6 Steps to Identify Your Core Values

 

What are your core values? 

Your core values are the forces, the feelings, the beliefs that drive your behavior. They are the things that are important to you both in your personal live and in your work.  When your core values match the way you behave and the things you do, you’ll find that you’re happier and more content with your work and life.  When the 2 are not aligned, you’ll find that you feel constantly stressed and full of anxiety.  It’s not a good feeling. 

So how do you identify what you core values are? 

1. Identify the things that make you happy and the things that cause you stress. 

• What were you doing? 

• Why were you doing it? 

• What did you like about it? 

• What values drove you to these decisions? 

• What were you doing? 

• Why did you feel so unhappy? 

• Why were you in this situation? 

• What values that were important to you were being ignored? 

2. Identify what’s most important to you in life. 

• How did you arrive at these goals? 

• Do they conflict with each other? 

• What’s helping you or stopping you from achieving these? 

• What values do you hold that align with these goals? 

3. Group your values together under themes to identify higher core values 

• What things show up repeatedly? 

• Group your values together into themes.   

• Example, spending time with your family and making it to your children's games go together. 

• Example, working on projects that allow you to use your strategic planning strength and making a difference in people's lives at work might go together 

• Values might go together or not differently for different people.  Group them together with what feels right 

• Once grouped together, look at the theme of those values and distill it to a single value. 

• From the examples above you might say, Family Oriented and Meaningful Work 

4. Looking at your list of values ask yourself: 

• How do these make me feel? 

• Does this reflect how I feel like on the inside? 

• Do I feel an emotional response to this value? 

5. Write down your core values and associate them with behaviors 

• List each value why it's important to you 

• What behaviors you’ll exhibit to live those values 

• How you’ll react in situations where you could feel pressured to behave in a way that isn’t consistent with your core values 

6. Live your core values 

• Keep your written list handy, on your phone, in a note book 

• When you are living your life ask yourself each day if you feel that you’re living your core values 

• Is your job aligned with your core values? 

• If it is, great!  

• If it isn’t can you alter your job to align or do you find a new job? 

• Is your personal life aligned with your core values? 

• Are you spending enough time on the things that are important to you? 

• Have you chosen to live in the right place? 

• Make adjustments to your work and personal life until they are aligned with your core values. 

What are your core values? 

Your core values are the forces, the feelings, the beliefs that drive your behavior. They are the things that are important to you both in your personal live and in your work.  When your core values match the way you behave and the things you do, you’ll find that you’re happier and more content with your work and life.  When the 2 are not aligned, you’ll find that you feel constantly stressed and full of anxiety.  It’s not a good feeling. 

So how do you identify what you core values are? 

Think about the times when you were happiest.  Think about both your professional and personal life. 

Think about the times when you were least happy, angry upset, etc. Again, think about both your professional and personal life. 

Write down your # 1 professional and personal goals.