
7 Steps to Discover Your Personal Core Values
by Scott JeffreyOVERVIEW: This guide provides detailed step-by-step instructions on how to discover your personal core values and to use personal values in meaningful ways.
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As a business coach, I appreciate the power of values.
I’ve noticed that individuals experience greater fulfillment when they live by their values.
And when we don’t honor our values, our mental, emotional, and physical state suffers. I’ve seen this to be true in my life too.
What follows is a self-coaching tool to help you discover your personal core values.
Let’s jump in …
Table of Contents
- Why Personal Core Values Are Important
- Knowing Your Personal Values Changes Your Behavior
- Discover Your Personal Core Values
- STEP 1: Start with a Beginner’s Mind
- STEP 2: Create Your List of Personal Values
- STEP 3: Chunk Your Personal Values into Related Groups
- STEP 4: Highlight the Central Theme of Each Value Group
- STEP 5: Determine Your Top Personal Core Values
- STEP 6: Give Your Personal Values Richer Context
- STEP 7: Test the Ecology of Each Value
- Are You Living Your Personal Values?
- How to Use Your Core Values to Make Decisions
- Take the Core Values Workshop
- Recommended Reading
- Discover the Core Values of Your Business
- Read Next
- What Do You Think?
Why Personal Core Values Are Important
Values are a part of us. They highlight what we stand for. They can represent our unique, individual essence.
Values guide our behavior, providing us with a personal code of conduct.
When we honor our personal core values consistently, we experience fulfillment.
When we don’t, we are incongruent and are more likely to escape into bad habits and regress into childish behavior to uplift ourselves.
Knowing Your Personal Values Changes Your Behavior
I still remember going through my first values discovery process when I was 22.
I was attending an intensive 4-day seminar devoted to learning about what motivates people. Personal values were a central theme of the event.
One value that rose to the top of my list was health. Physical health, energy, and vitality were, and still are, important to me.
I spent much of my childhood with various illnesses, and I saw how it affected my development and life experiences in deleterious ways.
I committed to cultivating a strong foundation for my physical health and wellbeing in adulthood.
Clarifying this value as a top priority shifted many things in my young life. It influenced what I ate and drank. I now consumed different media and installed different habits.
When you value health, you don’t have to wrestle with managing impulse control as much.
If you know a particular food or activity isn’t good for your body, you don’t want it.
I made a practice of paying attention to how different foods made me feel after I ate them.
If something made me sleepy or drained my energy, I took note.
I sought to create a way of being that supported a healthy, energizing lifestyle.
Many people value comfort. When people value comfort over growth, they are less likely to apply effort to grow. Breaking through resistance to growth is uncomfortable.
Consider what happens when people value comfort over their health. Eating to “feel better” will cause poor eating habits that undermine their health.
Discover Your Personal Core Values
Most of us don’t know our values. We don’t understand what’s most important to us. Instead, we focus on what our society, culture, and media values.
Can you articulate your top 5 to 10 values that are most important to you?
Without undergoing a discovery process, it’s challenging to identify your personal core values.
It’s easy to speculate and idealize what you should value. But knowing and accepting what you value takes effort.
While the following process is best done with a qualified coach, you can do it on your own if you apply self-honesty, patience, and determination.
Ready? Take out your journal, a notepad, or a note-taking app. And let’s get started.
Here are 7 steps to creating distinct and meaningful core values that will serve you in every area of your life and work:
STEP 1: Start with a Beginner’s Mind
It’s too easy to presume that we know the answer at the start and to, therefore, never embark on a creative, personal discovery process.
Adopt the mind 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 empty your mind. Remember that your conscious mind doesn’t have all the answers. Create a space for new insights and revelations to emerge.
Getting in the right mental and emotional state is an essential first step.
I also created a program called The Mastery Method: Activate Your Higher Potential to help individuals enter a state of heightened mental alertness, calm, and centeredness before doing processes like this.
STEP 2: Create Your List of Personal Values
Arriving at a concise and short list of personal values can be a daunting task. You can find lists online with almost 400 values to choose from.
However, I don’t advise using any predetermined lists.
Why? Values aren’t selected; we discover and reveal them. If you start with a list, your conscious mind will test which values appear “better” than others.
That said, if you’re not familiar with working with values, you can scan a list of values to get a sense of your range of options.
Here’s a list of over 220 core values.
To help you uncover your own personal core values, here are three processes you can try:
1) Peak Experiences
Consider a meaningful moment—a peak experience that stands out.
What was happening to you?
What was going on?
What values were you honoring at this time?
2) Suppressed Values
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 suppressed?
3) 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?
What are the personal values you must honor or a part of you withers?
STEP 3: Chunk Your Personal Values into Related Groups
Combining all the answers from step 2, you now have a master list of personal values. Maybe there are between 20 and 40 values on your list.
That’s too many to be actionable.
Your next step is to group these values under related themes.
Values like accountability, responsibility, and timeliness are all related.
Values like learning, growth, and development relate to each other.
Connection, belonging, and intimacy are related too. Group them together.
STEP 4: Highlight the Central Theme of Each Value Group
If you have a group of values that include honesty, transparency, integrity, candor, directness, and truth, select a word that best represents the group.
For example, integrity might work as a central theme for the values I listed.
You can keep the other words in the group in parentheses to give your primary value more context. You’ll use them again in step 6.
STEP 5: Determine Your Top Personal Core Values
Now comes the hardest part. After completing step 4, you still may have a sizable list of values. Here are a few questions to help you whittle your list down:
- What values are essential to your life?
- What values represent your primary way of being?
- What values are essential to supporting your inner self?
As a unique individual, you possess certain strengths and weaknesses. Your values matter most to you.
How many core values should you end up with? Too few and you won’t capture all the unique dimensions of your being. Too many and you’ll forget them or won’t take advantage of them.
While the number of core values differs for each person, the magic range seems to be between 5 and 10.
Rank them in the order of importance. This is often the most challenging part.
You may need to do this step in multiple sittings. After doing one round of ranking put it aside and “sleep on it.”
Revisit your ranking the next day and see how it sits with you. Then, go through the process again.
STEP 6: Give Your Personal Values Richer Context
Now, creativity comes into play.
Highlighting values into memorable phrases or sentences helps you articulate the meaning behind each value.
It gives you the opportunity to make the value more emotional and memorable.
Here are a few tips and guidelines for crafting your values statements:
- Use inspiring words and vocabulary. Our brains are quick to delete or ignore the mundane and commonplace.
- Mine for words that evoke and trigger emotional responses. They will be more meaningful and memorable.
- Play to your strengths in crafting your values.
- Make your value statements rich and meaningful to you so they inspire you to uphold them.
You could use other words from the groupings you made in step 3 in your description.
For example, let’s say you’ve identified a core value of health to represent other values, like energy and vitality.
Your values statement might be: “Health: to live with full vitality and energy every day.”
STEP 7: Test the Ecology of Each Value
Once you’ve completed your list of core values, walk away from them and revisit them the next day after a good night’s sleep. Review your list:
- How do they make you feel?
- Do you feel they are consistent with who you are?
- Are they personal to you?
- Do you see any values that feel inconsistent with your identity (as if they belong to someone else, like an authority figure or society) and not you?
- Check your priority ranking. Do you feel like your values are in the proper order of importance?
Nothing is final. Make any tweaks and changes as necessary.
Are You Living Your Personal Values?
Now you have a prioritized list of your top 5 to 10 core values, let’s see how well you’re living them.
From a centered position, assess how well you’re honoring each value by scoring each one on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 represents optimally living the value.
What’s your level of satisfaction with each value?
Record your score for each. You can set up a table in Excel or an online survey.
Date the top of the column. Repeat this exercise once a month or quarter to assess your progress.
If you score below 7 in a particular value, what changes do you need to make? What has to happen for you to further honor this value?
Here’s where self-coaching comes into play. Define your goals. Create a plan. Actualize it.
Check-in with your personal values again. Notice if you feel a difference in your level of fulfillment in life.
How to Use Your Core Values to Make Decisions
Knowing your personal core values and their order of priority is helpful in making difficult decisions.
Start by scoring your values as described above. Then, imagine your life several months or years from now having decided.
For example, what will your new business or a family change your life?
Step into this future picture as much as you can. Have it come alive in your mind.
Now, score your personal values while keeping the vision alive in your mind. Does deciding elevate your values score? Does it cause friction with one of your higher values?
This process will help bring a new level of clarity to your decision-making process.
Take the Core Values Workshop
The above process is fairly self-contained. but if you’re interested, I do offer a complete, online course on how to discover your core values.
It’s a hands-on, video-based program that guides through the process.
This Values Workshop also shows you, step-by-step, how to tie your values to specific behaviors to help you begin to live your values more fully each day.
Learn more about this course here.
Recommended Reading
Author Stephan R. Covey aptly noted:
“People can’t live with change if there’s not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.”
If you haven’t already, check out Covey’s best-selling classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Audiobook). It helps clarify the key behaviors necessary for consistent effectiveness.
Discover the Core Values of Your Business
If you’re a business leader or an entrepreneur, be sure to discover your company’s core values to create a thriving, unified culture.
Read Next
How to Use the Hero’s Journey for Self-Development
Transform Your Sleep With Blue Light Glasses
How Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs Explains Your Behavior
What Do You Think?
What are your experiences using this 7-step process? Has it helped you discover your personal values?
Leave your comments, questions, and experiences below:
I love this! :)
Best post I have found for this topic. Very helpful.
Thank you, Eric.
Scott,
About two years ago I came across this exercise and embarked on the journey to discovery. The result of this exercise has been the most empowering tools in both my personal and professional life.
Below you can read briefly what discovery of my “center point” has meant and I just wanted to thank you for offering the invitation through your exercise. I have introduced to many.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/centerpoint-jason-niehaus
That’s great to hear, Jason.
Thank you for a great resource! I have been meaning to determine my life values for ages, but I wasn’t sure how to do so. This is thorough, easy to do, even fun. Again, Thanks!
That’s great to hear, David. Glad you’re finding the process valuable. Thanks for the comments.
Excellent , would be glad to know the tools to assess the aspirations of human being.
Hi Tarun, I’m not certain what you mean by “tools to assess the aspirations of human beings”
Do you mean how to find your passion?
I’ll be honest. Lately, I have come across numerous articles that would go into “you need a vision statement” blah blah blah but none had an actual structure. I am glad I managed to read into something like this.
Glad you found it useful, Jamaal.
I have a guide on vision too:
https://scottjeffrey.com/personal-vision-statement/
Thank you for taking the time to record this exercise. I was looking for something to help me clarify my values and then to implement change. (action) I am working on aligning my personal values with my behaviors, and the first step is clarifying what those specific values are and then clarifying what my driving core values are. This was perfect and helped me do exactly what I needed to do. I just wanted to take a moment to sincerely thank you for making this site!!!
You’re most welcome, CK. Good to hear that this values discovery process worked for you. Thank you for the comments.
I really like this too! Thanks. I’m wondering about certain values that I am naturally and ones i feel i need to be but am not so much. Ex: discipline – I’m not lazy but i tend to avoid certain types of work, so I feel i should value discipline or It’s really what i’m missing to excel. I do value it and recognize the importance. I wonder if listing it as a core value would help me to strive or if it’s not be real with myself.
Hi Patrick. In the case of your example of discipline, your decision would come down to your selection process. Discipline may be important for you, but not the “most important” value for you based on your other top selections.
So you would evaluate your final decision based on the context of your other top values and the final number of values you are selecting for your list (3 to 7, usually).
I’ve discovered my 8 values and top 3 of them using this guide. I thank you a lot for this. Now what do I do with these values, what kind of action do I turn them into ? thanks :)
Hi Ug. The next step is to integrate your values with specific behaviors. I offer step-by-step instructions in this course:
https://scottjeffrey.com/values-workshop/
thank you so much for such a fast response :)
I really enjoyed reading this and it has made me think about my life and how I can improve myself and has helped me to realise what’s important to me.
That’s great to hear, Georgie. Going through the discovery process, step by step, will help you get even more clarity on what’s most important to you.
I teach values and this is a really excellent way to go
I find people have their values tho’ not often having sorted them to bring them to the forefront
and then many not incorporated lying dormant!
I call ones that are ‘used’ ( as they are instilling them with energy,) ‘Living values’ including those they don’t like to admit like criticism !
Yes, Jan, this is something I cover in my Values Workshop. Knowing your values is one thing; integrating them into your daily behavior is something entirely different.
That’s one great and detailed article..Thanks!
You’re welcome, Noha. Thanks for the feedback.
I am always seeking ways to enrich clients with exploring core values and this information is great to share, and great for me to practice personally!
That’s wonderful to hear, Kathy. I’m glad you found the process enriching.
I am am greatful that I came across this information. I am a counselor that is seeking to develop more balance and overstating of myself and others.So this I will be sharing with my team.!!!Your Counselor Lorraine Arnett.
Enjoy the discovery process with your team!
Hi Great advice. I just tried this exercise. If one of your core values is Learning, which is mine. At the moment I give it a score of 8, because I am constantly reading, learning and seeking. I still don’t understand how I use it for a future decision. e.g. say in 1 year I I start a business or get married, how can I tell what my Learning score would be? Doesn’t it depend on so many things? thx
Yes, Steve, it would depend on how you define learning and what behavioral patterns you identify with this value. This topic, however, is beyond the scope of this guide. I address this more deeply in my Values Workshop (online course).
When I was 32 (1975), I did a self-assessment to determine what satisfied me in my profession, my avocation,and daily life. This process led me to a change in careers from Engineering to Technical Marketing, Sales, and Business, completing a extremely satisfying and productive 37 year career in 2006, and a continuous avocation as a freelance writer, editor, weekly columnist, author and public speaker. Now at 75, I’m curious to see how my core values have changed, if any, and can I suggest this course to my middle-aged children and college age grandchildren.
That’s wonderful to hear, Ken. You’ve provided a powerful testimony to the power of knowing your values!
Excellent post on values !
Do you have any guide related to use of subconscious mind, auto suggestion, dreamboard etc? Thanks !
This guide is the closest to the topics you mentioned:
https://scottjeffrey.com/inner-guide/
very nice guide for teachers thank you very much.
You’re welcome, Janet.
What do you do if you can’t come up with any? I’ve been wracking my brain about this but have not been able to think of any. I don’t really have any positive peak experiences; mostly what life has taught me is to prioritize my own personal safety above all else. But that’s not really a “value.”
Safety/security certainly is a common value.
But if you go through the process and you can’t come up with anything, you need to acknowledge the part of you that doesn’t know to clarify his values because then you would need to become accountable for them. When you meet resistance like this, that’s usually the reason why.
Thank you so much for the articles.
You’re welcome, Mai.
Great
This is helpful and made me really think about who I am.
i love this
This was very helpful.
Great article
Just spent two great hours doing this exercise for our business and we feel like we had one of the most productive meetings. Thank you so much and God bless!!!
You’re welcome, Monica.
You are the Greate with all you wonderfull Articles! Thank you so much, Vlad Mentor
You’re welcome, Vlad. Glad to hear you’re finding the articles valuable for you.
Fantastic resource, I’ve just undergone this process and now have a better sense of direction in my life. Went through it with my psychologist who was blown away by the personal growth it has helped me attain. Thank you !
That’s great, Teigan. The next step is to integrate your values into your everyday behaviors.
Thank you
You’re welcome, Siboleke.
Thank you this is incredible.
Sure thing, John.
Thanks a lot Scott I think this is very helpful Ive been through difficult times and I am doing an analysis of my values. I am working on it, I will let you know about it…
You’re welcome, Jose. Best wishes to you.
Very helpful post, insightful and guiding.
That’s great to hear, Tess.
Great steps towards self discovery and success
A beautiful write-up. It has illuminated my mind on the importance of personal core values.
That’s terrific, Okonkwo. Enjoy!
Excellent post! I’m so happy to found this. It has helped me to put everything in perspective and make the necessary and urgent tweaks and changes I have to do to balance and enjoy more my life. I appreciated this a lot!! Thank you.
You’re welcome! Great to hear.
This clear and simple. Am grateful, I anticipate very significant change
You’re welcome, Kalu.
Very insightful article. I’m a coach and this adds a lot to my coaching in value mining sessions. Many thanks.
Sure thing, Sedef. It’s a vital process for coaches.
I shared this with a class I facilitate, and one participant suggested it was missing a vital value: humor. So she added it, of course, and I thought I’d share that feedback. The categories list of values has been a wonderful resource.
She’s correct! Thanks for the feedback, Carole. It has been added to the list:
https://scottjeffrey.com/core-values-list/
Funny, I went for a walk near completion, to reset, and thought of humor. Then promptly forgot it until I saw Carole’s Feb 8 2020 comment! Added it to my list.
Amazing! Insightful. Useful. Helpful. Great read. Thanks!
You’re welcome, Julie!
now I have found something I was denying I wanted to do….be the CEO of my life and business and help others do the same!
Good to hear that you discovered a hidden drive that existed within you, Shariwa.
Well-detailed article. Helped a lot. Thank you.
You’re welcome, Ronak. Thanks for your comments.
Strumento di analisi molto, molto utile. Grazie
I struggled to find core values, to be honest i had trouble working out what the values actually meant and where to use them,now i have sort of found them i have no idea how to use them to find work,business or everyday life.so frustrating
Dave, you might look into my Values Workshop course. It guides you through the process of integrating your values with specific daily behavior.
Thanks scott greatstuff ,will do cheers
Thank You
You’re welcome, Alex.
Hey man! I found this exercise so difficult! I wrote down a lot of stories from the past, from which I listed many values. When it came time to group similar values under one overarching name for the group, I wanted to give up because I had written so many values and I was struggling to group them and come up with a name for the group. My mind started telling it was a “pointless” and “ridiculous” exercise and I felt a massive urge to just write this exercise off and go do something else. But I know my mind well enough to know when I’m getting in my own way, so I took a breather and then came back to the exercise full throttle. I knew if I were to do this, I would have to do it properly, with no mercy (lol)…
I powered on through and grouped my values. I found 8 values which were essential, and ranked them as best I could. Got some sleep and then over the coming days I took each value and started to expand upon and strengthen my understanding of the value by finding a quote related to it through a Google search. The quotes really provided a lot of depth and inspiration for me to elaborate on the value in a paragraph or two. At this point I was actually feeling like I really wanted to keep going as I knew I was going to get a lot out of it (having broken through the wall of doom earlier when I thought the exercise was pointless). There was an emotional charge underlying my writing; I knew I was on the right track when it genuinely felt like what I was writing was real and true and flowed from within like a fresh river straight from The Source (whatever the hell that is.)
Having elaborated on all the values, I asked the questions to find out if they were really essential/congruent with me and re-ranked them a bit accordingly. Added an extra value and modified a couple more.
Even before I did the table at the end to rank how I was aligning myself with each value, I started to recognise in my day to day life how my activities made me feel good or bad in accordance with how aligned I was with my values – If I’m lazing about, I feel bad because I’m not in alignment with growth or learning. If I’ve been somehow drawn into scrolling through Facebook (which happens rarely these days but it still happens) I become aware that I’m feeling a sense of anxiety or pain or need for a better life, because I see everyone’s “amazing” photos – it reminds me that I’m conflicting with my value of PRESENCE and CALM. When I play video games without having exercised or done any work I start to feel restless because I’m conflicting with my values of HEALTH and WELLBEING and GROWTH and INTELLIGENCE/LEARNING all at once… But at the same time if I focus only on those – health and wellbeing and growth and intelligence – I start to feel soul-less because I am foregoing my value of ART and CREATION – something which video games, movies and TV shows have often provided me…
Really, this exercise has made me see things differently. It’s like… of course you feel bad if you’re not in alignment with your values. Duh.
But doing the exercise was NOT easy for me, as I said. My brain and mind just wanted me to stop, wanted to keep this hidden from me. I am glad I pushed through.
Obviously I’m going to take what I wrote and understood with a pinch of salt though. Reading about Schwartz’ basic values, it’s not uncommon for values to change as you age and go through major life events. I expect my values to change, but I don’t expect my emotional response to being out of alignment with my values to change.
One last thing; to “know” your values is to think you know them and there is nothing more to know. But I always try to remember that when one thinks they know something it can get in the way of finding out more, because you limit yourself by believing you already “know” – if you already “know” then there’s nothing more to find out. So I like to think of what I did here as having pointed me in the direction of knowing, and now I am wiser for it, with more wisdom to come.
Thanks for making this exercise Scott, I hope everyone got as much out of it as I did, and to be honest I think the difficulty of it for me was in proportion to the benefit.
Cheers,
Lewis.
Hi Lewis,
Sounds like you powered through it! Self-discovery processes like these get easier when you’re more rooted in your body. We often get stuck in our minds, which can create a labyrinth of indecision and confusion.
The point of “knowing your values” is to give you a guidepost for your behavior and for making decisions. It’s not to codify them or etch them in stone. Values certainly can change in the course of our development.
Once we understand that, values can become a useful tool in our development — until we reach the point where our True Self takes over the driver’s seat.
I found this very helpful. Especially the Value Ranking chart. Thank you!
You’re most welcome!
very nice
Hi this has been a good read and an excellent bringing together of a number of proven techniques. Have you used this methodology for a corporate and how did it work? Would you follow the same process for developing a set of life principles or would you change the detail of the process?
The process is different for businesses:
https://scottjeffrey.com/company-core-values/
Very interesting! thanks. I think that everybody should read this book. It’s really helpfully
Glad to hear you found the guide helpful.
Hey Scott!
Thanks so much for publishing this post, it’s really helpful – I’ve just started working through it :)
Wondering if you can help on this:
STEP 2
1) PEAK EXPERIENCES
I found it difficult to understand the difference between the first two questions when I got to answering them. Would you be willing to provide an example experience + example answers to these two?
Cheers,
Fi
It’s best to avoid getting hung up on any single question when you’re doing processes like these. When you get hung up, it generally because you start “analyzing” things, which hinders the discovery.
Just keep moving forward with the process with the answers you have.
Hi Scott,
Great article. The list of 220 values is very helpful. Had a couple of queries
a) Could it be that those who don’t have a well-defined goal in life – are content with enjoying and making the best of life each day – would have difficulty in narrowing down the top 10? Since each value, when it presents itself, would feel ‘should have / ought to’ to them?
b) How do Goal / Values interact with each other? Do our Values lead to deciding on appropriate Goals or vice versa?
c) Why is ‘Comfort’ looked down upon, and ‘Are you stretching yourself’ seen as positive? Isn’t it a societal mindset / outward expectation for someone who values comfort. Comfort can be both physical and mental – Stephen King writes a horror novel every year for the last 50 odd years. Would it be wise to look down on him and say – he is not stretching himself – to write in other genre / or conducting Writing workshops?
d) What do you think drives Roger Federer / Ronaldo to continue to play at the top, even after so many years? Is it just Values, or something else as well? What will you name that something else?
Thanks..
Thank you so much for having this available online. I was battling with what is my purpose in God’s purpose. I then had to know what values and skills I had. It devastated me to realize that out of all the people I’ve coached, I myself didn’t know my personal values. You have helped me to access myself and the values that I hold within. It was super hard visiting myself, but I am on a new journey, and I thank you.
Sure thing. This is quite common, Vicki. I used to fall into this trap often as well.
“Those who don’t know, teach.”
Anyone in a coaching role needs to remember that whatever you’re talking to your clients about is likely just as relevant to you. The Coach is an archetype, not a person. It’s sometimes difficult to make this distinction.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has always stuck with me…find this subject so interesting.
great process
Really helpful guide for putting values down on paper and simplifying them. Thank you!
You’re welcome, Brendan.
First, Being a SRCovey fan, I can see his handprints on this. You are wise to follow him. Second, the process you have outlined are simple, but require a willingness to engage in self-reflection…not always easy. Third, the real value will of the steps will come with application. Stay tuned. Once I’ve taken them for a spin around the block i’ll check back in.
Hi Dab,
Although I did read Covey’s book several decades ago and I listed it at the end of this guide, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that it influenced the process I outlined above in any way.
Enjoy the process.
Excellent!!!
This is a really detailed topic on discovering personal values. As I searched for the core values list, I came across this line of thought in your post: “core values are not chosen from a list, they are discovered, because they are a part of us.”
I am a newcomer to the field of personal values, and I hope to advance, learning from this site.
Thank you.
Utterly brilliant and insightful. Thank you.
Thank you, Geeta.
this article was very helpful for me. thank you.
Sure thing, Atieh.
I just want to thank you for yor work Scott. It wil be very helpful for me.
You’re most welcome, Gabriela.
Can you give an example of Suppressed Values?
Let’s say your lie all the time.
Sometimes you’re aware that you’re lying to others and yourself; other times, you aren’t conscious of it.
You never thought much about it, but when you place more attention on what’s going on, you notice that you feel crappy every time you lie, as if it’s sapping your life force.
In this illustration, truth or honesty might be something that you highly value, but you have been suppressing these values.
(And these values get suppressed so that our conscious mind/ego can go on lying without having to face our conscience.)
This was a very useful way to break this down. I like how you set this up to feel easily digestible, then started getting in a little deeper and breaking it apart into smaller and smaller pieces to make the brain storming process feel more attainable. At that point, having so many helped me feel like I wasn’t grasping for straws like I was before, so narrowing down was simple. Testing our thoughts is where this really helped out in the end though. I appreciate you posting this for us to use!
Glad to hear that this core values process worked for you, Timothy. Thanks for the comments.
Very valuable
Very well written. Unfortunately it just highlights what a shallow person I am! My top 5 come up as wealth, fun, youthfulness, celebrity, and kindness. At least I’ve got kindness in there so as not be a COMPLETE tool! Lol.
Sounds like you might need to add “honesty” to your list, Jon!
Incredible content of self-development or self-discovery. I was searching self-mastery but I found this website. Thank you for sharing this.
You’re welcome, Deep. And if you’re interested in the topic of self-mastery, you’ll find loads of resources on this website.
I feel a little dumb, but I’ve had this tab open on my browser for months now. I’ve read it over and over again. This paragraph sounds like it’s describing me: “Many people value comfort. When people value comfort over growth, they are less likely to apply effort to grow. Breaking through resistance to growth isn’t uncomfortable.” But, not matter how many times I read it, I get confused and think… “Doesn’t he mean ‘breaking through resistance to growth *IS* uncomfortable?’ I don’t know why I have spent so much time obsessed with this, but decided I had to ask.
Yes, Blair, you’re correct. That was a typo. (Now fixed.) Thank you for point it out and asking the question.
Absolutely, awesome. Yearn to know more. Appreciate!
Thanks for this guide which is really helpfull for introspection and which can deeply help in decision making !
You’re welcome, Maëlle.
Thanks Scott to show this material on the net.
Sure thing, Andreia.
Hi Scott, thanks so much for this really excellent and practical resource. It has been so liberating for me to formulate my own, personal core values and consciously decide to live by them. I found out, through painful experience, the truth of your remark that we wither if we don’t honour these personal values. I can tell from your text that you know in a deep and direct way what values really are.
Thank you for the feedback, Johan. Great to hear that you found this process liberating!
thank you!
You’re welcome, Amy.
Hi Scott, I have used a lot of your resources over the last 4-5 years especially as your advice excellently references Maslow’s work which I find particularly helpful as a framework to think within.
This is the first time I have followed your values exercise. It is a vast improvement on one I have used in the past and it is a great tool in setting myself up for a meaningful and focussed 2021. Thank you!
Now I am going to try to work on my overall personal development plan :)
Hi Kate,
That’s great to hear. Thank you for the feedback.
Enjoy the process of building your new personal development plan!
Super helpful!
Very helpful, the best explanation i had