Discovering your values
I’m so excited to write and share what I’ve learned about values. Not only because it’s helped me understand, accept and love myself but also because it’s helped me connect and at time disconnect with others. What I mean by the last part of that is there are sometimes people we hold onto throughout life because we have history with them, but as we learn, grow and experience life our values can change. And that can mean that sometimes we need to change the status of them in our lives.
Over the years I’ve found a couple of different ways to learn my values, that I’d love to share with you
Holding values lightly, instead of tightly
Values shift throughout your life as your experiences, circumstances, and environments change. That's not a flaw — it's just how being human works.
One of the most useful things to understand about values is the difference between holding them lightly versus holding them tightly.
Holding a value tightly means expecting yourself to live by it the same way in every situation. But that's rarely how life works. Take "Honesty" as an example. You might deeply value honesty in your relationships and feel it's important to share your unfiltered thoughts and feelings with your partner — but that same unfiltered honesty probably isn't what's called for in a work context. The core value hasn't changed. It's just showing up differently depending on the situation.
Holding a value lightly means giving yourself permission to experience it differently at different times, without judgment. You're not betraying what matters to you. You're just being human.
Finding values in what you love
What do I love doing?
Enter five activities you enjoy in the column headers below. Then for each activity, write five words or phrases that describe why you enjoy it — what it gives you, how it makes you feel, or what it brings out in you.
| Activity 1 | Activity 2 | Activity 3 | Activity 4 | Activity 5 |
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
Scan across all your words above. Look for themes, repetitions, or words that feel similar in meaning. These patterns are pointing at your values.
These recurring words are the seeds of your values — the things that matter most to you, revealed through what you love doing.
Need some help… See how these values align with you?
Go through the list and score each value from 1–5. Don't overthink it — go with your gut.
Your highest-scoring values appear here automatically. Values scored 4 or 5 will show up — your top 6 are highlighted.
Start rating to see your top values appear here...
How aligned are you living your values?
Type in the values you identified — up to 12. Each gets its own colour. Then drag them onto the wheel.
Drag each value into the area of life it relates to. Place it closer to the centre if you're living that value strongly — further out if you need to put some work into it.
A value can appear in more than one area — just drag it from the tray again. Click ✕ on a placed value to remove it.
So what now?
Now that you’ve identified your values, so what? Well here are a couple of next steps.
Look at the things you’re doing well and where you’re living your values. Practice some gratitude.
Look at the area you could be living your values more in and think through one action you can take. It’s one step at a time. And you don’t have to start with the area you’re living your values least in. Start building momentum by taking one achievable action.
Tips and Tricks
If you’re really stuck ask some people close to you to write down a few words that they feel represent you. This is likely your values shining through.
Review them over a few days, weeks or months. There is no particular rush, and no such thing as perfect.
There aren’t good and bad values, they just are! Like I said above, honesty is often great, but at times can be hurtful or create shame.
Think about the people close to you and see if you can identify the values they may hold. I suggest you just keep this to yourself, they may not appreciate you labelling them. But this can be helpful so that you can identify differences, accept them and let them be.