Find Your Values In 4-Step Practical Exercise

And Arrange Them By Importance

Values play a significant role in our lives. When we align our actions and decisions with our values, we increase the likelihood of living an authentic and fulfilling life.

“When you know your life matches your values, it’s easier to let other people’s perceptions fall to the side.” — Erica Layne

While some people may argue that it is not necessary to consciously identify your values since they are already internalised and operate upon you, whether or not you are aware of them, I have found that aligning my actions consciously with my values puts me in a more deliberate action mode.

Out of many different exercises dedicated to finding values, I found this one to be the most accurate and easiest. Therefore, I’ll share it with you so that you can end up with the better self-knowledge.

1. Create a Comprehensive List of Values

In the first step you should create a list of all the values you can think of. This list will serve you as a pool from which you will extract your top values. You can find various lists online to start from, but if you prefer not to bother, I have included a list of values in this story for inspiration. Feel free to add any values you find missing.

2. Identify Your Top 5 Values

In this step you may want to review the list and out of all listed values, select 5 or 10 of them that resonate with you the most. At this moment, don’t fret over arranging them according to their importance. We’ll do it in the next step.

For instance, my top 5 values in no particular order are: Peace of Mind, Truth/Reality, Personal Growth, Health, and Freedom.

3. Reflect on value trade-offs

Now it’s time to arrange your values according to importance.

Pick the two values and compare them by asking the following question:

Would I rather have an abundance of value A with no value B, or would I prefer to have and abundance of value B without value A?

This exercise helps you explore the relative importance of each value to you personally.

For instance, in my case I ask myself: Would I rather have an abundance of peace of mind without truth, or an abundance of truth without peace of mind?

I then reflect on my preferences and make a choice.

4. Evaluate and Refine Your Values List

Now, it’s time to compare each value you have chosen with every other value, reflecting on the trade-offs you made in the previous step. This process will allow you to refine and finalise your values list.

Finally, you should end up with your list of values which are arranged according to their importance.

Based on this exercise, my refined list of values is:

1. Peace of Mind
2. Health
3. Freedom
4. Truth/Reality
5. Personal Growth

Now, it’s your turn to undertake this exercise and craft your own list of values. It’s important to know that list of values and their level of importance are not set in stone. Instead, they are subject to change, so it makes sense to revisit them from time to time by repeating the same exercise.

Thank you for reading my story.