In this 45‑minute interactive workshop, Haritosh Srivastav guides a small group (Vignesh, Rajesh, Dr. Kanon, and others) through a values‑identification exercise. Participants first select one or two personal values from a suggested list (integrity, curiosity, courage, contribution, resilience, empathy, freedom, growth, creativity, service). Haritosh then provides prompts to help them write short stories that illustrate when they acted on those values, including both positive outcomes and moments of struggle. Each participant shares their chosen value(s) and a concrete anecdote: Rajesh describes how freedom enabled him to transform a project after moving to a new company; Vignesh recounts a creativity breakthrough that halved a legacy process and an empathy lesson from his childhood; Dr. Kanon tells a personal story of empathy when a friend’s father supported her during her father’s heart attack; Haritosh shares his own values of resilience and freedom, linking them to career pivots. After sharing, the group reflects on how the exercise felt, expressing enthusiasm, confidence, and a sense of uncovering hidden “golden nuggets.” The session closes with three collective affirmations—“I live my values,” “I lead through alignment,” and “My stories reflect who I truly am”—repeated by the facilitator and participants. The workshop emphasizes that storytelling is a powerful way to demonstrate values, align personal purpose, and inspire daily action.
Chapters
Awesome. So welcome everyone to day 15 of StorySpark session, and today's session is all about values. Our lives are driven by our values, and one of the best way we can connect with our audience is when we are able to demonstrate our values through stories. So that's what we are going to do today. In today's session, we are going to look at our lives. We are going to look at various values that we follow and try to find out some of the stories related to that. So get ready with your pen and paper because we are straight away going to go through the exercise section. And what you're going to see is in the next slide, I'm, I am showing some tentative values. These are not the exhaustive list, but what we're going to do is out of these values you need to choose one or two values, and then I'm going to give you some prompts, and based on that prompts you can write the story, and we'll have the story sharing, and in the end we'll finish it with our affirmations. So let me bring up the values. So these are some of the values that you may have: integrity, curiosity, courage, contribution, resilience, empathy, freedom, growth, creativity, service. So think about your life, think about your journey, and think about 1 to 2 values that you really feel that these are your values. This is what you relate most, and I'll give you 10 seconds to do that. And now that you have chosen the value, I'm gonna give you some prompts, and I want you to write down whatever comes to your mind. Okay, we have Vignesh also joining, so let's give him— Morning, Vignesh!
Hi, hi, Haritosh Srivastav, good morning!
Good morning! Okay, so Vignesh, just to give you a quick overview, what we are doing today is, uh, we are doing this exercise about, um, I'll just go back one slide, about the values that drive us. So it's the story about the values. So in the screen now you see some 8-10 tentative values, that those are not the exhaustive list. But what you need to do is you need to choose 1 or 2 values that you think really belongs to you, those are your values. And now I'm going to give some prompts for you to write down. So whatever comes to your mind, just think about that and start writing down. So the prompts are: what values did you choose out of this 10 list, or maybe something else? When in your life you acted based on these values, what were some of the times? And what was the situation that brought the value to the surface, which means you really felt that, okay, this is why I, uh, I think these are my values because this is the situation that I worked upon. This is the situation that I do. And what did you learn or experience because of it? So we are doing the value exercise. You choose which one or two values resonate most with you, and then the prompts are: what values do you choose? Which is the one that you think these are my values, these are my personal values? When in your life you acted based on that value. So when, when is the one you said, okay, this is, this is why I say my value is freedom, or my value is creativity, or my value is growth? And what were the situation or story about that, and what did you learn or experience? Okay, and it doesn't have to be only a positive story. It could be a story of struggle as well. It could be a story of pain or sorrow as well. It doesn't have to be only positive, but sometimes when we go through those phases, that's when we identify our values. So I'm gonna give you another minute to just reflect and write down your stories. Okay, time's up. So let's go around the room. I'm going to call in the order of when you join so that we others can have some time also. So let's start with Rajesh ji. So Rajesh ji, which value did you choose and what's the story behind?
Good morning, Haritosh Srivastav. Good morning, everyone. So I would like to choose freedom here as of now. So when I come to freedom, what I realized, uh, after when you gave all these values to us, in, in my last to last company, what happened, like, I was working as a, as a team lead over there, but I realized that my manager, he was not giving us freedom to implement things according to our own, this, on situation, on the situation-based, and whatever we were just thinking to get the result. So what happened that there I was feeling so stuck, I was not able to focus on the productivity, I was not able to guide team in right direction, and as a result we were not, you know, performing well. And after that, when I joined another company, what I realized there, my manager, he was, uh, he gave me free hand. And it was like, it is your project, you have to manage it how you need to manage it. And what I realized, that within a one month of time, I did so many changes over there. Realizing, first I realized what is, what is the real challenge and how we can overcome that challenge. And based on that, I implemented so many things over there because that freedom was there in my, my hand. And people could observe the difference within one month time period. And I feel so that I need freedom to give best result and use my own intellectuality and I can accordingly, I can take action to reveal the, to yield the result. So freedom, I feel, yes, I, when freedom is there, my mind is open and I become more creative to and become more result-oriented.
Awesome, thank you so much for sharing. And everybody write SPDY, Story Power To You. Now let's go to Vignesh. Vignesh, what values came to the core and what's the story behind?
Yes, ma'am, so the values which I chose is creativity and empathy. Whereas creativity being towards the positive side, in my— I can remember my first work where I was able to reduce 2 times of what the team does for decades. From 1980s till 2014, the team was doing repetitive work. They hired 2 engineers for it, which can be done in a single click. So I was able to be creative enough to change the entire structure of the organization just, just as a newbie there. So that's where I am valuing. I'm still carrying forward that creativity. Second is empathy. Uh, since my childhood, after watching a lot of movies Movies are always defensive, heroes are always defensive, they never empathize, and they show sympathy but they don't show empathy. So I am brought up in a defensive mode only, so I have failed multiple times without even knowing it. Now for past 2 years, after learning a lot of courses, and I have improved my values on empathy, empathizing people and staying with them, and even with the leaders, instead of being defensive, I'm empathizing them. And trying to provide a good value over there. These are two things.
Yes, awesome. Thank you so much for sharing, and story power to you as well. Let's go to Dr. Kanon.
Yes, I'm already unmuted actually.
We can hear you. Yeah, yeah, speak little louder.
Can't hear me.
Okay, speak something.
Okay, so for me, empathy is my quality. And, um, when my dad was not feeling well, he was admitted in the hospital. I was studying in second MBS, second MBS. And one day when I was sitting at home on a Sunday morning, I was waiting for my dad to come back from playing a game of of tennis, and he did not come back. And I was looking out of the window waiting for him, and just then there was a knock in the door, and I opened the door, and it was my dad's friend, his partner, active tennis partner, who was standing at the door, and he had brought his tennis. And when I asked him, where is my dad, he said that your dad is in the dispensary, and he just walked away. I ran to the dispensary and all said and done, my dad was having a heart attack. I took him to the hospital and I was very upset because we are like 4 daughters and I was very young and we have no relatives in the country. And I was very scared because when the doctor told me that you have only 48 hours because he's having a severe heart attack. And I ran to my friend's house, and at that time my friend's dad, he hugged me and he told me that, don't worry, I'm there for you, I'm your father. And that meant a lot for me, and that was my example of empathy that my, my friend's dad, he showed to me, and that meant a lot for me. That is my baseline value, and I got it from my friend's dad. So that's what I wanted to share. Thank you so much.
Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing, and story power to you as well. And I'll also quickly share, I think two values resonate most with me out of this list. Number one is the value of resilience, and the second one is the freedom. And why I say that, unlike many people If I take up something, I do not really care whether anybody is coming or not coming. If I have clarity in my mind, I push through it. I've done multiple challenges. I've done things that probably I never thought I would do, including changing careers, including doing what I'm doing. So I think once I understand and I have the clarity, I am resilient enough to follow through. And the freedom is, yes, after a certain point of time I felt trapped in my corporate job and there was so much going on, but actually there was nothing much going on and it was becoming repetitive. And it was like you are trapped, you're doing the similar things every year, but there's no growth happening. And that attracted me towards an alternate career, and that's why I'm doing this, what I'm doing. So my two values are resilience and freedom, and, and this is what I'm here for. So those were the value stories. So how did it make you feel? Let's start with Rajesh Ji. What did it make you feel when you went through the value and the story behind the values?
I guess, uh, so Haritosh, when you, you were just sharing all those, uh, values, like you have to choose one. It was becoming difficult for me to find one on which I can, you know, narrate the story. But however, it is, uh, what I feel, there's so many values or things are there in, into our life. There are so many stories, uh, even behind one single word, but we never realize it. But, uh, and on, you know, poking by someone it, it, uh, challenge our mind to think of on all those things. So I really loved it, and I feel that we should put ourselves into challenge all the time, or most of the time, so that we can reveal unhidden, uh, you know, treasures out of us.
Absolutely. Thank you. And yes, I think we're so much busy in our cycle of life, we don't take a time to reflect and really push through. That's where these golden nuggets come. Awesome. Vignesh, how did this exercise make you feel?
Uh, it is making me feel like telling a millionaire or reminding a millionaire that you are a millionaire. So when person having untapped potential on values, this exercise is reminding them that you are valuable in these areas and gives me a confidence for the day.
Excellent, excellent, awesome. Thank you for sharing. Yes, Dr. Avikar.
So early in the morning you make us deep dive into ourselves. That is a very beautiful thing, you know. We are not going to do that unless we do this in the morning every single day. So this exercise, whatever we do in the morning with you, stays with us throughout the day. So thank you very much, Haritosh Srivastav.
You're welcome. And yes, that is the purpose of it. You start the power, you start with the power of direction, and then you go full throttle. Awesome. So let's now come to the last part of the session, which is about the 3 affirmations. So like every day, you're gonna see the affirmation. I'm gonna recite it once, and then we are all gonna recite it together. So here we go. The first one: I live my values.
Everyone I live my values.
I live my values.
I live my values.
Awesome. I lead through alignment.
I lead through alignment.
And the last affirmation for today is: my stories reflect who I truly am.
My stories reflect who I truly am.
I truly am.
Awesome. So wishing you a great day ahead. Story power to all of you, and see you tomorrow for day 16 of Story Spark session. Take care, thank you, stay safe and stay blessed.
I also feel that Haritosh Srivastav, one of your qualities is also empathy because you have a lot of caring for all of us. Yes.
Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you. See you tomorrow.
Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day, everyone.
