What are your personal values

How to Define Your Personal Values and Live By Them

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When we think about the big questions, such as who we are and what we want to achieve in life, we often ponder things like our personality traits and goals. We try to figure out if we are introverts or extroverts, if we are agreeable or not, or how many of our New Year’s resolutions we have managed to tick off our lists. But how about personal values?

The truth is, we rarely think explicitly about our moral standards and how they influence our character and life.

But what if I tell you that our personal values were around long before everyone started using goal-setting, Myers-Briggs personality tests, and self-awareness as pathways to understanding what makes us tick and how we can use these revelations to succeed.

Personal values shape who you perceive yourself to be. It may even heavily affect something as trivial as your purchasing decisions. [1]

So, let’s take a look under the hood and see how you can discover your own guiding principles and utilize them to enhance your relationships, careers, and everything in-between.

Table of Contents

What are Personal Values?

Before we start, it is integral to define what personal values are.

Personal values are part of the moral code that guides our actions and defines who we are. They are what we consider important, the things that matter to our well-being and happiness.

The simplest way to describe what personal values are is to think in terms of your personality and behaviors. Ultimately, your values become woven into your personality and become part of you.

Some of these are more of a universal rule of conduct—think along the lines of religion and the morals it teaches us. Then, there are some values that each of us decides to adopt, depending on what we hold dear in our lives and what we want to achieve and become. For instance, I may value kindness and compassion over fame and popularity.

To give you an idea of some values you may have, here is a good list of personal values example: [2]

As you can imagine, the above can play out differently for each of us—there are varied combinations and priorities we use to adopt these. The end result? The writer and poet Robert Zend greatly put it:

“People have one thing in common: they are all different.”

Before we delve further into the “so what’s” and “how’s” of our moral principles, there’s one more important thing to remember. Values are often more or less visible to others and are expressed through our current actions, words, and behaviors, but more importantly, they also carve the people we are striving to become in the future.

Our personal values are not only an extension of ourselves, but they also shape our characters. They are us—who we are and what we stand for.

Why Are Personal Values Important?

Why does it all matter so much anyway? Why do I have to know what my values are?

Personal values are the main driver behind our personality and actions, and any endeavor to re-invent ourselves will have to tap into our current moral principles to give ourselves a chance at a more fulfilling life.

Knowing moral values definition can aid us in a variety of ways. It can help us find our purpose, ease decision-making, increase our confidence, and guide us through difficult situations.

Personal values bleed into your personal, academic, and professional life. For instance, it can impact learning approaches in your studies, particularly in higher education. [3]

Here are a few other benefits of knowing how our codes of conduct can help us turn our lives around.

1. Personal Values Help with Self-awareness

Self-awareness has earned a lot of attention in recent years. Indeed, its advantages are undeniable. It has been linked to enhanced personal development and better relationships, among a plethora of other gains. [4]

It helps us make sounder decisions, communicate more effectively, get more promotions, and be less likely to lie, cheat, or steal. [5]

Simply put, self-awareness is a must-have skill we should all nurture.

Self-awareness is basically an awareness of your personality. There is certainly value to be had—personally and professionally—in what the Greats have wisely taught us: Know Thyself.

How would you otherwise know what you want to achieve, what you are capable of, or how far you can push yourself if you don’t have a clue who the person staring back in the mirror really is?

Understanding who we are begins with an awareness of what drives us, what makes us tick, and what we hold dear—that is, it starts with knowing our personal values.

2. Personal Values Influence Our Outcomes

What do you do with all the self-knowledge, though?

The coaches and gurus often advise that, in order to succeed and get everything we want in life, we need to play to our strengths. [6] Using our powers instead of dwelling on our foibles can make us happier and less depressed. Of course, this implies that we know what these are to start with.

There is another equally important side to why knowing ourselves and what we value in life can be beneficial. Yes, I’m talking about personal reinvention, self-improvement, life enhancement, and all the similar buzzworthy concepts of late.

But it all comes down to change. Bluntly speaking, you can’t change what you don’t know. [7]

When we talk about personal reinvention, we usually mean creating new habits, new behaviors, new ways of thinking, and, of course, adopting new personal values.

To change our outcomes and, ultimately, our lives, we need to change our actions and mindset. In order to do this, we need to weed out the trifles and decide what truly matters.

How to Find and Nurture Your Personal Values

To discover exactly what your personal values are, there are questions and techniques you can use. Here are a handful of ways to help you get started to personal define what your values are.

1. Ask “Who Am I Today?”

As adults, we all have a certain set of values (adopted knowingly or not), which guide our actions and define the people we are today.

So, a good starting point is to make a list of 10-15 values we believe we live by. Use the list I provided at the beginning or find a more detailed one online. Pick the ones that best define you. Be honest with yourself.

To get a 360-degree picture of yourself, I would recommend that you do the same exercise with your family and friends. Show them the full list and ask them to pick the values that they think are synonymous with your personality. Do the two lists match?

The goal of this activity is to draw a realistic portrait of who you are. It is the starting point of the bigger pursuits of self-awareness, self-reinvention, and leading a more fulfilling life.

2. Prioritize Your Values

Not all we deem important is created equally in our minds. That is, some values are more significant to us than others. This is what determines your primary and secondary behaviors. For instance, you may value family and career, but we all know that a balance is hard to achieve. In your mind, one tops the other. Therefore, you should always take steps to advance what is dearer to you.

Our current lives and the behaviors that guide them are structured according to our values and their rank in our own rules of conduct list. Therefore, one way to change our results and draft a different version of ourselves is to re-shuffle the list. If you want to spend more time with family, put it at the top, above anything else.

Read your list often. It’s also a way to reinforce your identity. Sometimes you can get so caught up in the web of your busy everyday life that you forget to focus on the most important person in your life: you.

Get to know yourself so that you can like yourself and avoid sabotaging your own efforts to change the things you want to.

3. Complete a Values Audit

The beautiful thing about personal values is that we all have a say and a choice in the people we evolve to become.

That’s what the gurus always trumpet: If you don’t like your life, change it.

Of course, this is easier said than done.

A good starting point is to have your values list, ranked by importance, and to re-assess it regularly—say semi-annually or annually. As our life circumstances change, so may the things we consider important to us. For instance, when you are fresh out of college, financial security may not be a top guiding principle as it may be for someone married with kids.

Read your existing list often and change it around as needed. Your primary behaviors will follow what you find significant.

But there is another side to this—it’s the process of adding new values, embracing and making them part of our lives. One way to find such new values is to look at the people we respect and want to be like. Listen and watch them carefully— what principles do they live by? Can you emulate them?

Once you find a new guiding value you want to adopt, you must own it. As the popular author and entrepreneur Mark Manson writes:

“So, here’s the catch: sitting around thinking about better values to have is nice. But nothing will solidify until you go out and embody that new value. Values are won and lost through life experience. Not through logic or feelings or even beliefs. They have to be lived and experienced to stick. This often takes courage.” [8]

Therefore, a value audit is an essential part of the process, both to re-examine our current priorities and to find new mountains to climb.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

Change is part of the re-invention process.

How to Define Your Personal Values

This article was co-authored by Guy Reichard and by wikiHow staff writer, Danielle Blinka, MA, MPA. Guy Reichard is an Executive Life Coach and the Founder of HeartRich Coaching & Training, a professional life coaching and inner leadership training provider based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He works with people to create more meaning, purpose, well-being, and fulfillment in their lives. Guy has over 10 years of personal growth coaching and resilience training experience, helping clients enhance and transform their inner worlds, so they can be a more positive and powerful influence on those they love and lead. He is an Adler Certified Professional Coach (ACPC), and is accredited by the International Coach Federation. He earned a BA in Psychology from York University in 1997 and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from York University in 2000.

wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, 96% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status.

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Knowing your personal values will help you find fulfillment and direction in life. Your values can act like a compass, guiding you to life and career choices that give you meaning. When you have a choice to make or feel stuck, examining your values and staying true to them will help you get on the right path. You can discover your personal values by doing the following activities that reveal what’s important to you. Once you discover your personal values, you can use them as a framework to redesign your life. This will help you create a life and career that are aligned with your values.

What Are Your Personal Values? How to Define & Live by Them (+Video)

Living by your personal values sounds easy—at least in theory. Your values, after all, are simply the things that are important to you in life, so it should be natural to live by them.

Coming up with a list of personal values can be challenging, yet understanding your values is important. (Image source: Envato Elements)

And yet so many of us don’t consistently live by our values. Have you ever been in any of these situations?

If any of these resonate with you, then this tutorial will help you. In it, you’ll learn what personal values are and why they’re important. Then we’ll go through all the steps involved in defining and prioritising your values, changing them as necessary, and living by them so that your actions are aligned with your values.

When you live by your values, you feel better about yourself and are more focused on doing the things that are important to you. In this tutorial, you’ll see how to achieve that.

What Are Your Personal Values? (Video)

Do you want to be clearer about what personal values are, why they’re important, and discover what your own values are? We’ve created the video below to answer some of the most pressing questions about defining personal values:

Would you like to learn even more about personal values? Keep reading for more information.

1. What Are Personal Values (And Why Do They Matter)?

Let’s start with a personal values definition. Personal values are the things that are important to us, the characteristics and behaviours that motivate us and guide our decisions.

For example, maybe you value honesty. You believe in being honest wherever possible and you think it’s important to say what you really think. When you don’t speak your mind, you probably feel disappointed in yourself.

Or maybe you value kindness. You jump at the chance to help other people, and you’re generous in giving your time and resources to worthy causes or to friends and family.

Those are just two examples of personal values out of many. Everyone has their own personal values, and they can be quite different. Some people are competitive, while others value cooperation. Some people value adventure, while others prefer security.

Values matter because you’re likely to feel better if you’re living according to your values and to feel worse if you don’t. This applies both to day-to-day decisions and to larger life choices.

If you value adventure, for example, you’ll probably feel stifled if you let yourself be pressured by parents or others into making “safe” choices like a stable office job and a settled home life. For you, a career that involves travel, starting your own business, or other opportunities for risk and adventure may be more appropriate.

Which do you value more: adventure or security? Image source: Envato Elements

On the other hand, if you value security, the opposite applies. What some people would view as a “dream” opportunity to travel the world and be your own boss may leave you feeling insecure and craving a more settled existence.

Everybody is different, and what makes one person happy may leave another person feeling anxious or disengaged. Defining your personal values and then living by them can help you to feel more fulfilled and to make choices that make you happy, even if they don’t make sense to other people. You’ll see how to go about doing that in the following sections.

2. How to Define Your Personal Values

What makes you feel good? That’s a good place to start when figuring out what your values are.

No, “ice cream” isn’t a value. What we’re talking about here are characteristics or ways of behaving in the world. As we saw above, someone who values honesty will feel good when they tell the truth.

Conversely, that same person will feel bad about themselves when they don’t tell the truth. So negative emotions can also be a good guide to your values. When have you felt disappointed in yourself or like you were a fraud? What behaviour led up to that?

Here are some more questions to get you started:

Take a blank sheet of paper and quickly brainstorm some answers to these questions. Then use those answers as guides to figuring out your personal values.

Brainstorm on a blank sheet of paper. Image source: Envato Elements

In some cases, the values will be easy to figure out. If you wrote “a loving relationship” in response to the question about what’s important to you, then “love” is an important personal value for you. If you wrote “being happy,” then you value happiness.

Others may require a bit more work, though. For example, if you’re inspired by stories of successful entrepreneurs, maybe you value determination or achievement, or maybe it’s wealth and success. If you’re inspired by activists trying to change the world, maybe you value courage or integrity, or maybe it’s justice or peace. Try to examine what exactly it is about those stories or experiences that you relate to.

List of Personal Values

To help you, here’s a short list of personal values.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of personal values. I’m sure you can think of plenty more. The idea isn’t to pick items from a list, but to come up with your own based on your own experiences and personality. So, please use these as examples of personal values, but don’t feel limited by them. Let your imagination run free!

When you’ve finished brainstorming, you may have half a dozen values, or you may have a huge list of dozens. If you’re in the second camp, try to cut the list down to something manageable—perhaps ten values that mean the most to you. If you’re struggling, try assigning scores to each one and then sorting the list in order.

3. How to Prioritise Your Personal Values

Once you’ve come up with a list, it’s important to prioritise your values.

Why? Because prioritising can help you get even closer to defining what’s important to you.

Your overall list of values may include quite disparate values. If you value honesty, health, kindness, adventure and half a dozen other things, it doesn’t give you a clear direction. But if you put “health” right at the top of your list, you’ll know that establishing a daily exercise routine and cutting out the junk food should be priorities for you. If “adventure” is at the top, on the other hand, maybe planning that trip to South America will come first.

Ideally, of course, you’ll live according to all the values on your list. But your time and energy are limited. Prioritising helps you to ensure that you’re spending them on the most important things that’ll have the biggest payoff in your life.

So take some time to reorder the items in your list by using the scoring system we covered in the last section. Or you could compare each item in turn and ask yourself which you would work on if you could do only one. Take your time, and keep going until you end up with a final order you’re happy with.

4. How to Live Your Values With Integrity and Use Them to Make Decisions

Having a list of values on a sheet of paper is nice, but it doesn’t change anything. To see a difference in your life, you’ll have to start living by your values. As we’ve seen, that can be easier said than done. So in this section, we’ll look at how to use your values to actually live your life and make decisions.

Use Your Values for Goal Setting

First, let’s look at the big picture. Are you living according to your values in your life as a whole? Does your career choice reflect your values? How about your activities outside of work? Are you spending your time on things that matter to you?

If not, don’t worry—it’s quite common for our lives to diverge from our values for any number of reasons. Here’s how to get things back on track.

For each of your values, make a list of things you could do to put those values into practice. For example, if you wrote “Learning,” you could go back to college and do that degree you’ve always dreamed of. Or you could commit to read a book every week on a subject that you care about. Or you could take online training courses or sign up for classes at your local adult education centre. There are so many possibilities.

Don’t be constrained by practical considerations at this stage. Just write down possibilities, even if you think you can’t afford them or don’t have time. Make a list of things you could do to live by your values.

You should end up with a long list of possible actions for each value. The next step is to make them into goals for the next week, month, year, and perhaps longer. For detailed instructions on how to do that, see the following tutorials:

If you already have goals that you’ve set before, you’ll also need to take one additional step. For each goal, ask yourself whether it aligns with any of your personal values. If not, why are you doing it? Unless there’s a very good practical reason, delete it and focus instead on the new goals that do help you live according to your values.

Make Decisions According to Your Values

Living your values is about more than the big, long-term goals, however. It’s also about the small, day-to-day decisions. In the moment, do you react to situations in ways that align with your values?

If you value compassion, for example, do you regularly display compassion towards others? Or do you sometimes slip into judgment and blame? If you value health, do you always take care of your body, or do you sometimes end up eating burgers instead of bulgur?

It’s not always easy to make your actions align with your values. Anything from force of habit to the lure of immediate gratification can be powerful enough to make us forget those good intentions and act in ways that don’t reflect our values.

You’ve got many techniques available to you to help you change your reactions and live more consciously in accordance with your values. For example, you could:

You can find plenty more ideas in the following tutorials. Although a couple of them are about productivity, which is different from living by your values, some of the techniques about overcoming distractions and following up on good intentions are relevant here.

Possible Barriers to Overcome

So far, it sounds quite simple, doesn’t it? So why do so many of us still struggle to live according to our values?

Sometimes it’s about lack of clarity or not knowing what your values really are. The values exercises in this tutorial should deal with that problem quite effectively.

But there are other possible barriers, too. What if your personal values come into conflict with those of your family or the wider society? For example, you may value tolerance, but the society you live in may stand quite strongly against tolerance, at least of certain groups.

Or perhaps you’re facing a conflict between your personal values and the practical situation you find yourself in. You may value creativity, but you’ve got family members to take care of, so you can’t take the risk of embarking on an art career. Or you may value honesty, but feel that there are certain lies you need to tell in order to preserve important relationships, to keep your job, or whatever else.

Sometimes you may feel you need to hold your tongue to keep your job. Image source: Envato Elements

These are important barriers, and they’re worth reflecting on seriously. But it’s also worth remembering that there are many ways to live your values, and you don’t have to reject all compromises and ignore practical considerations.

For example, it’s quite possible to live according to a value of honesty while also inserting a caveat like “. as long as my honesty doesn’t hurt other people.” That would help preserve those important relationships. And if you’ve got to be dishonest in order to keep your job, maybe that’s a signal that, in the long term, you need to find a new job. But in the short term, you don’t need to get fired by telling your boss exactly what you think. You can compromise for now, while moving in the long term towards a solution that’s more in line with your values.

If your values come into conflict with those of others or the wider society, you may face some difficulties. But you can still live with integrity in your own life. If your circumstances allow, you can also fight to change society according to your own beliefs. Look at many of the heroes of history like Susan B. Anthony or Martin Luther King, Jr., and you’ll find people whose personal values came into conflict with those of their time. But if you don’t feel ready for that kind of struggle, then you could choose to focus on your own actions and on living according to your own values, without challenging those around you who live differently.

5. How to Adapt and Change Your Values When Needed

Your personal values aren’t set in stone. While some of your core values will probably stay the same throughout your life, others may change as your life circumstances change or simply as you get older and start to have a different view of what’s important. Or even if the values stay the same, the order in which you prioritise them may shift.

For example, starting a family and having children to take care of may cause you to value security and financial stability more highly than you did when you were single. Or a divorce may result in a renewed desire for freedom and self-discovery.

Your values may change after major events such as starting a family. Image source: Envato Elements

So it’s worth checking in regularly to see if your values have changed. Repeat the process of brainstorming, listing and prioritising, and see if your results are different.

How often should you do this? At least once a year is probably a good idea, and any time you go through a major life change like job loss, bereavement, illness, divorce, etc.

Of course, you’ll also want to keep reading your values and referring to them much more regularly than once a year. If at any time you notice that something just doesn’t feel right any more, feel free to revise your values then and there.

Once you’ve come up with your new list, re-examine your goals and rewrite them where necessary to reflect your new or newly prioritised values. And start using your revised list of values to inform and direct your daily life, as discussed in the previous section.

Conclusion

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this tutorial. I hope you’re now much clearer about what personal values are, why they’re important, and how you can do a better job of living in alignment with your values.

To read more about values, but from a business rather than a personal perspective, see the following tutorials:

The next step, if you haven’t already, is to put the lessons from this tutorial into practice. Start brainstorming, making lists, prioritising your values, and setting value-driven goals. Then start living by your values from day to day, month to month, and year to year.

Editorial Note: This content was originally published in August of 2018. We’re sharing it again and have added a video because our editors have determined that this information is still accurate and relevant.

What are personal values? Discover yours in 5 steps

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We’re constantly making decisions – what to eat, which meetings to attend, who to call when we need to connect. But making decisions isn’t always easy. When you are wrestling with a tough choice and feel stuck, the answer can often be found in your values.

You can use your values as a north star to help guide you. But what are your personal values, and how do you connect with them?

Here is more insight into personal values, why they’re important, and ways to find yours.

What are personal values?

Values, such as honesty, love of learning, authenticity, or courage, are what you deem important in life. Values show you who you are or want to be and provide a framework for how you act.

The values you embrace could be those you picked up from your family values, your education, your religious traditions, and maybe your mentors. No matter where they came from, they all tie together to inform your behavior.

Examples of personal values

People’s personal values tend to change over time. What was important to you in high school is likely different from what you value most in retirement. And since these morphing values change based on your experiences, each person’s personal values are unique to their journey.

Here’s a healthy list of examples of personal values to start with when working to define your own. As you consider what’s important to you, you may notice that it’s not on this list, and that’s fine. Use this list to get a sense of where your priorities lie.

The benefits of recognizing your personal values

Recognizing your values can help you to live more intentionally and increase integrity. Here are other benefits of living in alignment with your values.

How to find your personal values

Just as your values themselves are likely different from someone else’s, your process of discovering them will also be unique. Here is a general guide to get you started so you can narrow in on what’s most important to you:

1. Review our list of personal values

This list should give you a jumping-off point to think about what’s most important to you. If you know immediately that family and loyalty are essential to your happiness, take note of them.

As you’re going through, think of where you want to go and the set of values you will want to carry with you on the way.

2. Consider where you are and who you know

Your life experiences so far have all contributed to your values in some way. Some of your life decisions have likely been made based on core values. Think about the times you overcame hardships, where you excelled, and times you felt the most fulfilled. Look for the values that guided you in those times.

Just as your own life serves as a resource for understanding what is important to you, looking at other peoples’ lives can also help. Who do you look up to? What values do they live by that matter to you?

By looking at how you and other people came to be where you and they are, you have further defined your core values.

3. Choose the 10-15 values that resonate most

The full list of values can be overwhelming. And there’s a tendency to want to prioritize everything. But choosing 10-15 of the most important values will help you stay focused.

4. Bucket any values that complement each other

Once you select your tops values, you might notice patterns. Maybe you have artistry, creativity, and craftspersonship. These can all be grouped under one high-priority value.

Clustering your list of values will help you see the areas that are most important to you and those that carry the most weight.

5. Order them by priority

Whether you have clusters of values or not, you can still put them in order of importance. It’s hard (or impossible) to do everything at once. So keeping a narrow focus on some top values can help you succeed in aligning with them.

4 tips for living in alignment with your values

Of course, there are things you cannot control: a client’s response to your latest pitch, your partner’s mood, a power outage.

But here are four areas you can control right now that might boost your connection to your personal values.

1. Address your mindset

How do you show up every day? Do you show up ready to take on difficult projects and cheer others on? Or are you more likely to shy away from challenging work?

You can positively influence those around you and your own mental well-being by leaning in on your values. If hard work and dependability are important personal values to you, then establishing a mindset to live up to them will support your personal growth and help you feel more aligned.

2. Be aware of where you put your effort

How intentional are you with your commitments, completing your assignments, and connecting with family members and loved ones? If you have ever heard that you are where you put your energy, it rings true.

If your actions do not align with your values, you may feel disconnected from your daily routine. Or you could have the urge to change things up. When your actions align with your values, though, you’ll likely feel more settled in life and work.

3. Notice how you treat others

When faced with challenging situations, how do you respond? Does your behavior reflect your list of core values? Try to build your self-awareness and practice being clear, empathetic, and direct. These qualities will likely feed into the relationship-based values you have highlighted.

4. Establish short-term and long-term goals.

What’s on your agenda? The way you plan for each day and look ahead to your future gives shape to your purpose and meaning. When you set goals based on a set of values, you’ll feel more motivated to achieve them.

5. Take care of yourself

Are you giving yourself the movement, nutritious foods, and rest you need? Nutrition and mental health are closely linked. And physical well-being feeds into your mental well-being. So fortifying yourself allows you to face the many things out of your control.

What are your personal core values?

When you have a clear direction of where you’re heading in life, your values shine through. You have purpose and meaning because you know what you want to achieve, and you can make decisions and take actions based on a handful of guiding principles.

Finding purpose and meaning in your work and daily life can lead to a more fulfilling life.

The next time you’re faced with a decision, consider your values. You’ll know exactly what to do.

Personal Values

Personal Values Assessment

Every day thousands of people discover their core values with our free test

What are personal values?

To know your values, you first need to understand what they are. We have prepared a series of simple but very developing exercises that will make it much easier for you.

Values can be simply described as things that are especially important to us. For example: family, health, security, freedom, trust. You can say they are the theme of our lives. They are always present with us, although we do not always have to be aware of them. They led you to where you are today. They shaped you as a human being and determine how you are perceived by others.

For example, a health-conscious person will feel great importance of their diet and exercise. Thanks to their systematic efforts, they enjoy vitality and are perceived by others as a specimen of health.

We can also interpret values as goals that we want to achieve in a long term. They can slowly change over time because they depend on our current stage of life. Different values are attractive to young people just entering adulthood. Different for people developing their careers and starting their own families. And completely different for people who have raised children and are finishing their professional careers.

For people who see the greatest value in family, starting their own family and taking care of their well-being will be a goal they will focus their attention and actions on. Expect them to spend more time with their family than others. They try to satisfy all needs and solve encountered problems, and when making decisions, they are guided by the interests of their loved ones.

It can therefore be concluded that values are a strong motivation for us to act. We naturally strive to live as much in harmony with our values as possible. The reward for these efforts is a sense of inner consistency, satisfaction and contentment with your life.

From the definitions above, we can also conclude that values are like a signpost that tells us which way to go to get where we want. Our independent decisions will always be, to some degree, geared towards the realization of our values. This is why it is so important to trust your choices, and not follow the opinions of the environment.

The answer does not always seem obvious, as this choice was not usually the result of one conscious decision. Your values were determined by the whole baggage of experience you have gathered along the way. All the events and situations that helped you discover what’s important to you.

There are also single moments that can completely remodel our hierarchy of values.

Imagine a situation in which someone finds out that they are terminally ill and do not have much time left. How valuable will health and time spent with loved ones be then? How much will professional success and money be worth?

Values are a very individual matter. Even if two people declare that their most important value is success, each of them may ascribe a different meaning to it and implement this value in their own way.

Now that you have an idea of what values are, let’s think about the benefits of knowing your own values.

How does knowing your own values help you make decisions?

If it has a positive effect on the realization of your values, then you already have a clear answer. You will feel comfortable with your decision because you will stay true to your values. Thanks to this, you will avoid dissonance between your actions and what is really important to you.

It is important to rely on your own values when making important decisions. Not the general values, but your own. Remember that ultimately you will take responsibility for your choices and you will live with its consequences.

Values are very important even when making small, everyday decisions and choices. For example, what foods we choose when shopping. How we spend our free time. What do we spend our money on.

These seemingly insignificant choices accumulate and after several months or years of systematic repetition, they are no longer meaningless. Their consequences become visible to us and affect us.

For example, the habit of exercising daily will improve our figure and increase our physical fitness. A prudent approach to finances will allow us to save money to achieve the desired goal. The habit of reading daily will broaden our knowledge and horizons.

It sounds very simple, but we all know it is not. Life daily verifies our values and commitment to their implementation. Sometimes we devote ourselves to what is easy and convenient at the moment, but in moments of self-reflection, we feel guilty. Guilty for not realizing our potential for wasting time.

If we remain aware of our values, we’ll increase our chances of making choices that are favorable to us. A personal list of values can be a compass for us, which in moments of doubt will remind us in which direction we want to go.

How to live in harmony with your values?

If you want to live up to your values, you need to remember them. It seems obvious, but many people don’t pay enough attention to it. Just preparing a list of personal values is barely the beginning. Real change comes in small everyday steps.

Try to remember the five most important values. You can write them down on a small piece of paper that you’ll keep in a visible place on your desk. If you need more privacy, you can download or prepare a list in the form of a wallpaper for your phone.

The point is that in the first days after compiling the list, you should be as close as possible to the values you choose. Make reading your list one of the first things you do in the morning and the last thing you do before falling asleep.

When you know your values by heart, you can remember in which direction you want to go at any moment. Use this knowledge as often as possible. For almost every daily activity and choice. Thanks to this, you will avoid the wrong paths or going around in circles.

The point is, you should be able to precisely define your «why».

Frequently ask yourself why you made this decision and not the other one. Or why you are currently doing this activity. This way, you will often verify to what extent your actions are in line with your values. Remember to always be honest with yourself. It lets you get to know and understand your motives.

For example: why do you go to work every day?

Does your answer match your values? How satisfied do you feel with the current situation?

If you feel inconsistent with your own values in certain areas, it’s time to think about what changes you can make. You don’t have to change everything at once. It is enough to make small changes regularly.

Take your time and think about the areas of your life where you feel deficient. Think about how they are related to your values. Look particularly at:

List specific problems that hinder the implementation of the most important values. Anything that prevents you from realizing your full potential. It is important to know what exactly you want to change

Now go through the list of problems and think about how you can reduce them. Think about what small step you can take now to increase your consistency with the declared values. What can you do in the next week or month? Write down your ideas to read them later.

Do you feel like you’re not paying enough attention to your family? Planning a trip together once a week will be a small step forward.

After implementing a few ideas, it’s time to verify their effects. What did you feel while implementing them? Do you think this is the right direction?

If your feelings are positive, you can set the next steps for implementing changes. Take your time and watch your reactions carefully. It is a constant search for small improvements and self-improvement. With each iteration, you increase your consistency with your own values. Think of it as a trip. Observe the changes and enjoy the growing satisfaction in your own life.

How to discover your values?

Defining your own values is not as easy as it seems. First, you need to understand what they are and prepare a complete list of values from which you will be able to select the most important ones for yourself.

Where to get the full list of values? There are many lists on the Internet, but they are often incomplete or too long. You need a list that allows you to find all the values and is not a random set of synonyms. We recommend that you use the list we have prepared.

Once we have a prepared list of all values, we can filter it according to our needs and preferences. Look at each value in turn. Discard all values that arouse negative feelings in you and those that are indifferent. Leave only those that you consider important and that you identify with.

At this point, you have a list of your values, but it’s not over yet. You can probably see that not all of them are equally important to you. Now let’s focus on finding the most important ones. This can be done by directly comparing the values and sorting their positions on the list. This is the most difficult stage, so take your time. Take as much time as you need to do it.

While comparing values:

If you have gone through the entire process and you are satisfied with the established hierarchy of values, you can already tell what is most important to you. Pay particular attention to the first five values on the list.

It is worth repeating the entire exercise regularly. Preferably once every six months. Thanks to this, you can see how our needs and motivations change over time. It is also a good time to verify to what extent we implement our values.

If you are ready to discover your personal values, we encourage you to take our free test.

How can personalvalu.es help you start living in harmony with your values?

From the beginning of personalvalu.es, our goal was to create a simple and effective method to find and organize personal values. The developed solution turned out to be so good that today it is used by personal trainers, during classes with students, and even in recruitment processes.

The compiled list of 62 personal values is the result of the analysis of many different approaches to the value definition. When creating it, we paid special attention to cover the space of personal values as accurately as possible while maintaining clarity and ease of interpretation.

All values are well described and provide guidance on strengths and potential threats.

The test we have developed will help you to:

To help you remember your values, we have prepared: