Last week I wrote about goal-setting. To set goals, however, a person needs to know the value, purpose, consequences, and context of those goals. At the heart of the question, “why these goals versus all others,” lies the clarification of one’s core values. A value is whatever a person finds valuable, worthwhile, or is willing to devote time and other resources to achieve. Values include adherence to one’s ethical principles and individual way of being in the world. Values are the in-between abstract principles and practical instantiation or achievement in a person’s life. Because values can differ in centrality or importance to the way of life a person seeks to achieve, it is useful to add the modifier, ‘core’ to their description. By core values I mean values that affect a person’s most closely held ethical and other life principles. I may value a good meal, but, since I am not a gourmand, seeking to maximize eating of delicious and varied meals is not one of my core values. Spiritual seeking and world exploration are core values I hold.

Given their centrality, it would be tempting to assume that most of us are clear on our core values. Given my personal experience and what I have learned from conversations with family, friends, colleagues, and patients, I have come to conclude that this is not the case. Almost everyone would benefit from reviewing once again or for the very first time one’s core values. And this is the focus of today’s article. Here I 1) present a list of values and 2) offer you the opportunity to reflect on them to clarify the level of importance each of them has to you. I have included a series of exercises you can work through.

Before we begin, a couple of notes: you will notice, first, that the values I present overlap, sometimes substantially so. This is by design. You may find that certain labels resonate for you more strongly than others, even when the labels seem to point to a similar or even the same value. Second, this list is incomplete. In the exercise portion of this article, you can add other values that come to mind that I did not include. Third, the list is intentionally randomly ordered. I considered grouping related values together but thought it may be more informative to present them randomly, to intentionally avoid grouping them. By grouping them, I would have assumed their grouping, which may or may not have been the way you would have grouped them.

Let’s now begin.

List of Possible Core Values

  • Love: To feel love and being loved
  • Companionship: Living in close association with one or more others
  • Mastery: Expending effort to develop deep knowledge and skills in particular areas
  • Kindness: Acting with respect, empathy, and regard for the needs of others and for their person
  • Spiritual Seeking: Thinking, reading, and searching for ideas and experiences that give deep meaning and purpose to one’s life
  • World Exploration: Traveling and exploring places, events, and people from different cultures
  • Hard Work: Working diligently and well at important life tasks
  • Piety: Having and expressing reverence for a deity and acting in alignment to one’s religious beliefs
  • Harmony With Nature: Living in ways to minimize damage to the planet and enhance engagement with the natural aspects of the world
  • Sense of Community: Feeling connected and engaging with one’s neighborhood, work, or virtual community
  • Coupleship and Romance: Maintaining close and enduring relationship with one’s significant other
  • Problem-Solving: Figuring out solutions to vexing problems
  • Family Life: Importance given to raising children and spending time with extended family
  • Security: Feeling financially and physically safe and secure, knowing one’s basic needs will be met
  • Courage: Willingness to stand for and take action in support of one’s beliefs
  • Free Time: Having enough unoccupied time to pursue avocations and other important interests
  • Being Taken Care Of: Desiring to have another person take care of you
  • Wealth Maximization: Seeking to increase one’s income and accumulating financial resources
  • Independence of Mind: Maintaining independence in what one believes, how one decides, and trusting one’s own counsel
  • Freedom of Action: Seeking to optimize one’s ability to choose, including parameters of one’s work
  • Compassion: Understanding and empathizing with those who suffer and seeking to help them
  • Determination: Maintaining a firmness of purpose over time
  • Service to Community: Seeking to help one’s community through concrete actions
  • Generosity: Openness to giving one’s time and other resources to help others
  • Creativity: Ability to bring into being an art object or to solve difficult problems
  • Aloneness: Maintaining opportunity to spend time alone
  • Scholarship: Expending effort on academic work
  • Ethical Living: Choosing and acting in accordance with one’s ethical and moral precepts
  • Health: Maintaining one’s physical and mental health
  • Strength of Character: Having clarity on one’s values and adhering to them despite obstacles
  • Wisdom: Applying one’s knowledge and experience to daily encounters to optimize positive outcomes
  • Status Maximization: Increasing one’s reputation in the eyes of people one deems important
  • Longevity: Maximizing the healthy years of one’s life
  • Tradition: Living in accordance with one’s cultural, ethnic, or religious traditions
  • Closeness to God: Feeling a personal and daily renewing relationship with God
  • Discipline: Maintaining focus and extended effort on long terms projects and goals
  • Neatness: Maintaining an uncluttered and well-arranged home and office
  • Peace of Mind: Having one’s default mental state being one of calmness and rest
  • Prudence: Practical wisdom, taking deliberate and thoughtful care in what one decides and does
  • Engagement: Feeling connection to one’s profession, family and friends, the world, and the future
  • Teaching and Guiding: Desire to share one’s knowledge, experience, and skills with others
  • Legacy: Wanting to leave something of value beyond one’s lifetime
  • Honesty: Maintaining truth telling even in difficult circumstances
  • Nonconformity: Seeking to live on one’s own terms irrespective of common expectations
  • Loyalty: Maintaining allegiance and not betraying family, friends, companions, etc.
  • Rationality: Thinking through ideas and problems with reason and without undue emotional influences
  • Simplicity: Living with the fewest objects, using the simplest solutions, and minimizing one’s needs

Clarifying Your Values Exercises

Now, I here suggest a series of steps you can follow to gain greater clarity of your values. Feel free to add and subtract steps as you deem fit.

  1. Copy and Paste List of Values: This email contains text you can copy and paste into a document of your choice, such as Microsoft Word for example. Do this now.
  2. Set a Mindset of Compassion and Openness: These exercises are private, and you can be open with yourself. You may consider some of these values as being more or less socially appropriate and valued. I encourage you to place these considerations aside. If you can’t be open with yourself, then you certainly will never be open with anyone else and you will not know yourself well. You will likely miss living the good life because you will not be in a position to establish what that entails. Be open and compassionate to yourself. Know yourself. You need not pursue every value you perceive as valuable. Or at least not immediately.
  3. Categorize the Values: An easy way to do this is to set up four categories and move the values (as you initially judge them) into one of the categories. Then return to that initial categorization and reflect on your placements. Make changes as needed. The four suggested categories are:
    1. Very Important
    2. Somewhat Important
    3. Not Very Important
    4. Irrelevant – Delete
  4. Reflect on Categorized Values: Within each category you can either group values by their relatedness or by their level of importance to you. Notice which terms resonate most strongly or not at all. Notice if any values seem related and should be grouped together. Consider the reasons why some values are so much more (or less) compelling than others. What can you learn from this? Are there any particular surprises?
  5. Consider How Your Values Change Over Time: Would you have ordered these values the same way five or ten years ago? How do you think your ordering will change five or ten years from now? What does this show you about the changeability or persistence of values over your lifetime?
  6. Identify Discrepancies Between Perceived Importance of Values and Their Role in Your Life: It is common that people, on the one hand, believe they hold certain values and, on the other hand, invest little time, energy, and other resources in living those values. Maybe a person highly values ‘Family Life’ but then doesn’t actually devote time or effort to their family. Why? Well, because that person is so busy with work and other activities. The realization of the misalignment between values held and resources invested is the first step to making positive life changes.
  7. Consider What Needs to Change to Live More Aligned with Your Values: Here’s some sorry news: no one will resolve the misalignments and conundrums for you. No one will give you an easy pass. No one can give you the answers to what is most dear to you. You need to take it upon yourself to 1) make hard choices and 2) work diligently over an extended period of time, probably through the rest of your life, to ensure you achieve and then maintain alignment, understanding all the while that perfect alignment will elude you. Further, to achieve closer alignment between values and life as lived day-to-day requires operationalizing your values, setting goals, making commitments, developing plans of action, regularly reflecting on progress or lack of it, and making adjustments as needed.
  8. Email Me if Needed: If I can help clarify any part of this process or weigh in with advice or guidance, feel free to email me. I would like to share with others what you share with me while keeping your communication anonymous and not including details that would identify you. Also, if you have advice to share with me on this topic, that is most welcome to. Regarding one concrete point: Do any of you engage in value clarification with your patients? If so, what is your experience like and what can you teach us?

Thanks,
Dr. Jack

Language Brief

“It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.”  ― Shannon L. Alder

“Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“A highly developed values system is like a compass. It serves as a guide to point you in the right direction when you are lost.”  ― Idowu Koyenikan

“Sharing certain important core values is one of the key factors that determine the chemistry of a relationship/partnership.” ― Assegid Habtewold