Chapter 7
Value
Your Values Guide You to Your Purpose
“Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.”
– Gandhi
When's the last time you examined your core values? With full transparency, I can tell you that I never really considered what they are, or should be, in any formal way that would help to ensure they were guiding me through life. Then, in a miracle of fortunate timing, I was asked about my values twice in two days, in two different states by two people in two unrelated conversations. Their questions served as a catalyst for my own deep exploration of my values.
From New York to Boston: The Serendipity of Rediscovering the Value of Values
There I was, sitting again at a lounge I had visited a mere hour before at New York's LaGuardia airport. I had boarded my flight to Boston only to deplane due to severe weather at Logan airport that had shut down all flights. I was exhausted from the week of travel but also still buzzing from an incredibly inspiring conversation the night before with dear friends that lasted well into the morning. Heightening the experience, our conversation took place on a New York rooftop with a marvelous view on an abnormally warm summer evening.
Since I found myself with an abundance of time, I decided not to work and instead replayed in my mind some of the memorable moments from the evening before. The part of the conversation that really stuck with me was about personal values and decision-making and how easy it is to lose touch with their importance in guiding our lives in purposeful directions. One individual in particular found himself on a completely different life journey than he anticipated following a series of misguided decisions. His moral compass, he shared, hadn't been consulted before each poor decision.
Those missteps led him to realize he was in need of deep reflection and enlightenment. He sought to discover the reasons behind his bad choices. Some deep introspection revealed the key to his future and the answers to his past. He had lost touch with his personal values. In doing so, he also lost touch with the underlying fabric of life and the essence of happiness.
He went on to explore his values and built on them to redefine his life goals and has since reset his compass, living a renewed and happier life.
Four hours later, I finally boarded my flight to Boston and soon arrived at Logan airport. I was worried that I was going to miss a chance to see a special friend from Slovenia who was visiting Boston for work and was leaving the next day. I hadn't seen her for two years and it would probably be another two years until I would have an opportunity to see her again. To my great good fortune, I got there in time to enjoy a glass of champagne with her.
Almost instantly, she observed that I looked “really different” and “really happy” and wanted to know what was new in my life. To my surprise, I responded, “Wow. Thank you. You know? A lot has changed.” I shared that I had been working on this book and had been developing my focus and rekindling my creativity.
She listened thoughtfully and then surprised me again by responding, “May I ask, what are your values and have they changed?”
In New York, I was a listener, allowing a friend to share a deeply personal story of values and their importance in guiding one's life. Now, I was the one who needed to share, and I decided to really open up.
I answered honestly, “I don't know.” I told her that I had just had a very thought-provoking conversation about values the day before, and I divulged that I was trying to re-center my life, unlock my creativity, and chart a course toward happiness.
She then shared a recent experience she felt would help me. I was so compelled by her story that I wrote this section on my flight home from Boston to San Francisco the next day.
“What do you think your three most important values are?”
“What do you think your three most important values are?” she asked.
Before I could respond, she added, “You won't believe that I bet they're the three everyone has on their list.”
With a moment of reflection, I offered that my top three were “family, love, and happiness.”
She smiled and replied, “Yep, those were at the top of my list, too.”
She went on to say that these are on everyone's list because we all have experiences that teach us that if we lose touch with their importance to us, we lose our sense of direction in life. We begin making bad choices that pull us even further away from what truly matters to us.
She then said with excitement, “I have to tell you about an experience I recently had in Europe. I went through an unforgettable values exercise that is helping me center my life around what's important … what's missing in my world.” The exercise is basic, yet profound. Following our heartening conversation, after some research I set out to simplify it a little, to craft a process for us to go through together.
The value of values
We should start with defining what values are and why they're important. Values guide our behavior. They represent the underlying fabric of how, what, and who surrounds you and how you navigate life's daily challenges and opportunities. Whether it's your friendships, relationships, art, work, partnerships, financial management, or how you spend your time and resources, values are (or at least, they're supposed to be) the guideposts that help you live your truly best life. Values provide the warmth in the best of times and light in the most difficult. They are what keeps you true to yourself. Your beliefs become your thoughts and your thoughts become your reality.
When I sat down to consider my values, I discovered my understanding of them was nebulous at best. As I reflected on them, I realized that the character I believed I emanated and the character who really showed up in important life events were in conflict. I hadn't been seeing that. As a result, I hurt people close to me and made poor business decisions.
Looking back over the past several years, I was stunned that I hadn't seen how out of alignment with my true values my life had gotten. We don't see that because we lose our way small steps at a time. As with my friend in New York, I'd made a series of missteps that pulled me further and further away from my moral center.
Defining What Is Right, not What's Right for Right Now
American humorist, author, and screenwriter Leo C. Rosten once observed,1 “I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be ‘happy.' I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.” I would just add that by living in the values-driven way he describes, we can achieve the happiness we hope for.
To gain clarity about the values you want to guide you, and then build on that awareness to reset your own compass, grab some paper and go through the following exercise, writing down your answers. The act of getting them down on the page helps to reveal the messages within them.
I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be ‘happy.'
Step 1:
Start by identifying times in your life when you were happiest.
- Write it out—what were you doing or what did you achieve?
- Who were you with and/or what were the surrounding circumstances?
- What factors contributed to that happiness?
- What values would you associate with these experiences?
Step 2: Identify the saddest, angriest, and most desolate moments in your life.
- What happened?
- Who were you with and/or what were the surrounding circumstances?
- What factors contributed to these feelings?
- How did you (or did you not) move on and what did you learn?
- What values would you associate with moving on?
Step 3:
Assemble the values from steps 1 and 2 and list them in a matrix-style format (you're going to move them around in a bit).
Step 4:
Outline a list of your additional personal values that may not have come up yet. The list can include as many as you want. Don't worry about putting them in any order; we'll organize them in a later step. To help with this, you can consult this list of common values. If you don't see a core value of yours, add it!
| Abundance | Excellence | Piety |
| Accountability | Excitement | Positivity |
| Accuracy | Expertise | Practicality |
| Achievement | Exploration | Preparedness |
| Adventurousness | Expressiveness | Professionalism |
| Advocacy | Fairness | Prudence |
| Altruism | Faith | Quality |
| Ambition | Family | Relationships |
| Assertiveness | Fidelity | Reliability |
| Attractiveness | Fitness | Resourcefulness |
| Balance | Fluency | Responsibility |
| Being the best | Focus | Resilience |
| Belonging | Freedom | Restraint |
| Boldness | Friendships | Results-oriented |
| Brilliance | Fun | Rigor |
| Calmness | Generosity | Security |
| Carefulness | Goodness | Self-actualization |
| Caring | Grace | Self-control |
| Challenge | Growth | Selflessness |
| Cheerfulness | Happiness | Self-reliance |
| Clear-mindedness | Hard Work | Sensitivity |
| Commitment | Health | Serenity |
| Community | Helping Society | Service |
| Compassion | Holiness | Shrewdness |
| Competitiveness | Honesty | Simplicity |
| Consistency | Honor | Soundness |
| Contentment | Humility | Speed |
| Continuous | Humor | Spontaneity |
| Improvement | Inclusiveness | Stability |
| Contribution | Independence | Strategic |
| Control | Ingenuity | Strength |
| Cooperation | Inner Harmony | Structure |
| Correctness | Innovation | Success |
| Courtesy | Inquisitiveness | Support |
| Creativity | Insightfulness | Teamwork |
| Credibility | Inspiration | Temperance |
| Curiosity | Intelligence | Thankfulness |
| Daring | Intellectual Status | Thoroughness |
| Decisiveness | Intuition | Thoughtfulness |
| Democraticness | Joy | Timeliness |
| Dependability | Justice | Tolerance |
| Determination | Leadership | Traditionalism |
| Devoutness | Legacy | Trustworthiness |
| Diligence | Love | Truth-seeking |
| Discipline | Loyalty | Understanding |
| Discretion | Making a | Uniqueness |
| Diversity | difference | Unity |
| Dynamism | Mastery | Usefulness |
| Economy | Merit | Vision |
| Effectiveness | Mindful | Vitality |
| Efficiency | Obedience | Versatility |
| Elegance | Openness | Vision |
| Empathy | Order | Warmth |
| Enjoyment | Originality | Wealth |
| Enthusiasm | Parenting | Well-being |
| Equality | Patriotism | Wisdom |
| Perfection | Zeal | |
Source: Scott Jeffrey2 Image source: Carnegie Mellon University3 |
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Step 5:
Organize your values by themes, and try to limit the groupings to a maximum of five. For example, values such as accountability, responsibility, and timeliness are all related. Values such as learning, growth, and development also relate to each other, as do connection, belonging, and intimacy.
Step 6:
Select one value in each group that you think best represents the common thread that ties them together. Maybe for the learning, growth, and development cluster, for example, that would be growth. Note: There is no wrong answer here. The right answer is simply what feels right to you.
Step 7:
Select a subset of all the values you've listed that are the most important to you. This helps you focus on the aspects of your life that are both most in alignment and the most out of whack, and to prioritize the changes you want to implement.
It's easy to align with many of the values you see in the sample list, but too many make action nearly impossible. For most people, the magic range is between 5 and 10. Once you've selected yours, take the prioritization a step further by ranking them in order of importance. Revisit this list over the next day or so and make sure it still rings true.
This part of the exercise can be surprisingly difficult, so here are some questions that will help:
- Which values are consistent with your best memories and those that helped you through your worst of times?
- What values are essential to your lifescale?
- What values are essential to supporting what you stand for?
- If you were in a hospital bed, what values would you hold most dearly if you were to ever get out?
Step 8:
For each value, write a short description of the actions by which you want to fulfill it in your life. These are your values commitments.
To clarify, the following are the statements I wrote:
Now, it's your turn.
Step 9:
Roy Disney once said, “It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” Keep your set of value commitments somewhere close to hand, maybe on the wall by your desk, in your purse or wallet, or saved on your device of choice.
As you proceed with the next steps of the lifescaling process, revisit the list periodically. Doing so will help you immediately begin making decisions and implementing changes in your life that get you in better alignment with the way in which you truly, deeply aspire to live. The commitments will also guide you in formulating a clear and powerfully motivating statement of your life's purpose for this leg of your journey.
Before we get to crafting your purpose statement, though, it's important to gain clarity about the ways in which you're being pulled away from living as you authentically want. That requires building deeper self-awareness and grappling with the baggage you've been carrying about what success looks like, which has been weighing you down.
Notes
1https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/11/29/purpose/
2https://scottjeffrey.com/personal-core-values/
3https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/my-career-path-activities/values-exercise.pdf