Culture eats strategy, err, everything for breakfast. You must have heard this. This is definitely true for companies. Most successful companies are not successful because they got some geniuses. It’s because they can function and deliver due to their thriving culture.
However this post is not about company culture, although that post is pending and coming soon too.
This post is about your inner culture aka your “personal culture”. I am sure you have been asked the question of “what is your personal strategy for success?”. To which, you probably had a very intelligent answer. Something like, “my strategy is to get a job in top company and then work very hard and my way up” or some sort of similar but thought through answer.
Now, if you know your personal strategy for success, then it also begs the question of “what is your personal culture?”.
Confused?
Let’s explain what culture means. It has a lot of meanings when looking at dictionary. But for our purposes, we will take the anthropological view.
Definition: Culture is a way of life. It is representation of values, beliefs and customs that distinguishes one group of people from another. Culture is transmitted, through language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art, from one generation to the next.
Going by the above definition, your personal culture constitutes of:
- Your personal values: What do you value the most? E.g. money, relationships, creativity, food, compassion, excellence, achievement, health etc.
- Your personal beliefs: What do you believe about yourself? What do you believe about the world?
- Your personal rituals: What do you do every morning, every night? What are your rituals for celebration? What are your rituals around failures?
- Your personal language: How do you talk to yourself? What are the most common words used in your inner dialogue? Are they words of wisdom, kindness or critique?
- Your personal expression: What are the most common emotions you express? How do you express love, anger, fear and sadness? What do you feel about and towards yourself most often?
The above are just some sample questions and they are all very abstract. The point is, that the answers to above questions define your inner/personal culture. For example, I have seen clients who are always beating themselves up, no matter what’s the occasion. Or clients who are able to be kind to themselves under the harshest of circ*mstances. These are representations of their inner culture.
A great metaphor for culture, I heard, is that culture is like the water you swim in. Are you swimming in muddy waters, clear water, shark filled water, thick as molasses water? 80% of our body is water. So if your cells could talk about what is your inner culture, what would they say? What kind of waters are they swimming in?
And if your personal culture is not full of compassion, curiosity and creativity, then all your personal strategies will fail, because, that cruel, presumptuous and uncreative inner culture of yours, already ate your strategy for breakfast yesterday.
So what kind of waters do you want your cells to swim in? What inner/personal culture do you want to cultivate to make your strategies successful and maybe to pass on to the next generation?
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