How do you make the choices that make the biggest impact on your life? How do you decide pretty much everything in your life? What you believe in, what’s important to you, what you do day to day and who your friends are? These choices come down to values, and more specifically your core values.

Your core values are the source of all of that you choose and do in life. The challenge for many of us is that :

1. We don’t know where our core values come from
2. We don’t know what our core values are
3. We don’t fully appreciate their impact on our lives

This post will add some clarity around the idea of core values and how we can use them to make better choices. It’s one of the core principles of my coaching program.

Are You Living Someone Else’s Values?

It’s virtually impossible to pinpoint where your values originated. So in some sense it’s not worth the attempt to figure it out. It’s widely understand that a person’s values come from a combination of their upbringing, family, friends, genetics, society and other factors. Largely, we are blind to how our values have formed and in many ways we have little control over what our values are.

Since we can’t completely know the true source of our core values, my view is that we should spend minimal time digging into our past trying, seeking an undiscoverable truth. Values aren’t sacred, they don’t come from some unchangeable and mystical source, and so we have an opportunity to investigate and question what values we choose to live by. It also means, we can further differentiate between the values that we have in our hearts, deep down and truly live by, versus those that we have adopted without truly believing in them in our core.

That’s hard, really hard, it requires complete and sometimes brutal honesty. It requires time, patience and flexibility. So to summarize step 1, it’s simply to be OPEN and allow yourself the privilege of looking at your perceived values objectively, with some level of detachment. To know that what you instinctively think of as your values at first may not be accurate. In essence, that you could be living by someone else’s values.

What Can’t You Live Without?

Here’s a list of some of the most popular values, I’m sure many of these values are important to you and shape your life. We all have hundreds or thousands of values, but they aren’t all equal. Core values are in some senses, the root values from which others spring. They sometimes stand alone as well, but in either case, they are values which are not only very important, but you can’t live without.

Generally speaking, 1-3 core values is about the limit after which they shift from core values to simply things that matter a lot in your life. So how do we identify them, and how deep do we go? It’s a long process of self-reflection, but the process can start with looking at this massive list and reflecting on what really stands out. From there, find umbrella values that contain other values. Then filter that down even further. This is an iterative process and can take time. Don’t forget! These can also change over time, so be open to adapting as you grow and change. 

A couple questions I’ve found really help people are :

• Think of a time you felt deeply fulfilled, just totally amazing and happy! What values were present?
• Think of a time you felt deeply discontent and frustrated, what values were missing?

Once you’ve identified what you believe your core values are, it’s good to really test it. Think of specific times where you felt the value was present, and when it wasn’t. Examine those feelings. Maybe do some visualizations where that value is fully present, how does that feel?

Often times, in that process you unearth that the first values you settled on aren’t quite the core values. Maybe there’s another word that resonates better. Maybe there is a value beneath that core value which is more specific.

Many people will choose Time as a core value. To value their time as much as possible, and make the most of it. At that point, I’d ask, “what does making the most” look like? Then the answers vary, but maybe it’s to be Joyful. So Joy is more of a core value then time, but what brings Joy? To which they may say, having incredible adventure. Adventure is maybe more the core value? Once you really can’t break the core value into smaller parts, you know you’ve hit it. So that chain goes, and the exploration can get interesting and fun because it really gets you curious about yourself and what you want from your life.

When you start to really hone in on the core values, it simply feels different. The words resonate more, your passion comes through and the clarity and awareness are palatable. It’s amazing to me that people are so unique and diverse in their core values, it’s extremely personal, so take the time to truly separate what YOU value vs what you THINK you should value.

You can revisit and refine until you land on something that truly sticks and feels real. Trust me, you’ll know it once you get there.

Are You Choosing to Live in Your Core Values?

Armed with the clarity and awareness of knowing your core values, you begin to see the choices you make on a day-to-day basis differently. We are constantly making choices, whether we are aware or not. Armed with an understanding of core values, we have a clear way to evaluate our decisions.

Are you living in your core values? If adventure is what you seek, do you have it? If it’s harmony, do you have it? For me, it’s freedom, and I did not have it so I dedicated myself to getting it and it feels awesome.

If you are currently not living by your core values, that’s pretty fantastic. It is likely a big source of discontentment, and therefore there is room for improvement. If you are living by your core values, that’s also fantastic because you likely made some powerful choices along the way, but you can also improve by ensuring your core values are secure, and then seeking secondary values.

When your core values are clear, you can form strong intentions around them. Intentions are statements that give you purpose and direction. They serve to make choices clearer.

For example, I find adventure wherever it is possible. If that’s important to you, you will begin to frame choices in your life in terms of whether or not they will get you to a more adventurous life. These are often very small choices, not the huge ones like, “I’m going to take a trip around the world“. Although that’s totally fine too.

More likely it will be, “do you want to go for a bike ride”, and you decide yes! I will make up my work later, I’ll catch up on sleep later, I’ll shift my schedule and prioritize Adventure because I feel most myself when that core value is being represented. It syncs up with your intention.

What’s really amazing is that once you identify your intention, you suddenly start seeing it everywhere. Bike rides become an exciting opportunity for adventure, but so does taking on that project at work that seems really difficult. So does asking that girl out that you’ve been shy to. Your core values color and frame all of your experiences, and you see all situations as opportunities to make your life more aligned with your core values.

That becomes incredibly motivating and exciting, because you are no longer simply having adventures, you are living your life true to who you are. Everything takes on a larger and more purposeful meaning.

Health is a core value that is important for all of us. If you ever got into a mode where you recognized the core value of Health and formed a strong intention around it, you know how all your choices get reframed with that in mind. It’s no longer simply having vegetables instead of chocolate for a snack, it’s being my best self vs not having control of my life. That framing is critical in making choices simple.

Choices become either, this gets me closer to my intentions, or further from them. So you see all these amazing opportunities, and the choices you have to make are essentially binary. It becomes simpler to act, it’s a short cut in your decision making progress.

Once you consistently make choices to get closer to your intentions, you will get closer and closer to having a life aligned with your core values. Once you have that, you can really see the difference in how much more meaningful and joyful life becomes. You are taking charge and living life in control, true to yourself.