How to identify your core values (and why you should)
Introducing you to the practice I’ve used for the last 1,149 days.
I started 2021 by setting personal OKRs for myself. With eager first-day-of-school energy, I built an Asana board, carefully assigning myself Objectives as “tasks” and Key Results as “sub-tasks.” Every Sunday at 7 pm, a notification would pop up on my phone, bullying me: “OKR Check-In.” I logged my meditation minutes, investments, and reading progress, taking perverse satisfaction in my self-discipline.
After a few months, I started to resent my weekly reminders. Updates became infrequent and haphazard. Finally, they disappeared entirely. I ended up accomplishing a few of my objectives and failing others. More importantly, I hated the process.
Life is for experiencing, growing, and enjoying — not generating shareholder value. Why was I treating myself like a business?
I’ve come to realize that my desire to set goals often stems from ego. I use achievement as an all-purpose balm: to soothe anxiety and protect against insecurity. Traditional goal-setting practices have never helped me feel more motivated. If I want something badly enough, I’ll do it anyway, without a task in Asana. The other problem? I usually don’t know what my future self wants. And if you’re like most people (thanks, projection bias), you probably don’t either.
After abandoning my OKRs, I shifted focus towards accepting daily life over chasing long-term goals. One day, while mulling this over with my therapist, she offered an idea: would I like to try an exercise to identify my core values? Never one to turn down a self-improvement tool, I responded with an emphatic yes.
As I understand it, this practice can be helpful if you:
Want to feel more connected to your work and daily life
Don’t identify as a goals person, but like the idea of using a framework for personal growth
Have a significant change or decision on the horizon
It’s been three years since we identified my values, and I still check in with them every night. For me, they serve as a compass and a tool for connection. I’ve used them to answer big questions, like “Should I go freelance?” and to find meaning in my day-to-day work.
I’ll walk you through how to identify your core values, but first, I should clarify: I’m no therapist. I’m just a human searching for meaning, and this is something that’s worked for me, both in my career and personal life.
How to identify your core values
Step 1: Print out this list of values.
Step 2: Circle all of the values that feel important to you.
Be discerning and refrain from judging yourself. At first glance, you might think every single value is important to you. Possibly, but some will be more meaningful than others. When I did this exercise, “kindness” didn’t jump out at me, but “honesty” did. Does that make me a monster? Your call.
Step 3: Write down all of the values you circled on a separate piece of paper and cut the list in half.
Do a few of your values mean something similar? Did your ego select any? If so, they may feel less resonant upon second glance. Cross them out.
Step 4: Do a quick journaling exercise.
Ask yourself, “What does this value mean to me, and how does it show up in my life?”
Step 5: Narrow down your list to 3-5 values.
The journaling exercise should help. You’ll learn which values speak to you the most, in that you either feel very strongly about them, or that they show up frequently in your choices and behavior.
Feel free to play around with a thesaurus, too — language matters. Sticking with my example from above, I originally selected “honesty,” but ended up using “integrity” instead because it felt more representative of my values.
How to use your core values
Nearly every night for the past three years, I've checked in with my values using an app called Daylio. If you upgrade to the paid version ($4.99 per month), you can customize the sections and items within them, as I’ve done below. After I get in bed, I review my day and select the values that were activated. Did I struggle with a problem at work? That’s challenge. Did I do something new, even if it’s visiting a coffee shop I’ve never been to? That’s novelty. Did I learn something about myself? That’s personal growth.
The whole exercise takes five minutes, so I rarely have an excuse to skip it. Regular check-ins help me feel more grounded in my day-to-day, and over time, they’ve also supported bigger decisions. Because Daylio stores all my data, I can zoom out and see which values appear frequently and which I’ve been neglecting. I’ve used that information to make decisions and have applied my values as a framework to evaluate new opportunities.
I started 2021 with goals, but now I have something even better: clarity about what matters to me, and a practice that helps me stay close to it. My core values have guided me through job changes, a transition to self-employment, and numerous other challenging work moments. They’ve also supported me through break-ups and other difficult transitions. This is so much more than a career tool.
Despite our cultural obsession with 5-year plans, New Year's resolutions, and big, hairy goals, you don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to know what matters to you, and how to stay close to it.
Has a personal value ever helped you make a tough career decision? I’d love to hear how it showed up.
This really resonated! I've always been a quarterly OKR-gal, but as you said, it's hard to predict what future me wants, and it's even harder to predict how life will get in the way of the perfect little targets I've set for myself. I did a personal values exercise once with a career coach. Maybe it's time to revisit it! Do you ever review/adjust your values? Or do they feel pretty sticky?
The Brene reference 🙌