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We live in a world where it is so easy to compare ourselves to others and to use other’s success as a litmus of our own success. But truly the only way to define and be effective and successful in your life is if you are living a life that is in accordance with what you value. So it is really important for each of us to come to a place where we are able to understand, at some level, what it is that is important. Because when we are able to do that that becomes a compass point by which we make decisions and can move forward in our lives effectively. There is really fascinating research looking at this idea of values affirmation. Very often values are seen as being warm and fluffy and almost arbitrary things that can be in our lives but have no practical purpose.
The research suggests that this idea of our values couldn’t be further from the truth. In multiple studies where people who are at risk – for example, someone who is absorbing a cultural bias against women – women are cut out for some jobs and not others. So what the research shows is that very often we will unintentionally absorb these biases about ourselves. We will develop stories about what I can do and what I can’t do, what I should do and what I shouldn’t do.
Now imagine an individual who has absorbed, sometimes without even knowing, this kind of cultural bias. Who works, for example, in a male-dominated area of science and who has a project that goes horribly wrong and potentially fails. We know that those women are more likely to drop out of their profession or to change their profession. And really the story goes something like: “I knew I wasn’t cut out for this; that’s what society is telling me; it may not be explicit that they’re saying that and therefore I need to choose a different path.”
Now fascinatingly what the research shows us is that individuals who are going through this kind of transition, whether it’s moving to college as a student, whether it is someone who is at risk of dropping out of school, or whether it is someone who is dealing with failures or setbacks at work – the simple idea of affirming and writing down, sometimes even in the space of ten minutes, what it is that you value, why it is that you are at school in your career trying to do what you are trying to do – is shown to be protective two and three years down the line. So when we divide people into groups, one group is the control group and one group is the values affirmation group. The individuals who simply express what it is that is important to them. Those people in the values affirmation group, over a period of years, show greater levels of resilience and the ability to thrive under pressure and to come back from setbacks.