We are constantly exchanging values whenever we are dealing with any other human being.
While buying any book and paying for it, you would have had some expectation that the money spent on it would be worth the cost of acquiring the book. You would have derived some value from reading a few chapters and then only you would continue reading the rest of the book.
Same is the case with all our business transactions, personal or professional relationships or even while offering free service for a just cause. If I take a stray dog to the vet for his treatment, I feel very good for him. That is my reward in exchange of my free service because the emotional kickback that we get doing something good, is our reward or the value we expect in exchange of our free service.
We look for positive values
To live a good life, therefore, we should always get something of positive value and avoid all those cases where the return is in negative. Other than avoiding possible monetary loss, why not avoid all the chances of a poor relationship, poor payment for our services in a job, poor treatment by the service provider, say in a restaurant etc.?
But even with all the wisdom of choosing only the good things of value, we make mistakes and get stuck in a bad situation. We realize that sometimes, few things can’t be changed so easily.
Having paid heavily for a management program, a student may discover at the end of the program that it may not fetch him a good job in a job market that is not growing. Anyone in his position may feel short changed. This may be a typical reaction of an ordinary person in a so called bad situation.
We feel defeated when we fail to accept our reality and hence tend to blame the system that has led to such a situation. But in order to bring in a change for the better, it is imperative that we accept the present reality as it is.
Looking at the positive side
It is only then we would be able to think clearly about our next course of action. For example, in this case of the student not being able to find a suitable job, he might try to figure out which are the segments in the job market that are growing and whether they require any additional sets of skills that he should acquire, in addition to his management qualification.
Or is it that the new start-up firms are offering jobs as they need to grow where risk factor may be high but opportunities to learn fast and to grow fast if they ultimately do well, is quite an interesting choice to consider?
Therefore, under any circumstances, we can seek value that will benefit us at least in the long run, provided we are willing to take risk and are prepared to undertake certain pain either from learning absolutely new things to keep pace with the changing times, or even be prepared to work long hours at a lesser salary, because of our inexperience, till such time our own value in the job market automatically goes up due to our new skills and new experience that is in high demand.
A few people who are extraordinary by nature, would even think of such a poor job market to be a golden opportunity for reskiling people and making money through redeployment of the current workforce in new jobs that require new set of skills like data science, cloud computing, blockchain technology or even skills related to art and culture, social service etc.
This goes true for our close relationships as well.
We keep focusing on other’s certain behavior that we do not like, instead of looking at his/her remarkably good qualities in some other areas. Once we start doing that, the other person automatically starts reciprocating in a similar manner and the once sour relationship ultimately turns into a relationship of mutual respect, admiration and love. We exchange not the wrong values but the right values and both benefit from it.
We can grow only through more value creation
In business, unless we offer something of great value to the other person by way of offering solutions to his problems, in a better manner than most of our competitors, we would not be able to grow in our business.
Those who are being benefited from our product or service, are going to be our strong advocates, particularly when we tend to make our purchase going by others’ good experience with the product (in the current age of social media). This will in turn bring in more customers for us. Here again, we are exchanging value for value.
