a silent feeling that lives within us and guides the relationship.
We tend to meet a lot of people in our lives and among them, there are some people who stay in constant contact with us, some people with whom we try to stay in contact with, some with whom we share a few special moments, some people with whom we shared a certain part of our life and some whom we have forgotten along the way.
You can be good to every person you meet in your life, but no man can ever be loyal to every person he meets, although he can try, then the concept of loyalty is belittled and lost. Loyalty, at its base, is something that is compounded and anything that compounds needs time, and all the passing relationships you are involved in do not get the right amount of time to form that unique bond.
Loyalty is not formed based on any grand gesture, it is always in the small, simple things that this feeling of loyalty gets compounded in our hearts and minds. For example, you have committed a huge error or made a big, costly mistake and everyone you know is furious with you. All are asking you for answers and at that time your friend defends you in front of everyone and calms the situation down. Once it is calm your friend comes to you in private and reasons out their point of view and demands you to make things right. That is a sign of a loyal person for you.
Most of you would have felt this deep connection with either a friend, a sibling, a sports team, or even your spouse. But an interesting aspect of loyalty is that it is not necessarily reciprocated. You can feel loyal to your spouse, but end up knowing that they had been cheating on you this whole time. You can give your all in support of your favorite sports team but cannot expect the players or the management to be loyal to you alone. They are loyal to their entire fan base as a whole but not specific to you. There are very few instances in each of your lives where you come across someone who shares that same feeling of loyalty with you.
In your life, if you find someone who is loyal to you and you feel the same way about that person, place your trust in him/her and never ever break that bond. Even if you are offered a billion dollars to break it, please don’t. That relationship is worth more than any amount of money that this world can offer you. Money loses its specialness over time but that bond will remain sacred till the very end.
2. Carpe Diem:
I made this a part of my life after I saw the iconic movie, ‘Dead Poets Society’. No matter what I say about this, I cannot explain it more beautifully than Robin Williams. Please do watch the video below if you haven’t already understood the full extent of my emotions:
In the end, we are all just food for worms. Every one of us gets a finite amount of time on Earth. We must always strive to find out what we desire, what we are curious about and we must focus on it. In the words of Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist, ‘To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation’. Figure out what your personal legend is, always ask your heart because it always knows what it is.
Whether you are privileged or not, whether you have money or not, whether you are an orphan or an outcast, life always offers you certain signs or moments to follow your calling. Develop self-awareness to understand which of these signs point to your personal legend. Once you filter out the noise that isn’t your true calling, in those times, whisper ‘Carpe Diem’ to yourself and go out to seize that moment, to seize that day and make your lives extraordinary.
3. Respect your opponents:
I always believe that the best fight is always between two people who respect each other. The battle between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates was beautiful for the world of innovation. They had their petty quarrels and the media made it sound as though they resented each other (they might have, we would never know). But deep down they both respected each other so much and in Steve Jobs’s last days he wanted to meet with Bill Gates and talk to him. That was the level of respect they had for each other.
My personal favorite will always be the battle between Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson. They both had a lot of differences and when it was time for a match between Arsenal and Manchester United, it was always feisty. Both of them ridiculed each other in front of the media. All said and done, Arsene Wenger rates the time he spent against Sir Alex as his most cherished because he respected the person and the battle between them and claims Sir Alex to be one of the reasons to make his managerial career to be so special.
In life, you will come across many opponents that you need to overcome. Sometimes it may be a single person, a group of people, and many other times it is just the situation at hand, like an exam. I have personally felt the effect of what happens when there is a lack of respect towards your opponent when I was close to failing the easiest exam during my engineering degree which is the English semester exam. I did not study as I believed that I would ace the test easily and was on my computer till 3 AM the night before the exam. I did not even know the format of the exam. All this overconfidence played against me and I was 2 marks short of failing the easiest exam in the whole of my engineering course.
This might be a simple example when compared to the other things I had to work my way around. But it still taught me at a very young age the value of giving any work you do the importance it deserves. Since then I have always made it a point to prepare myself to the best of my abilities and not be lazy and lethargic.
Closing:
Hope the virtues in follow in life help you to discover yours. You will definitely find them in the path of your life. All you need to be is a little self-aware. Do let me know in the comments what your virtues are and to read more such articles, check out my blog page.
