What’s your life about? What do you most value? What would you never compromise on?
These are important questions. Because they reveal the values that influence the way you live your life and shape the decisions you make.
Your personal values are the ideas, qualities, and principles you hold in high regard. Some examples: family, wealth, freedom, health, friendship, honesty, love, peace, faith.
Values are different from goals. You never “accomplish” a value. Rather, your values are like a compass — they help you make decisions based on the direction in which you want your life to go.
Most people don’t know their values. They only have a vague implicit sense of what’s important to them. Or they simply go by what society decides for them, which often leads to internal conflicts. Conflicting values and moral dilemmas then lead to stress and anxiety.
Life can be frustrating and confusing if you are unsure of what’s important to you. But when you have clarity on what you most value, you’ll get the courage to confront your fears and do what matters, rather than what is safe and easy.
“When you know what’s most important to you, making a decision is quite simple. Most people, though, are unclear about what’s most important in their lives, and thus decision making becomes a form of internal torture.” — Tony Robbins
For instance, if one of your most important values is Freedom, you’d be willing to bear the short-term anxiety of quitting your job to create the life you want. Or if honesty is important to you, you’d be okay with having that difficult conversation no matter how anxious it makes you.
Your personal values are unique to you and they may be innate to some extent, similar to how a lot of your personality traits are innate. You did not come into this world as a blank slate. You have a strong inner sense of values and preferences that is buried under layers of social demands and expectations.
Can your values change as you grow? Maybe. But it’s more likely that, as you grow and become more self-aware, you simply rediscover parts of you that got unconsciously hidden away due to social conditioning.
This process in which the individual self develops out of an undifferentiated unconscious is called individuation. Individuation involves unearthing, unraveling, and unlearning all the beliefs we have received since birth. As you bring the various aspects of your psyche into awareness, you develop an integrated unique identity, allowing for authentic expression. Discovering your personal values seems like an important quest in the individuation journey.
We need to find out what truly matters to us and make it explicit. Otherwise, we’ll end up chasing things that make us miserable and don’t nourish who we really are.
Here’s something that will get you started on the path: Personal Values Card Sort (PDF). If you’re feeling adventurous, print it out, cut it out and have a fun little Sunday project.
It’s easy to idealize what you should value. But knowing what you truly value might take some introspection and time. So maybe start with identifying 10-15 values that appeal to you the most. Write them down and also write about why each of them is important to you.
The writing part is important because this is something you’d like to constantly revisit and refine in your self-discovery process. Also, writing about your personal values will help you stay cognizant of how your insecurities and conditioning influence your selection.
As you gain some clarity on your values, ask yourself if you are living and acting in accordance with these values? If not, what’s stopping you? Maybe use this question as a journaling prompt.
When you narrow the gap between your values and your behavior, your life will become more fulfilling. It is the synergy among the values and the impact of each value upon the others that offers further uniqueness — allowing you to create your own meaning. This greater sense of meaning then serves as fuel for motivation to create the life you want.
Thank you for reading. Most of the content on this website has emerged from conversations with readers like you. Every other Sunday, I send out an email dissecting some aspects of the human mind.
If you can take out a few minutes every week to read these emails, I’ll try to help you develop a deeper understanding of our minds. So that you can create a life full of beauty, joy, and love.
You can sign-up below. Or you can sign-up after reading my story and the core idea behind this website: We Should Be Getting More Out of Our Lives (would recommend)