The statement of Jon Stewart “If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values; they’re hobbies” reflects about functionality of values in dynamic society and how conflict of values might occur in diverse systems. Values is very abstract terminology and can be interpreted in different context and hence it’s a contextualized idea. (Koujes Posner, 2012) Generally, it’s a foundation of our words, actions, judgment and decisions. The personal values system is modelled by our family culture, childhood experience, and religious affiliations. The values with respect to my professional work as a follows: -

1. One commitment at a time: I think I have spent some couple of useless years doing nothing expect sleeping unconsciously. When I realized there is something more that, I can do with myself and for others beside sleeping. But, I was struggling to focus in one particular task for a long period which is the reason I decided to be committed for one particular task at one time. In my professional work I always try to bring best possible outcome with this sense of commitment. According to ZEHIRa, SEHITOGLUb, ERDOGAN, the sense of commitment has a positive relationship with the organizational productivity.    

2. Learn is a means not an end: I believe we are perfectly imperfect being who are perfectly persisting to achieve perfect result in the  illusion of perfectionism. I know perfectionism is a relative term therefore my journey is not towards perfectionism while its to reduce the percentage of imperfection in the work we do. This value pushes me to be curious, learn in best possible ways and continuously    implement in bringing tangible results.

3. Take risks to grow: I have never been afraid to try ideas, experiment odd styles and share my opinions even majority of them        disagree. I sometime put myself in a conflicting situation intentionally to validate my self-belief which has given me an ability to grow  from those intentional risks which sometime are calculated and sometime not.   

4. Expand your 100%: I believe we often set boundaries for ourselves before other set for ourselves. The way we say I had given 100% percent in a given task are sometime biased argument. Therefore, I believe my potential and capabilities is not what I say is or what other say is rather it always expand with hard work and perseverance. This makes me obsessive for a given task and I learn things faster than expected in professional setting.

5. Be Honest with self: I don’t withstand if someone insult, dominate or preach power for self-interest and therefore I would find ways to speak against it if necessary. I don’t hold myself back thinking that my thoughts will contradict with others and my personality would be judged with the opinion I gave. I considered myself honest and sharing my honesty depends on the time, space and context. I think there are strategic boundaries on where to vent out our honesty and where to just keep silence.

6. Lead from back: I think successful leadership is achieved when we can empower other people to lead and therefore prefers sometime lead from the back. The question is not about confidence nor its about skipping a responsibility rather it’s about preference. May this is the reason I don’t like to be in photographs but will be ready to take other photographs. May this value lead me to choose photography and video making skills.

     “Spending your time wisely and attention wisely” for me means to prioritize my task and time which will give me best results. It also means to mean people, attend events, watch videos, read books, explore in wilderness to make myself more knowledgeable, skillful and stronger to prepare myself for the uncertainties. It also means to engage myself in meaningful conversation which will either give me validity of my thoughts or challenge it; through which I will learn insightful lessons which otherwise wouldn’t have possible through other ways.        

     Most of my professional values are aligned and overlapped because I believe that person can’t be separated from a profession and therefore personal values will be carried to professional setting. The context of work, growth of a person might be changed but the values that we believe as a person will be reflected in our workplace. With this reality there might be an issue of ethical dilemmas which can be negotiated and clarified with the companies’ vision.  It is not preferable to stay for the job if ethical dilemmas exist for a longer period. No matter what I do my values will not be changed and if I had to change then I would rather prefer to leave that job without any hesitation.