Ask AltoTRY · 10 MIN
Principles Under Pressure
TAIU
A principle only counts on the day it costs something.
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Tool 09 · Develop yourself
What do I steer by when it costs me something?
A guided 25 to 35 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. Not a values exercise. A look at what you chose when two things you cared about could not both win.
It isn't a principle until there's a price.
What have you been willing to lose rather than compromise?
Anything you have never had to pay for is still just a preference.
What you'll look at
- 01A decision you are still proud of
- 02A time two things could not both win
- 03Something you refused
- 04A rule you did not choose
A note from Mark
I do not learn much about somebody by asking what their values are. Most of us know the right words. Integrity. Family. Loyalty. Freedom. Ambition.
I am much more interested in the decisions somebody has made when two important things could not both win. That is normally where you find out what somebody really believes.
I have made decisions in my life that looked irrational to other people, because freedom mattered more to me than the obvious economic answer. I have also stayed loyal longer than I should have, trusted people when the evidence suggested I should not and learned that something you think of as a strength can become a weakness if you never question it.
Read my full view ↓
That is why I do not think principles should be inspirational words you put on a wall. They should help when the answer is not obvious.
And occasionally this exercise may tell you something uncomfortable: the principle you have been describing is not actually the one you have been living. Good. Now you have got something worth thinking about.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
What your decisions reveal
02
What it has cost you
03
Where it turns against you
04
One test to use next week
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01What I came here with
- 02What my decisions reveal
- 03My working principles
- 04Where my words and my behaviour differ
- 05What I may have inherited
- 06The credible alternative
- 07What deserves protecting
- 08What is still uncertain
- 09One principle to test in real life
- 10Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
This session works on the whole of you, not one part of your life. Nothing is scored. At the end, you are asked once which part of your life this touched most. You can answer none.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
Three to five principles, written as things you actually do rather than things you believe, each one you can trace back to a real decision.
02 · Test it
Name a decision coming up in the next month and write down, in advance, which principle it will put under pressure. Look at it again afterwards.
See more ↓
Before you file it away
Principles are only worth writing down if they change something under pressure. Keep the decision tests and throw away the prose if you have to.
If the exercise concluded that you are already living by what you say you believe, that is a genuine result. Sharpen it and leave it alone.
What I would do
- 01
Start with decisions, not values. Anything you can say about yourself in the abstract is available to everybody and worth very little.
- 02
Look for the times two important things collided. Nothing else shows you the ordering.
- 03
Test a candidate principle against the evidence that contradicts it before you accept it. One story is a story, not a principle.
- 04
Ask where the strong ones came from. A rule inherited at nineteen and never reviewed is not a principle yet.
- 05
Write the survivors so they could govern a real decision on a Tuesday afternoon, then find the point where each one turns against you.
Test it
- 01
For a fortnight, note every occasion where two things you cared about could not both win and what you chose. The pattern arrives faster than people expect.
- 02
Say one of your working principles out loud to somebody it affects and see whether they recognise it.
- 03
Find the shadow in real life. Ask when this principle last cost somebody else something rather than costing you.
The alternative
The obvious conclusion is that your behaviour should catch up with your stated principles. Sometimes that is right. But the evidence often points somewhere else: two genuine principles colliding rather than one being neglected, a sound principle applied too rigidly, a rule that is really a defence carried over from circumstances that have passed, language that has not kept up with a person who changed some years ago or an apparent inconsistency that turns out to be reasonable judgement. Occasionally the honest finding is that your principles and your behaviour already match and the exercise has nothing to correct.
Think about this
- A decision other people thought was irrational, that you would make again.
- The last time you disappointed somebody because something else mattered more, and what that something was.
- Something you turned down when accepting would have been easier and better paid.
- A rule you follow that you have never actually chosen. Most people are carrying at least one from home or from their profession.
- Where the thing you are proudest of has a cost attached that you have not looked at recently.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →Want to go further?
LISTEN · EPISODE
Steven Hayes on psychological flexibility
Dan Harris with Steven C. Hayes
Hayes founded the approach behind the previous entry, and the conversation is more useful than the books because he is being pushed on it. The part worth your time is where he separates a value you are moving towards from a rule you are obeying, and explains why holding the second one too tightly damages the first.
Listen ↗
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READ · BOOK
Dare to Lead, and the Living Into Our Values work
Brené Brown
Read the values chapter and skip the leadership framing if it is not your world. Take it as a translation tool rather than as a way of choosing what you believe.
Read more ↗
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Further thinking
Dare to Lead, and the Living Into Our Values work
Brené Brown
Principles
Ray Dalio
Identity-based habits
James Clear
See the thinking ↓
Book
Dare to Lead, and the Living Into Our Values work
Brené Brown
The useful part is not the list of values at the back. It is the exercise that follows it, where you have to write down what living that value looks like in behaviour and what its opposite looks like when you are tired and under pressure. Most people find the second list easier to write, which is the point.
Book
Principles
Ray Dalio
Dalio's case is that most people rediscover their own rules under pressure, badly, every time. Writing them down turns a repeated agonising decision into a considered one made once. The book is at its best where he shows a principle failing and being rewritten.
Article
Identity-based habits
James Clear
A short piece with one idea in it: every action is a small vote for the kind of person you believe you are, and the tally is more honest than the label. It is the clearest statement of the assumption this exercise runs on, which is that what you did tells you more than what you would say.
Book
The Happiness Trap
Russ Harris
The plainest introduction to acceptance and commitment therapy, where values are treated as directions you keep moving in rather than rules you either obey or break. It also makes the case that rigid rule-following, even about admirable things, is one of the more reliable ways to make yourself miserable.
Podcast
Steven Hayes on psychological flexibility
Dan Harris with Steven C. Hayes
Hayes founded the approach behind the previous entry, and the conversation is more useful than the books because he is being pushed on it. The part worth your time is where he separates a value you are moving towards from a rule you are obeying, and explains why holding the second one too tightly damages the first.