Have you made some major decisions in your life and then started to wonder what drove you to take those specific actions when making that decision?
I can’t say for you but I have definitely gone down the rabbit hole on why I made certain decisions.
After numerous self-experiments expanding over a decade of my life involving both, big and small decisions around health, money, parents, career, friendship and romantic relationships, etc, and researching published literature, I’ve finally stumbled across some answers.
What drives us to make major life decisions?
When it comes to us humans making decisions (and I’m not referring to our daily decisions which are often a result of our formed habits but I’m referring to major life decisions), it’s generally a combination of:
What do we value with regard to the thing in the picture that we need to make a decision on?
What are our underlying needs in relation to that decision?
What are our belief systems around that thing in the picture that often becomes a part of our operating paradigm?
In this part I, let’s take a look at how we make decisions based on what we value.
Values-driven job hunt
I spent 5 years in graduate school to wrap up my Master’s which typically takes 2-2.5 years. The external reasons for my delayed time to graduation were things like — lack of funding or yet to make a significant finding in my research that would be a worthy contribution to science.
But internally, I knew that I was feeling scared to jump into the job market and take the very first job that would help navigate my work visa situation which was the influence I had from my peers.
The day eventually came. I graduated with my Master’s in Chemical Engineering. The last thing I wanted was to work in a lab with E.Coli or S. Cervesia.
The only thing I was sure of was I did not want to work in the field of my formal education and that software technology made me tick (and still does to this day).
My GF at the time was living in Vermont. We had been keeping up with the long-distance for 3 years now. So how did I go about all of this?
Well, I tried to compromise by looking for relevant jobs based on my degree up in New England. After no luck, I started to concentrate on the New York tech scene.
But after 2 months of feeling a lack of progress with zero interviews, I tried listening to my heart.
“Your heart knows the answer.” — as my mentor likes to say. And I’ve agreed with him since the beginning of 2020.
But one evening, as I was in my shower, debating with the inner conflict of whether —
Should I compromise with where and how I start my career to be with someone I loved?
Or...
Do I compromise with the person I had been in love with for 3 years in order to start a career that tied to my personal calling?
My heart answered and I went with the later.
I booked a one-way ticket and moved to Silicon Valley — the software & tech capital of the world.
For the next 3 months, I explored multiple things.
I used referrals and got my foot into the doors of Google & Airbnb who were kind enough to tell me why I wasn’t a fit for a UX Research role and that if I was serious about breaking into tech in UX/UI Design, I needed to start with a design portfolio first.
I then tried my hands at a coding boot camp and then a data science boot camp. Both of them passed on me.
It was an intense period of abject hopelessness. I felt I was making no progress on my job hunt and the clock was ticking for me.
Okay so here’s an interesting fact for all of you who work with immigrants on a work visa in the US. There’s a deadline of 60 days for the foreign national US degree holder to look for a job.
If he or she fails to secure a job offer related to their field of study within that period, the USCIS asks us to take the flight back home.
With that deadline looming over my head, I had a sense of urgency in my job search decision.
So I asked my heart again and my heart gave me an answer.
I was able to connect the dots on how my experiences in the US had enabled me to shed my older skin.
I went from being a shy, socially awkward guy to becoming an insatiably curious being with a love for learning who had traveled across all 48 US states, read over 300 non-fiction books, launched 7 businesses, lived homeless for a while — all of it while attending grad school.
The new Ankurman (which I feel is more who I am today) was finally able to communicate with people of all ages and colors.
That exercise led me to become self-aware of my love for serving others which led me to find my Ikigai — at least partially.
What do I love to do?
I love to learn STEM-related topics
I love to learn from people who are at a stage in their lives that I aspire to be someday
I love to learn from smart people building things that run the global economy
What am I good at?
I am good at researching
I am good at reaching out to folks who haven’t heard of or aren’t expecting to hear from me
I am good at being curious about others which helps me to have an endless repository of questions to ask someone I’ve just met
What does the world need?
The world needs people living meaningful lives
The world needs people who become valuable members of society and can contribute to the greater good
The world needs inspired people who show up not because they were asked to but because they want to
What can I get paid to do?
I can get paid to sell something I love and leverage what I’m good at that also serves the need of the world.
Technology sales - the answer was in front of me. I could sell a technology that can touch all of my requisites and kickstart my career that would also pay me decent to hit my financial goals.
So I attended a technology sales boot camp which lasted 3 weeks and started the interview process.
After interviewing with 49 companies, getting 12 on-site rejections, I finally had 2 job offers.
It was my hope for a better future that kept me going after 7 back-to-back on-site Nos.
When it came to choosing between the two offers I had on the table, company B was offering a 54% higher base salary than company A.
That was a lot of money I would leave on the table if I went with company A. And I needed money desperately at the time to take care of the massive debt I still had on my head from the real-estate business screw up that ultimately got me to experience homelessness. But more on that story later.
But I ended up going with company A and my reflection helped me understand why I made that decision.
While money was somewhat important to me, the following values were most important to me.
Autonomy, Flexibility, Adventure: My research showed company A with 9 team members in the US office would give me way more opportunities to be self-determined and independent than company B with 200+ people. The idea of being employee #10 also filled a sense of adventure within me and during offer negotiations, I learned company A was more flexible to sponsor my work visa compared to company B.
Curiosity, Love for learning, Knowledge, Challenge: What I would be selling at Company A involved selling to stakeholders involved in Enterprise IT business decisions - which was closer to my Ikigai than Company B where the product was relevant to marketing function at a company and selling to marketers didn’t quench my thirst for learning the type of knowledge I was seeking to learn and experience. My research showed that mastering Enterprise IT sale is a beast of a thing and that was a challenge I was excited about and am still to this day.
Provide, Family: While the salary difference (about $23K per year) was significant, I was able to crunch the numbers and it was possible for me to be able to provide for and take care of my family’s financial needs.
With all of my most important values in front of me, it then became an easy decision to make.
In case you’re wondering, I’m almost 3 years with company A and have gotten 2 promotions, was able to smoothly navigate my OPT to STEM extension to H1B RFE process that enabled me to visit my parents in India followed by a trip to Europe. But more importantly, I am surrounded by really smart people who are grounded on the values of simplicity, no fluff, integrity, equality, and approachability which deeply resonates with me.
Since then, I’ve become more aware of how both, major and minor decisions in my life are driven by values that are most and very important to me.
But what’s even more interesting is how our values are a result of our core needs belief systems. We’ll dive into that on part 2 and part 3 of what drives you to make a decision?
The Personal Core Values Exercise
This exercise allows you to identify those life values that are most important to you and weigh those with your current patterns of how you show up in your life and at work.
According to research by William Miller, Janet C'de Baca, and their team at the University of New Mexico, 2011; we all hold certain core values that drive our behaviors. Because all of us are unique, no two people may be alike in their priorities.
The goal of this exercise is to build awareness of your core values which you can then leverage to align those values when making a major life decision and take better care of your responsibilities.
Step 1: For each value from the list below, choose from the Priority drop-down list as to how you feel about that particular value is important in your life or to what extent it has impacted some of your major life decisions.
It’s easier to visualize on the spreadsheet, but you’re categorizing the corresponding values with Most important to me, Very important to me, Important to me, Somewhat important to me, Not important to me.
Step 2: In Step 1, filter the 'Most Important to Me' values set and copy-paste the 4 columns (Values, It is, Priority, Brief Description). Then, answer the question on column E for each value
Note down a key story or moment or experience that you’ve had over the last 3 years where your behavior — that decision you made was guided by your core values — whether you knew it consciously when making the decision or maybe you realized it later.
I’ve included a link to the spreadsheet which you are free to copy or extend for your personal purposes.
Some interesting findings on this topic of how we make decisions based on our core values. I’ve found that:
Our values evolve throughout our lifetime as we evolve as individuals
I used to value money a lot when I was a broke graduate student that drove me to take on blue color gigs like cleaning the basement trash of a renovated building, recycling metal and stuff you find at the auto junkyard, working as a cashier at a liquor store — not that there’s anything wrong with these jobs.
But today, I’m grateful to be able to pass on opportunities or stop doing something if I sense that the time I spend doing those tasks will negatively impact by inner peace, autonomy, growth — that it doesn’t fuel my curiosity, love of learning, knowledge, I don’t feel I’m making a contribution and there’s no connection to my personal purpose in life.
And the last one which I find the most fascinating is this.
Our values are a result of our habits. We form habits by repeating a seat of actions influenced by triggers with associated rewards. The triggers are often environmental or psychological i.e. what we see and hear around us, our internal dialog, and how we think and feel about different things. And that our triggers are a direct result of our belief system.
And if I have your permission to peel one final layer of the onion — our belief systems are a direct reflection of our upbringing as a child.
Even though we may be adults, we walk around in our daily lives holding the belief systems we formed in our childhood that could have been influenced by our parents and other experiences we had — positive or negative.
With the Ankurman podcast, my intention is to share the findings from my quest to seek the truth that is relevant to my unique individual self so that I can live my truth.
On this journey, I’m becoming aware of my values, needs, and belief systems and I’m intentional to keep the ones that serve me, reject the ones that don’t, and establish new ones that I hope will serve my purpose.
I’m also sharing all of this hoping it could be useful for others to adapt to their own situations.