My tenets
I find the thought of having my fundamental values written down very appealing. Whenever there's a difficult decision to make, I could refer to that document and let it guide me. Motivated by that goal, I have done numerous exercises to find out my principles, values, purpose – they come in many names.
This usually involves a deep reflective journey that results list of holy items. Like Moses, I climbed up the mountain of my inner self, stayed there for 40 days and nights without food and water to return with a list of holy items that are set in stones.
My problem: This approach never worked for me. The result never fully resonated with me and I never hat a set of written down personal rules that I could actually use to guide me in my decisions. I suspect that the process is always too top-down, too abstract for me, to far away from my daily reality.
Trying out tenets
That's why I want to try a simpler approach: Adam Damianos tenets method. It goes like this:
- Write down a handful of tenets that you want to focus on
- Review those regularly (once a week seems to be good)
- The heightened awareness will likely already cause a change. If not, take the necessary measures
- Add new tenets that become important and archive old ones
What I like about this is that it is bottom-up, modular and hands on. You write some things down and then you immediately test them in everyday life. You think about them weekly, so they're never so far away that you forget about them. You can adjust and switch them up if necessary.
Here are my initial tenets (2025-01-10) that have emerged in my new year reflection:
Finish what you start: I have a habit of starting things with great enthusiasm, but then losing that pretty quickly to start the next exciting thing. This leads to a lot of unfinished business and some dissatisfaction with myself and my ability to get things done.
Don't take too many shortcuts: The ability to act pragmatically and not long-winded is a plus. But it can go too far. I regularly look for the shortest path and skip essential steps which impedes the quality of whatever I'm doing. Examples include trying to set something up without doing proper research and "cleaning" the apartment by throwing everything in a drawer.
Embrace discomfort: When there is something that is potentially uncomfortable, my first instinct is often to avoid it. This is an impediment to me reaching my goals and living the way I actually want to live. Examples include not going to the gym because I'm tired or it's cold outside, not answering a message because they might not like the answer and not working on important things because they are (or seem) tricky and doing easy things instead (yes, I'm talking about procrastination).
Adam shares his reflections publicly, and I'm thinking about doing that too.