To build a framework for your life that helps you become the kind of person you want to become, you must identify and write down your core values. You'll need to review them regularly against the way you are actually living, in order to keep your life in integrity with what you believe truly matters. Your values must also be written down because we forget our values like we forget our groceries.

But what if you can't yet put your core values into words? Or, what if the words seem too abstract or anonymous?

Let's look at one baseline step, and then seven ways to help you articulate your internal commitments.

The Baseline for Identifying Your Core Values: Become Conscious of What Resonates with You

What are the feelings you get when you come across something that feels important to you? You might write down how you know something resonates for you. "This gives me a sense of excitement." "This gives me a feeling of urgency, like I have to do something about this." "This feels like something I’m missing in my life, and I want to make room for it."

You might also write down what repels you. Sometimes we find what we are looking for by knowing what we don't want: "This drains me." "I want to do something to change this." "This isn't right."

What draws you, what feels life-giving to you? What feels like it drains energy from you? Learn to track your mood and energy around people, places, activities. Resonance is a feeling state, not an intellectual process. It is our feelings that tell us what to prioritize.

Core values are not abstractions. They are meant to be lived out. Once you have a sense of when something resonates for you, here are seven ideas for finding your core values.

1) Find Your Core Values Through a Values Inventory List

This method is commonly used in the psychology and business leadership fields. You look at a list of values - often quite a long list -- and pick several (say, ten) that resonate for you. Then you might be asked to narrow that list down considerably, to two or three. Values Inventory Lists often include words like: freedom, relationships, adventure, independence, clarity, peace, knowledge, compassion, creativity, learning. Below are two values inventories, that are both free to use.

The Life Values Inventory takes you through a whole process to identify your values. (Check out their privacy and security information here)

And here is a values list from Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead resources.

2) Find Your Core Values Through a Wisdom Tradition

This comes under the category of not reinventing the wheel. The wisdom traditions, philosophical and theological, offer road maps to living as well as communities of practitioners. They include values such as liberating oneself from attachments, responding to suffering with compassion, and working toward the well-being of all.

However, even if you do subscribe to a formal code of ethics or to a religious practice, you still must make it your own! (For instance, as a clergywoman, I do not give credence to teachings that claim that women cannot be spiritual leaders.) What parts of that wisdom tradition do you feel called to live out, given your gifts, skills, resources, and life context? Those are often tied with particular values.

3) Find Your Core Values by Identifying How You Want to Achieve Outcomes

Does the end justify the means? Does the goal mean we can use any way to get there? In the American Civil Rights movement in the mid-20th century, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) decided that in order to move toward the outcome of a racially just society that upheld freedom and dignity for all people, they must use nonviolent means. As their opponents were extremely violent, this was controversial. Some people believed answering violence with violence was morally justified, and others believed it was inevitable. But the SCLC held onto the value that the path to freedom and dignity for all people required a response of nonviolence. One of the values expressed by the SCLC was this: "Remember always the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation – not victory." This particular value statement, half a century later, has provoked me to consider how to direct my own anger in more life-giving ways. If there is an outcome you want to work toward, what do you believe are the right ways to get there? This will also help you identify values.

4) Find Your Core Values By Identifying Someone You Admire

Sometimes finding role models is a great help in identifying your values. Who do you personally know and admire in your community? And what is it that you admire about them? We can certainly be inspired by role models who are historical figures, who are known nationally or even globally. However, I like to focus on not-famous people I know in my local community, because this challenges my temptation to say that one has to be considered exceptional to live a life of depth and value. Who do you wish you were more like? Do you find yourself admiring someone for their honesty, their generosity, their hospitality? Who is doing what you would like to be doing? Who is living in a way you would like to be living? Who is making a difference in your community that inspires you? What are the values they are living out?

5) Find your core values by writing down your intentions in your relationships

By "relationships" I don't just mean your relationships with other people, although that is certainly important -- you could start with thinking about what you want your relationships with others to be like, what characteristics you want to express in relationships with others. But I encourage you to take a very broad definition of the word relationship:

• How would you like to live out your relationship with the natural world?

• How would you like to live out your relationship with technology?

• How would you like to live out your relationship with other people?

• How would you like to live, in relation to life in general? This could be a spiritual approach, an ethical approach.

6) Find your core values by identifying your intentions for your work or your tasks

I’ve met a couple of people who have written down their intentions for their work, and this can be done in a big-picture way, or done for each task. One doctor taped a card above his white coat to remind himself how he wanted to be present with his patients, in the context of a stressful job (scroll down to see his photo of the card he created). What are your intentions for a given meeting, or a phone call? What are your intentions for writing code, or writing a particular email?

This can also work with personal tasks. Maybe you are preparing a meal, or cleaning a room. Sometimes when I tidy up a room, I remind myself that this action allows new things to happen in that room; that this action creates space for us to come together in a relaxed way. So my intention — my value, in that situation — is to help make our home a place of peace and relaxation.

Whether you look at the particular tasks you are doing throughout the day, or have a big-picture sense, you can look to your work to find your values.

7) Find Your Core Values By Identifying What You Don't Want to Become

Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy, in their influential Harvard Business Review article Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time, believe that the way to identify values is not to ask people initially to define them outright, but to reveal them through personal questions (Schwartz and McCarthy 2007):

We don’t suggest that people explicitly define their values, because the results are usually too predictable. Instead, we seek to uncover them, in part by asking questions that are inadvertently revealing, such as, “What are the qualities that you find most off-putting when you see them in others?” By describing what they can’t stand, people unintentionally divulge what they stand for. If you are very offended by stinginess, for example, generosity is probably one of your key values. If you are especially put off by rudeness in others, it’s likely that consideration is a high value for you.

I will end with telling a story on myself: Many years ago, a few days before Christmas, I was filled with self-pity, feeling overwhelmed by our extensive holiday preparations. My young children were in their car seats in the back of the car, as we went through the drive-through lane at the bank. Luckily, our favorite teller was there. She passed two small candy canes to me for the children, and I asked her how things were going. She said she was excited for the holiday, and couldn't wait to see her grandchildren. Then she mentioned that an earlier customer had come through, complaining non-stop. She told me she felt sorry for people like that, and for those who had to be around them. Then she said, "Some people just suck the joy out of everything.”

Wow! She had unwittingly held up a mirror to my mindset of resentment! I resolved at that moment to learn how NOT to be someone who "sucked the joy out of everything." My husband and I reconsidered how our family managed the holidays, in ways that brought joy to all of us.

Pay attention to what resonates for you and what repels you, and write down the values you discover.

References

Schwartz, Tony, and Catherine McCarthy. “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time.” Harvard Business Review, Oct. 2007. hbr.org, https://hbr.org/2007/10/manage-your-energy-not-your-time. Accessed 14 June 2021.