What Are Your Personal Values?

“Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.” ~ Ayn Rand

 
Your values are the things that you believe are important in deciding the way you want to live and work.

They determine your priorities and they’re probably the measures you use to determine if your life is turning out the way you want it to.

When the things that you do and the way you behave match your values, life is usually good – you’re satisfied and content.

But when these don’t align with your values, that’s when things feel… wrong. This can be a real source of unhappiness.

This is why making a conscious effort to identify your values is so important.

How Values Help You

Life is so much easier when you determine your values and commit to honoring them.

If you value family, but you work 70-hour weeks in your job, you probably will feel internal stress and conflict.

If you don’t value competition, but you work with a highly competitive sales team, you are likely to feel stressed and frustrated with your job?

When you know your own values, you can use them to make decisions about how to live your life and you can answer questions like these:

• What job should I pursue?
• Should I accept this promotion?
• Should I start my own business?
• Should I compromise, or be firm with my position?
• Should I follow tradition or travel down a new path?

Taking the time to understand what are your true priorities, you’ll be able to determine the best direction for yourself, your family life and your life goals.

Do Personal Values Change?

As your definition of success changes, so do your values.

For example, when you start your career, you may measure your success by how much money you make and status may be a top priority.

But after you have a family, work-life balance may be what you value more.

Redefining your values should be a lifelong exercise that you periodically revisit.  This is especially true, if you start to feel unbalanced and you can’t quite figure out why.

As you go through the exercise below, bear in mind that values that were important in the past may not be relevant now.

Defining Your Values

When you define your values, you discover what’s truly important to you.

A good way of starting to do this is to look back on your life – to identify when you felt really good, and really confident that you were making good choices.

Step 1: Identify the times when you were happiest

Find examples from both your career and personal life. This will ensure some balance in your answers.

• What were you doing?
• Were you with other people? Who?
• What other factors contributed to your happiness?

Step 2: Identify the times when you were most proud

Use examples from your career and personal life.

• Why were you proud?
• Did other people share your pride? Who?
• What other factors contributed to your feelings of pride?

Step 3: Identify the times when you were most fulfilled and satisfied

Again, use both work and personal examples.

• What need or desire was fulfilled?
• How and why did the experience give your life meaning?
• What other factors contributed to your feelings of fulfillment?

Step 4: Determine your top values, based on your experiences of happiness, pride, and fulfillment

On 3 X 5 notecards, write out each value on your list…

1. Make a list of all the important people in your life. Put them in the order of importance with the most important on the top.
2. Make a list of all the important things in your life. Put them in the order of importance with the most important on the top.
3. Make a list of all the important activities in your life. Put them in the order of importance with the most important on the top.

You can use the following list of common personal values to help you get started – aim for about 10 top values.

As you work through, you may find that some of these naturally combine.

For instance, if you value philanthropy, community, and generosity, you might say that service to others is one of your top values.

Accountability
Accuracy
Achievement
Adventurousness
Altruism
Ambition
Assertiveness
Balance
Being the best
Belonging
Boldness
Calmness
Carefulness
Challenge
Cheerfulness
Clear-mindedness
Commitment
Community
Compassion
Competitiveness
Consistency
Contentment
Continuous Improvement
Contribution
Control
Cooperation
Correctness
Courtesy
Creativity
Curiosity
Decisiveness
Dependability
Determination
Devoutness
Diligence
Discipline
Discretion
Diversity
Dynamism
Economy
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Elegance
Empathy
Enjoyment
Enthusiasm
Equality
Excellence
Excitement
Expertise
Exploration
Expressiveness
Fairness
Faith
Family-orientedness
Fidelity
Fitness
Fluency
Focus
Freedom
Fun
Generosity
Goodness
Grace
Growth
Happiness
Hard Work
Health
Helping Society
Holiness
Honesty
Honor
Humility
Independence
Ingenuity
Inner Harmony
Inquisitiveness
Insightfulness
Intelligence
Intellectual Status
Intuition
Joy
Justice
Leadership
Legacy
Love
Loyalty
Making a difference
Mastery
Merit
Obedience
Openness
Order
Originality
Patriotism Perfection
Piety
Positivity
Practicality
Preparedness
Professionalism
Prudence
Quality-orientation
Reliability
Resourcefulness
Restraint
Results-oriented
Rigor
Security
Self-actualization
Self-control
Selflessness
Self-reliance
Sensitivity
Serenity
Service
Shrewdness
Simplicity
Soundness
Speed
Spontaneity
Stability
Strategic
Strength
Structure
Success
Support
Teamwork
Temperance
Thankfulness
Thoroughness
Thoughtfulness
Timeliness
Tolerance
Traditionalism
Trustworthiness
Truth-seeking
Understanding
Uniqueness
Unity
Usefulness
Vision
Vitality

Step 5: Prioritize your top values

This step is probably the most difficult, because you’ll have to look deep inside yourself.

It’s also the most important step, because, when making a decision, you’ll have to choose between situations that may satisfy different values.

This is how you know which value is more important to you.

• Collate the values listed on the notecards from the top 3 lists to create one main list with no two items sharing a level on the hierarchy.
• Ask yourself, “If I could satisfy only one of these, which would I choose?” It might help to visualize a situation in which you would have to make that choice. For example, if you compare the values of service and stability, imagine that you must decide whether to sell your house and move to another country to do valuable foreign aid work or keep your house and volunteer to do charity work closer to home.
• Keep working through the list, by comparing each value with each other value, until your list is in the correct order.

Step 6: Reaffirm your values

Check your top-priority values, and make sure they fit with your life and your vision for yourself.

• Do these values make you feel good about yourself?
• Are you proud of your top three values?
• Would you be comfortable and proud to tell your values to people you respect and admire?
• Do these values represent things you would support, even if your choice isn’t popular, and it puts you in the minority?

When considering your values in decision making, be sure to keep your sense of integrity and what you know is right in mind so you approach decision making with confidence and clarity.

You’ll also feel clear that what you’re doing is best for your current and future happiness and satisfaction.

Making value-based choices is not always easy. But, making a choice that you know is right according to your values is a lot less difficult in the long run.

Final Key Points

Your values are a central part of who you are and who you want to be.

By becoming more aware of these important factors in your life, you can use them as a guide to make the best choice in any situation.

Most of life’s decisions are really about determining what you value most.

When many options seem reasonable, it’s helpful and comforting to rely on your values and use them as a guidepost to point you in the right direction.