7 Steps to Discover Your Personal Values

OVERVIEW: This guide provides detailed step-by-step instructions on how to discover your personal values and use them in meaningful ways.

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As a coach for over 25 years, I appreciate the power of values.

I noticed that individuals experience greater fulfillment when they live by their values.

When we don’t honor our values, our mental, emotional, and physical state suffers.

What follows is a self-coaching tool to help you discover your personal values.

Let’s jump in …

What Are Personal Values?

In his paper “Universals in the Content and Structure of Values,” psychologist Shalom H. Schwartz outlines five features of values derived from Milton Rokeach’s original definition.1Milton Rokeach, Beliefs, attitudes and values: A theory of organization and change, 1968.

Values are:2Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1-65. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60281-6

  1. Concepts or beliefs,
  2. Pertain to desirable end states or behaviors,
  3. Transcend specific situations,
  4. Guide the selection or evaluation of behavior and events, and
  5. Are ordered by relative importance.

Schwartz also pointed out that another primary function of a value is the type of goal or motivation it expresses. From his perspective, values are an expression of our basic human needs.

Why Personal Values Are Important

Values are a part of us. They highlight what we stand for. They can represent our ideals and unique, individual essence.

Values guide our behavior, providing us with a personal code of conduct.

When we honor our personal values consistently, we experience fulfillment.

When we don’t, we are more likely to escape into bad habits and regressive patterns of behavior.

How Knowing Your 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 well-being in adulthood.

Clarifying this value as a top priority shifted many things in my young life. It influenced what I ate and drank. I changed many behaviors and established new habits related to my value of health.

An Example: Personal Values Change Behavior

When you value health, for example, you’re less likely to wrestle with impulse control.

If you know a particular food isn’t supportive of your body, you’ll form an aversion toward eating 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.

In contrast, many people value comfort.

When people value comfort over growth, for example, they are less likely to apply effort toward growth. 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.

What Happens When We Don’t Know Our Values?

Most of us don’t know our values. We don’t consciously go through a process to clarify what’s most important to us.

In the absence of this clarity, there’s a subconscious “default” position provided by the collective.

So instead of living by our own ideals, we subconsciously shift our behavior and attitudes toward what society, culture, and media value. In today’s world, those values include:

  • Image
  • Money
  • Material possessions
  • Success
  • Competition

With these values as the subconscious standard for human behavior, it naturally leads individuals in that society toward anxiety, depression, addictive behaviors, and a host of other mental illnesses.

As such, clarifying what’s important for each of us is a moral imperative if we want to take better control of the direction of our lives.

Personal Values Examples

In contrast to the default values we might observe in society, there are hundreds of other personal values we can choose from. For example, common personal values include:

Acceptance

Accomplishment

Accountability

Achievement

Adaptability

Alertness

Altruism

Assertiveness

Attentiveness

Awareness

Balance

Beauty

Boldness

Bravery

Brilliance

Candor

Certainty

Challenge

Cleanliness

Clarity

Commitment

Common sense

Communication

Community

Compassion

Competence

Concentration

Confidence

Connection

Consistency

This is just a small sample of personal value examples available to us.

Here’s a list of over 220 core values.

7-Step Personal Values Assessment Exercise

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 coach, you can do it independently if you apply self-honesty, patience, and determination.

In this assessment, we’re going to follow 7 steps to help you determine your personal values:

  1. Start with a beginner’s mind. (This is important!)
  2. Create your initial list of personal core values.
  3. Combine your personal values into related groups.
  4. Highlight the central theme of each value grouping.
  5. Determine your top personal values.
  6. Craft personal values statements.
  7. Test the ecology of each value.

Ready? Take out your journal, a notepad, or a note-taking app. And let’s get started.

personal values assessment exercise

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 a Beginner’s Mind. Let go of all preconceived notions of how it’s “supposed to be.”

Our beliefs and conditioning often block our conscious minds from accessing inner truths that are right in front of us.

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 from within yourself.

Getting in the right mental state is an essential first step for this discovery process.

(I also created a simple program called The Mastery Method: Activate Your Higher Potential to help individuals enter a state of heightened mental alertness, calm, and centeredness before doing this.)

STEP 2: Create Your List of Personal Values

Arriving at a concise list of personal values can be a daunting task.

At this stage, don’t worry about the actual number of values. We’ll whittle your list down later in the process.

The key thing to remember is that values aren’t selected; they are discovered.

Our values reveal themselves to us.

That’s why I don’t suggest only scanning a core values list to choose your values.

Why not? If you work off a list, your conscious mind will select which values appear “better” than others. You won’t necessarily be selecting your personal core values.

That said, if you’re unfamiliar with values in general, you can scan a list of values to get a sense of your range of options.

To help you uncover your personal values, here are three exercises you can try on your own:

1) Peak Experiences

Consider a meaningful moment—a peak experience that stands out in your memory.

  • 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?

Including your basic human needs and what lies beyond them, 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 yourself withers?

STEP 3: Chunk Your 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.

STEP 4: Highlight the Central Theme of Each Value Group

Let’s say you have a group of values that include:

  • Honesty,
  • Transparency,
  • Integrity,
  • Candor,
  • Directness, and
  • Truth.

Now, select a word that best represents this group.

For example, integrity might work as a central theme for the values listed above.

You can keep the other words in the group in parentheses to give your primary value more context. You’ll use these other words again in step 6.

For example:

Integrity (Honesty / Transparency / Candor / Directness / Truth)

Before you move on to Step 5, you might want to quickly scan this core values list to make sure you didn’t miss anything important to you.

STEP 5: Determine Your Top Personal 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 Personal Values Should You Have?

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 personal values differs for each individual, the magic range seems to be between 5 and 10. (In my experience, the closer to 5, the better.)

Rank Your Personal Values

So now you want to 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: Craft Personal Values Statements

Now, we get creative.

Highlighting values in memorable phrases or sentences helps you articulate the meaning behind each value.

It allows you to make the value more emotional and memorable.

Here are a few tips and guidelines for crafting your values statements:

  • Use inspiring words. Our brains are quick to delete or ignore the mundane and commonplace.
  • Look 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 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 personal 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: Give Each Value a “Gut Check”

Once you’ve completed your list of personal 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 Core Values?

Now you have a prioritized list of your top 5 to 10 values, let’s assess how well you’re living them right now.

From a centered state, 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. If it helps, you can set up a spreadsheet to capture your evaluation.

Date the top of the column. Repeat this exercise once a month or quarter to assess your progress.

personal values assessmentExample of a Values-Based Action Plan

Create a Values-Based Action Plan

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:

  1. Define your goals.
  2. Create a plan.
  3. Actualize it.

Check in with your personal values again a few weeks later. Notice if you feel a difference in your level of fulfillment in life.

How to Use Your Personal Values to Make Decisions

Knowing your personal values and their order of priority helps make difficult decisions.

Start by scoring your values as described above. Then, imagine your life several months or years from now having decided.

For example, how will starting your new side hustle change your life in the future?

Step into this future picture as much as you can. Let it come alive in your mind’s eye.

Now, score your personal values while keeping the vision alive in your mind.

  • Does making this decision elevate your values score?
  • Does it cause friction with one or more of your higher values?

This process can help bring a new level of clarity to your decision-making process.

Need More Guidance?

core values workshop

The above value experience is fairly self-contained. but if you’re interested, I do offer a complete, online course on how to discover your values.

It’s a hands-on, video-based program that guides you through the discovery process.

The program 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.

Read Next

A Complete Master List of Virtues

How to Use the Hero’s Journey for Self-Development

How to Make Positive Changes in Your Behavior: A Definitive Guide

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:

About the Author

Scott Jeffrey is the founder of CEOsage, a self-leadership resource publishing in-depth guides read by millions of self-actualizing individuals. He writes about self-development, practical psychology, Eastern philosophy, and integrative practices. For 25 years, Scott was a business coach to high-performing entrepreneurs, CEOs, and best-selling authors. He's the author of four books including Creativity Revealed.

Learn more >

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • 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!!!

  • 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 :)

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Excellent post on values !
    Do you have any guide related to use of subconscious mind, auto suggestion, dreamboard etc? Thanks !

  • 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.

  • 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!!!

  • 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 !

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • 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!

  • 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.

  • Incredible content of self-development or self-discovery. I was searching self-mastery but I found this website. Thank you for sharing this.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 Laura,

      My articles aren’t technically blogs (they are guides) and I don’t maintain a blogroll. Also, I wouldn’t recommend reading them in chronological order. It’s best to read them based on your internal tensions or what most interests you.

      If you subscribe to my list, you’ll receive different guides every week or two.

      • Thanks for the reply. Your blog is a pretty cool guide for me right now.

        My understanding is that a website that each individual article, opinion piece, essay, etc., sit on are the “posts,” while the website that houses those posts is the “blog.” But I’m splitting hairs of course and it doesn’t really matter what their called. :)

        I just wanted to be able to get to the posts (or guides) an easier way without relying on the links in each post. Not only does it seem that I might be missing something (which is an issue in itself…FOMO—lol) but it can feel like going in circles when there isn’t a menu of some sort or a table of contents to browse titles.

        Either way, I love your content. I found it via originally, searching for lists of values and then clicked the link on the exercise to ‘figure out’ my values.

        I do agree with your statement however, “Values are not selected; we discover and reveal them.”
        That resonated so much I wrote it in my journal. :)

        -L

  • This was excellent. I went through the exercise up to ordering the values. I had an epiphany around some things. Very insightful and helpful. Thank you!

  • Hi and thank you, this is an excellent resource.
    I have a question – can we have values which are negative? For example: I wish at all times to avoid dogmatic people; and I fear having contact with authoritarian bullies. I’m trying to turn these into +ve statements/values, but can’t!
    Thanks
    Paul

    • Hi Paul,

      You wouldn’t want to frame a value on what you’re moving away from. This would put you in a mindset where you would attract what you don’t want.

      So look at the opposite. Perhaps you value free-thinking, flexibility, autonomy, and/or freedom.

      Evaluate in this manner and you’ll arrive at what you value.

  • This has inspired me to re-visit my value system which is a long time out of date. I plan to restart my creative juices flowing and this will surely help me get started. Thnkyou for such a clear and inspirational guide. Sincerely.

  • Values are on the topics I am touching on for my blog post. I hunted for the right article to link users to and this is it! Easy to follow and practical. Thank you Scott for your research on this and for the article!

  • I wonder if people identify their real values or do they state what they think others want to hear. For example a lot of people may have a personal value of great individual financial wealth. For a lot of people, nothing is more important than money. This is true for other things as well. If you put down save the planet, or help humanity, but your actions are wealth, and when you think about it you really care more about wealth than you do about helping others, then would it not be true that your greatest core value would be increased financial wealth. Lying about it does one no good.

  • Life-changing article about discovering personal core value. Thank you for sharing, I need to take more time to digest it..

  • This is the most effective out of anything I’ve read online. I’m not just talking about with values, I mean out of every piece I’ve read on how to… it is the absolute MOST effective and easy to follow that I have ever read! Thank you so so much, I’m going to tell anyone I can about this!!!

  • Thank you. I think the most helpful part of this for me was being able to “assign” more context to each one of my values. That will help remind me the deeper connection and reason as to why I chose these values during this activity.

  • I meditated for 15 mins before starting this process and it has really helped in laying out my core values. Thank you for writing these guides, they are helping me a lot ❤

  • I am deeply concerned with giving misinformed individuals in companies a means of gaslighting the public, but more importabtly their employees who are robbed and coerced, especially for material gain. The fundamental aspects of reality which is covered up is not revealed therfore true growth can not be achieved.

  • Mind blowing! A great help to discover myself and others in my personal and family relationships when there is a mismatch of values

  • Excellent Contents.

    I enjoyed reading, practicing, and discovering my values and core values through this exercise.

    Thank you, Scott.

  • I have really enjoyed reading about these topics. It has given me more of a understanding about myself with core values , and values as a person.

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