Audit Your Values Before 2023

A great benefit of my current employer is the number of holidays we receive. This year I’ve had 10 which has allowed me to spend Christmas with my loved ones and the remainder of my time working on personal growth aims for 2023.

Part of this work forms the topic of today's article: Values, and auditing them.

When I look back at the past year, it wasn’t the one I’d hoped for. I came into it hot off the wheels of a successful back end to 2021 and came into 2022 on a mission. I wanted to take my Medium blog to the next level; start podcasting, build an audience on TikTok, sustain a relationship, and change careers.

I had SO much on my plate, and tackled my goals relentlessly — I didn’t even realize how my over-productivity was causing me harm. I eventually lost the relationship and lost my passion. I was burnt out and ended up feeling incredibly lost and low.

Only now am I beginning to truly recalibrate and refocus — and I am doing this through re-identifying what matters to me; my values, and where I disrespected them in 2022. In doing this I aim to stop unhealthy behaviors that haven’t served me and trade them in for new ones that honor my values in 2023.

That’s why this holiday season has been an important one for me. 2022 felt more like a relapse than a step forward for me — but sometimes this is needed. There is much insight to be found when you fall down — you just have to make sure your eyes and ears are open in order to learn from it.

Identifying Values

I’ve been tossing and turning with the concept of “values” for the past weeks. What even are they and what does it mean to be misaligned with them?

In the research I’ve done, you can simply think of “values” as the “things that matter the most to you”. It takes a level of awareness and intuition to feel what your values are, but they’re certainly there. I was listening to a Ted Talk yesterday in which the speaker said a way to identify your values is through recollecting the things that have made you feel angry or upset and tracing them back to “WHY”.

For example, I’ve come to release that “connection” is a huge value of mine. I can identify this value through my experiences on dating apps like “Grindr” — a gay app that describes itself as a “dating platform” when in reality it’s more of a sex app. Within it, you can expect to receive nudes and requests to meet someone for sex before you’ve even learned their name.

My distaste at engaging in the platform makes me realize that a personal value of mine IS “connection” beyond sexual attractiveness. I want to get to know people, and for them to get to know me before engaging in such conversations.

Other values I wrote down were “authenticity” and “health/well-being”. For an extensive list of values, check out this article.

Why Value Work Is Important

With life busier than ever and our senses bombarded with expectations from society and others, it can be easy to forget ourselves and the things that matter to us.

To illustrate this, let’s time-travel back to Summer 2022 — my burnout. Having worked myself to ground through my desire to build a personal development platform, I lost complete sight of what I enjoyed with the work in the first place. I was so focused on the next video, the next article, and the next podcast, that stress accumulated to a point of no return.

Over time, I began losing interest and eventually lost passion. I also felt lost due to the enmeshment that had occurred between myself and my work. I wasn’t Joe, the guy who liked Personal Growth work, I WAS my personal growth work. When burnout struck and I lost sight of my passion, I felt low, and I gave up on many of my pursuits.

Which I guess at the time was necessary. It’s good to take a step back and indulge in self-care when you’re feeling stressed and lacking passion. Except I didn’t invest in self-care, I numbed myself out on alcohol, messy holidays, and behaviors that didn’t benefit me. I quieted my voice, too something I’d worked for YEARS to improve as I battled self-expression problems.

The “authenticity” value that meant so much to me was scarcely being honored. I’d fallen back into behaviors that supported an old-inauthentic version of myself. I then felt EVEN MORE lost and misaligned — because I was.

When we’re not living through our values we’re either living through someone else’s or some other value we don’t even recognize. If I took a look at where I put my time and money in 2022 you’d think I valued “partying”. That isn’t me and it’s not what I enjoy — but my behaviors said otherwise. I would then wonder why I felt depleted, lost, and, inauthentic.

That is why honoring your values matters, because if you don’t you run the risk of living a life that you’ll never feel happy or fulfilled in.

Value Audits For 2023

Last night I sat with a new notepad — New Year, new me? — and spent a good half hour re-identifying my values and looking at where I’d disrespected them in the past year.

As I mentioned above, a good way to identify what you’ve been valuing is by recalling where you’ve spent your money and where you’ve spent your time. If you say you value one thing but your money and time say otherwise, that is an indication that your values are misaligned. For me, this was apparent when I said I valued “health” but actively engaged in behaviors that left me hungover and miserable for days after!

That isn’t someone who values their health.

Once you’ve identified your values and where you’ve potentially been misled by them, identify what you’ll need to do to honor them going forward. For me, this looks like honoring my authenticity through investing in my public speaking again and deleting apps that prioritize short-term connections over long-term ones. It also looks like going on an alcohol sabbatical for the first quarter of 2023 — and maybe beyond.

When you plan ahead in such a way that honors who you are, you’ll begin to feel more optimistic and hopeful for the future. Because you’re looking after yourself — and what’s better than that?

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