NoteShed

Every year I take a few days to conduct a deep-dive personal audit. I evaluate my relationships, professional life, habits, physical health, financial health, spiritual health, and mental well-being.

Each year’s personal audit begins by assessing my core values. When I have to evaluate and prioritize decisions and actions, I can compare the choice and potential outcomes to how well they align to my values. These same core values extend beyond my once-a-year session, and act as a compass in my business decisions, relationships, and activities.

Knowing my core values and using them to make decisions prevents me from sabotaging or betraying myself. When I am true to myself, I am more at peace and can contribute more meaningfully to my family, my work, and my community. By using core values to guide my life, the more engrained they become and the easier it is to make decisions and take action—or take none at all which in turn reduces my stress, elevates my speech, focuses my energy, and keeps me grounded during the most difficult days. All of this leads to a greater sense of peace and happiness.

Defining Core Values

Core values at their most simple, are your foundational beliefs. They empower you and provide moral guidance.

While I’ve been doing a personal audit for many years, I didn’t integrate core values until reading The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. In his book Darren says, “Getting your core values defined and properly calibrated is one of the most important steps in redirecting your life toward your grandest vision.” That made sense to me, and so I went with it. My only wish is that I had defined them sooner, as his statement turned out to be true.

You may already nave a hunch of what your core values already are, but spending the time to specifically define them is where the power lies. Defining your values can be as simple as writing a list of values that you admire, picking the ones that speak the most to you, and then narrowing them down until you’ve chosen your top three. However, I recommend taking the time to ask yourself questions that target different life areas and challenge your self-perceptions. As long as you’re honest with yourself, doing so will add confidence that your top core values accurately represent you.

Take your time, create space for yourself, and commit to total honesty. Picking a value based on what you think others want is a form of self-betrayal and will negate the purpose of this exercise.

Questions You Can Ask Yourself

The goal of these questions is to inspire deeper thoughts and memories while nudging you past the easier hanging fruit like honesty and integrity. There’s nothing wrong with those of course, and it’s 100% okay if they end up as your core values, but the point is to drill down and find the values that speak to the deepest parts of you.

• Who is my best friend, and what are their values?
• Who do I respect, and why?
• Who do I dislike and why do I dislike them?
• What behaviors have ended a working relationship?
• What behaviors have ended a romantic relationship?
• What behaviors have ended a friendship or family relationship?
• I am the most pleased with myself when I _____.
• I get angry at myself when I _____.
• I am the most passionate about something when _____.
• If I was stripped of everything, what values would I keep?
• If I had all the money I ever wanted, how would I behave?
• What type of recognition do I appreciate outside of monetary rewards?
• What type of praise do I give to others?
• What are three characteristics that attract me to someone?
• What are three characteristics that make me want to avoid someone?
• If I had only one day left to live, what lessons would I pass on?
• When I overcame a difficult life situation, what got me through it?
• When I get excited about something, what is the reason?

Prioritizing and Defining Your Core Values

Narrowing your values down to your top three provides focus, clarity, and power. Begin by listing out all the values you have discovered via the questions, and then from those, pick out your top 10. Then filter it down to five (six is fine if you’re really struggling here), and then once more to three. These three are your core values.

If you get stuck pinpointing your top three values, two methods have helped me prioritize and whittle them down. The first is to take each value and compare it to the other values one at a time. Whichever one is the most important gets a tally mark. By the end, there will be 20 tally marks (if you’re working with five values), and three of the values will have more marks than the others.

The other method is to pretend you have $100 to split between the different values. The more money you assign to each value, the more important that one is to you. You can’t assign the same amount to any two values, and you have to use all $100. The three values with the most money assigned are your core values.

I’ve Discovered My Core Values, Now What?

Defining core values is a critical step to living a healthier and more balanced life. Write your values down on a sticky note and place them in an area that you frequent to help maintain focus. This way, they’re continually on your mind, and you can refer to them when you need to make important decisions. Move the sticky note around now and again so it doesn’t become invisible as sticky notes are prone to do, and eventually, it will become second nature to refer to them.

As you use your core values to guide your decisions and actions, and even your career, you will find deeper satisfaction, strengthened commitment, and increased confidence. This is empowerment, and it comes from living true to yourself.

A small note: You may find after a few weeks or months that these core values aren’t speaking to you like you hoped they would. That’s what happened to me, and it’s okay! For a couple of years ‘Education’ was one of my core values, but it wasn’t sitting right and I wasn’t sure why. Eventually I realized that ‘education’ was an important value to me because it leads to growth, and growth itself was my the actual value for which I cared most. If this is you, don’t worry, just continue to adjust and make any tweaks until you connect with the right ones. Even using the current ones and having them in your mind and using them to make decisions will help you sift through the small nuances. If needed, give it a few weeks or months, and then do the exercise(s) again, and in time, you’ll get better at honing in on what your core values are.

Values Reference List

A quick Google search will help you find a list of values that you can use to brainstorm and jumpstart the process, but since you’re here, I’ve got you covered.