Values are like fingerprints. You leave ’em all over everything you do.
Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.
Do you know what your values are?
Most of us don’t know them as well as we think, but we can change that.
Values are a map and compass for the journey we want to take. They help us navigate through the difficulties and obstacles of life, so we can live well and be effective in reaching goals and knowing what we need to be happy.
The problem is, many people try to navigate without a map or compass, and end up winging it or crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. That tends to lead to all kinds of problems, and poor choices we regret later.
It’s good to have hope, but it’s better to understand your values and put them to work in your world.
Values to the rescue.
The magic bullet is - be the change you wish to see in the world. So simple, yet so easily overlooked and forgotten.
This reminds me of my favourite Rumi quote:
Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.
Everything begins with you. If you want to change the world, start with yourself.
Your actions will set an example and inspire the change you wish to see. And to do that, you have to discover your high-level values.
Values are who you are at your best, not who you think you should be to fit in. They’re like the master compass that points us to our “true north.”
When your thoughts and actions are in alignment, life feels very good – you feel content.
But when these don’t align, then things feel not so good.
Life feels more uneasy.
You feel out of touch, discontented, restless, and unhappy.
You may end up trying to numb yourself as you know you’re not living in a way that honours your values.
This is why making a conscious effort to identify and live your values is so important.
I am going to lay out an effective process to help you identify your core values. Getting to know your values is like finding a map when you’re lost in the forest. It won’t magically get you out of the forest, but it will help you navigate much more confidently and give you a much greater chance of success.
In the rest of this article, we’ll explore what values are, why it’s important to clarify them, and then look at some practical ways to do that.
”If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”
Joseph Campbell
Start with a beginner’s mind
It’s easy to presume that we know the answer at the start and, therefore never embark on a creative, personal discovery journey for ourselves.
So we want to adopt the attitude of a beginner—someone with no preconceived notions of what is—to give you access to inner truths to which your conscious mind is yet unaware.
Take a deep breath and relax your mind. Remember that your conscious mind doesn’t have all the answers. Create a space for new insights and revelations to emerge.
What are personal values?
Let’s begin with a specific example:
Acceptance
This is the value to accept what you can control and what you can’t control. Being able to understand that on some days you are the hammer, and other days you are the nail. With acceptance as a core value, you can build either way and be happy while doing it.
Acceptance is a value many people share. It’s something most of us would agree is a good thing. It’s an aspiration or ideal we strive toward, even if we don’t always live up to it. If you asked a thousand people whether they would like to have to ability to be more accepting, it’s hard to imagine many of them saying no.
But values like acceptance also serve as guiding principles for our behaviour, especially when strong emotions like fear or shame are involved.
For example, suppose your boss at work asks you to head up a new project. The project sounds exciting but you’re also afraid of taking it on (“What if I’m out of my depth and I fail?”)
In this case, your value of acceptance might be a helpful guide suggesting that even though you feel afraid since you don’t have a choice, you can accept the challenge and move forward.
A definition for values:
Values are ideals that guide our behaviour, especially in difficult situations.
And while we typically associate the term values with big universal ideals like courage, compassion, or honesty, values can also be much smaller and more specific to our own individual lives. This brings us to your values.
Here is an example. I value breaking the rules or at least challenging them.
I love thinking about ways things can be done differently, or more effectively. I am an enemy of the status quo. It’s energizing for me to get introduced to a new concept or way of looking at things that I hadn’t known before.
It’s also helped me in my work as a coach since I understand that at some level, there are no rules…we are trying to accomplish something:)
But here’s an even smaller, more unique example of a personal value.
I was talking to someone recently about values and he said something very beautiful.
He said that one of the values he learned came from being a dad, and that was something new to him… It was playfulness. He said he wasn’t even sure it was a value, but it seemed increasingly important to him and his happiness and the happiness of his family. It was a quality he wanted to embody more.
This is a powerful expression of personal value.
Playfulness isn’t necessarily going to make it on any top 5 most important values to live by lists because it’s hard to see it replacing truthfulness or compassion, or what I call the obvious ones.
Values may be grand and universal, but they also have to be guiding principles that make your life richer and more meaningful.
While there may be universal human values that everybody agrees are good and useful, something can still be a value for you even if other people don’t see it that way. Personal values are ideals that help guide you toward your best life.
The value of values… or why they are so critical to a happy life.
They boost your confidence
As the saying goes, compassion is the thief of joy. One of the roots of low self-confidence is constantly looking to other people and things as our map and compass. When this pattern becomes a habit, we begin to feel insecure because we don’t trust ourselves to determine what we want in life. We are always looking at other people’s playbooks instead of creating our own.
But when you learn to clarify your values, you start to trust yourself. And once you start to trust yourself, confidence is born.
2. Improve your relationships
We are in relationship to everything in our lives, which is the ability to relate to ourselves, our friends and loved ones and our colleagues at work, and our world and our problems.
One of the biggest obstacles to healthy relating is a lack of clarity about our values. If you think about it, of course, it’s hard to communicate what you want or need, or what you don’t want or don’t need if you don’t make time to understand your values.
Once you become better at clarifying your values, all relationships tend to improve naturally including the one you have with yourself. You just become someone who is a reliable person, because your values are guiding you.
3. Stop the “someday” trap
We all procrastinate sometimes. Sometimes procrastination can be a positive thing as it shows us we may not be in alignment with certain things in our lives.
We all have things in our lives we don’t like doing or don’t find meaningful. But when you start spending too much of your time doing stuff that doesn’t matter to you, procrastination can be your mind’s way of asking, “Hey is this really what you want to be doing?”
Discovering and clarifying your values helps you understand what kind of stuff matters to you. And when you start spending more time on the stuff that matters, procrastination has a way of taking care of itself.
4. Less anxiety and worry
One of the most powerful ways to apply an antidote to the worry habit is to “override it” with your values.
Worries exert a kind of magnetic quality on our attention, which is why it can be difficult to let them go. One of the best ways to avoid the feedback loop of worry and anxiety is to have a clear, compelling alternative for our attention to focus on.
Your values are your superheroes, who come to protect you.
If you’ve spent time discovering and clarifying your values—the things that matter most to you in life—they will naturally draw your attention toward them and turn the volume down on anxiety.
5. Discover more joy
One of the reasons people are often unhappy is that they don’t have joy in their lives. And while there can be many reasons for this, here’s an idea that I think doesn’t get talked enough about:
Joy is something you have to actively cultivate.
And one of the most important parts of cultivating joy comes down to whether you are living your values or ignoring them. If joy comes in part from moving toward your values, that’s hard to do if you are not intimately acquainted with them.
When we make time to intentionally reflect and clarify our values, we cultivate and invite more joy and satisfaction into our lives.
6. Goals get achieved with more ease
We all have goals. Sometimes they’re very small (walk the dogs every day) and sometimes they’re much bigger ( build a new business or write a book ).
I think we can all agree that sticking with our goals—even the small ones—can be challenging.
If the personal values behind our goals are not clear enough, they are always harder to achieve.
Clear, well-defined personal values supercharge your ability to achieve goals and create a compelling vision for your life.
Here’s a simple example: If your goal is to exercise four times per week, which of the following values is more motivating:
Health
Healthy enough to run around and play with my kids without being exhausted in 30 seconds.
I think most of us would agree 2 is much more compelling.
So, one of the benefits of discovering and clarifying values is to improve motivation and outcomes.
Practical Exercises to Excavate Your Values
Ready? Here are a few ways to know your values better:
Like in things in life, insight and action are necessary to get where you want to go.
So, if you’re serious about understanding your values better, read through the following ways to do that, find a few that seem interesting or most applicable to you and then commit to trying them out.
Take out your journal, a notepad, or a note-taking app. And let's get started.
Peak Experiences
Consider a meaningful moment—a peak experience that stands out. Can you recall a moment where you felt yourself? A peak moment of life when you were in your element when everything just felt… aligned? A moment when you felt happy and fulfilled? Take some time to recall this peak moment. When you’re ready, take some notes describing this peak moment in some detail.
● What was happening to you?
● What was going on?
● What values were you honouring then?
For example, here is one of my peak moments:
I had been on a silent meditation retreat in California and was getting ready to leave the retreat. As I got on the bus to take me to the airport, I realized how noisy it was, everybody, talking. This is a shock after a silent retreat where you do no talking:)
As I sat down I had what can only be described as a mystical experience, where I was able to hear every conversation simultaneously. It’s impossible to describe this state, but it brought me to a different level of awareness.
It was a peak experience that showed me some gifts of the mind that are extraordinary. It also filled me with awe and wonder. It made me feel at peace. It revealed the value of my spiritual journey, which is the most important value for me.
Suppressed values or things that trigger you
Now, go in the opposite direction; consider a time when you got angry, frustrated, or upset. What was going on? What were you feeling? Now flip those feelings around. What value is being stepped on in these situations?
Flip Your Frustrations
But here’s the thing: our frustrations often contain useful information.
Here’s a concrete example:
You are triggered by pre-judgment and people with closed minds.
Now think about all the ways that bugs you or triggers you or make you frustrated or angry.
Then look at the triggers list and think about positive counters for each one of them.
Then finally distill them down into one word. The value we need up with was integrity.
You get frustrated at your manager who drones on and on during weekly meetings, preventing your team from being productive and solving real problems in a timely way. Exploring this frustration could be useful because it might be telling you that efficiency is an important value for you. Perhaps so much so that it might be worth looking into switching to a new department or even a company that shared that value more.
If you’re having trouble identifying your values, try flipping your frustrations:
Make a list of 5 things that frequently frustrate you in your life.
For each frustration, ask yourself, What goal am I being thwarted from achieving? and then write that down.
Finally, for each goal, ask yourself What might this tell me about my values?
And remember
A personal value doesn’t have to be valuable to other people—just to you!
The reason many people struggle to identify their values is that they don’t think they’re valid or important enough. Or they think it’s silly that they get so frustrated or worked up about something “small” or “unimportant.”
Instead, try respecting those “little” preferences and see what they can tell you about getting to know your values.
Your Personal Code of Conduct
What's most important in your life? Beyond your basic human needs, what must you have in your life to experience fulfillment? Creative self-expression? A strong level of health and vitality? A sense of excitement and adventure? Surrounded by beauty? Always learning?
The proverbial bucket list
Think about the things you might like to do before you have to leave the place:) Here are a few examples.
Write a novel
Reconnect with an estranged family member
Take the Orient Express train Trip
Learn to play the flute
Stay at Atay at Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita ( cave hotel )
Start my own business
Go on a 3-month meditation retreat
I’m going to bet you have not created a bucket list for yourself.
It’s a clever way to excavate for values:
So, if you haven’t already, take half an hour, sit down with a pen and paper, and start brainstorming items for your bucket list.
Once you’ve got a good number, scan your list for themes and patterns that might be clues to unrealized or ignored personal values in your life.
WHY x 5
The 5 Whys is a technique to get to the root of an idea.
It helps us to go deeper.
For example:
Why did the crucial software update not get implemented on time? Because Bill is not working hard enough- he must be lazy or unmotivated.
Why is Bill not working hard enough? Well after a closer look it appears, Bill is also working on Liz’s huge project, so I guess he has a lot going on.
Why was Bill covering for Liz? She said she needed a mental health day.
Why did Liz need a mental health day? It looks like she’s taken a number of them this year. She is feeling overwhelmed by her workload, and she is also dealing with a parent who is ill.
Why does she feel overworked? Because there’s no system in place in the organization to be paying attention to the deeper needs of our employees, who are also human beings and not computers.
So, we went from not working hard enough because he’s lazy and doesn’t care (a lazy explanation) to a much deeper and more complex explanation.
We can apply this same process to our values. This is valuable because often we have superficial answers to what our values are and why they matter to us. I’ve found that it is also applicable to daily life in any situation where one might seek a deeper understanding—of a problem, a challenge or even a motivation behind an action.
In this example, we end up getting to the value of family.
So, once you’ve identified some core personal values, you can get to know your values even better—and clarify them—by asking them 5 whys and trying to drill down to more specific reasons for why those things are valuable.
These are some building blocks to excavate your deepest values.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VALUES AND GOALS
There is an important distinction that needs to be made between values and goals.
Values provide a deep sense of ongoing direction for our lives – they are not ends in themselves. Goals are things that we want to achieve or do – Values always exist in the present moment… they can be drawn on at any given moment.
Goals are finish lines.
Values are every step.
VALUES ARE NOT RULES
Values are freely chosen by you. Your true values are not imposed on you from external sources. They come from listening to your heart and tuning in to what matters the most to you so you need to be honest with yourself about what you value most in life.
Values are not rules or commandments and they’re best held lightly. They don’t need to become rigid or static. Values may take new forms and change and develop over time. They are living inside you.
A MINDFULNESS PRACTICE
Making a small promise to yourself
To me, authentic values-based living is at the very heart of what it means to live mindfully. The ability to pivot towards purpose by making a small promise to yourself and asking two simple questions.
Take a moment right now to ponder how your values already come to life each day. Maybe you value compassion and that means you always make a point to check in on your friends when they are having a hard time.
Maybe authenticity is important to you, so you express that in your vulnerability and candy about your struggles. Maybe your values come to life when you’re in the grocery store when you allow someone to go ahead of you because they are stressed and in a hurry.
But there may be other times in life when we become a little out of touch with our values. Maybe we are rushing, stressed or challenged. And in those moments we might feel tempted to react, lash out or choose convenience or short-term pleasure; overdoing what feels right for us deep in our hearts. We all have moments like this from time to time.
The pivot towards purpose is an invitation to remember our values and principles in our little moments of decision throughout the day.
They are small promises we make to ourselves daily.
What matters to you at this moment?
There are two questions we can ask to connect with our values and pivot toward purpose in the moment.
What really matters to me most in this moment?
Who do I want to be in this moment?
For example, you find yourself in a situation where someone says something insensitive and you feel that urge to lash out at them. In that moment you can ask yourself the questions
What really matters to me most in this moment?
Who do I want to be in this moment?
…and maybe you come to the conclusion that what you want is to be kind and create connection and understanding.
So then you pivot towards your purpose and instead of speaking harsh words, you choose to reply in an openhearted and compassionate way.
Or maybe you realize you feel a bit disconnected from your partner after them having a busy week and you feel yourself becoming angry with them for it. But then you ask those questions and then perhaps you realize that what you really want is to have some fun with them.
So you pivot toward your purpose and take action guided by your values. Maybe you decide to set up a special surprise date for them and spoil them to let them know how much you value and love them.
So my invitation is this, whatever is happening for you this week, see if you can remember to pivot towards purpose. Do it as many times as you can so that this mindfulness micro-practice starts to become a habit.
No matter how others act or what stresses, challenges or triggers may arise, continue to connect with what is deep in your heart and let this awareness of what truly matters guide your decisions, actions and words as best you can.
To Sum Up
Discovering and clarifying your values is not something you do once and then it’s over. It’s an ongoing process that can be a regular part of your personal development.
So, I think it’s vital to regularly check in with yourself and your current values.
Personal values are the guiding principles that help you skillfully navigate life, especially when times become challenging.
When you know your values and are willing to live them, it becomes easier to make better decisions in the face of uncertainty, confusion, or difficult emotions like fear or frustration.
So whatever your particular goals or challenges are, consider making time to reflect on your values.
The sense of purpose, clarity, and motivation that comes from knowing your values well is well worth the effort.
If you would like support with your values, I’m happy to talk to you.
Reach out and book a complimentary discovery coaching session.