Living, Leading, and Loving From Your Core Values
When you face a difficult situation, do you overreact or move forward with intention? How do you know which direction to take? What’s serving as your guide or internal compass?
Values can light the way through challenging situations.
Exploring our values is helpful because it gives us a lantern to navigate the darkness. We can react to situations and don’t get the outcome we want. To be more effective in working out our differences with coworkers and personal relationships, knowing our values will help us sleep at night knowing we acted in ways that align with what’s important to us.
Here's a list of values from Brené Brown’s resources.
Start by highlighting all the ones that resonate with you. To narrow them down, ask yourself if these values are yours or if they have been given to you by others. Are they values you think you “should” have?
Here are some other questions you can ask yourself (from Brené):
Does this define me?
Is this who I am at my best?
Is this a filter I use to make hard decisions?
Ideally, you’ll narrow your responses down to your top two values. If you’re having a hard time doing this, try grouping some values and using another word to describe them. As an example, community, connection, and belonging can all be characterized by the overarching value of family.
How To Prioritize Your Top Two Values
Your values are likely to change as you gain wisdom and experience. My values at 18 were different from those I have now.
People often wonder if they must have the same values as their partner, friends, or workplace. Heck, no! Our values are simply information that helps us and others understand our perspective and how we make decisions about spending our time and energy.
Knowing our values is the first step, and putting actions behind our values is the next step.
How do you define your values?
What do they mean to YOU?
Take an inventory of all your values.
My values are authenticity and integrity.
To me, authenticity means being honest about who I am and having the courage to be myself in all situations, not just the ones that feel “safe.” My brain cares about other people's thoughts, but I don’t let that stand in the way of expressing myself. Integrity means being responsible for my thoughts and actions and doing the right thing, even when it’s hard or unpopular.
Values are aspirational.
We’ll never live up to our values 100% of the time because we’re human and imperfect. However, we do our best, and when we’re out of alignment, our body and brain will let us know by making us feel terrible or by our brains trying to justify what we’ve done. Pay attention to your discomfort — it’s a very helpful red flag.
Using my values to guide my life was a game-changer for me…
I recently got a text from a friend accusing me of sharing some information with people that wasn’t mine to share. I felt some shame at thinking I did something wrong, anger at the accusation and the fact it was in a text message, and frustration that someone would think I would do that. The truth is that I didn’t share the information and that someone else made a post on Facebook that shared the sensitive info.
I had to decide how I wanted to proceed with a hard conversation with this friend. How could I show up for my friend when we didn’t see eye to eye?
My instinct was to text back and defend myself using swear words, but that’s not helpful. Moving forward with authenticity and integrity helped me be myself and do what I thought was right.
I talked to my friend about this situation in person over coffee. When we met, I managed my emotions about the text and tried to look at it from her point of view. I could understand how she would be upset if it were true that I shared sensitive information, and it would take courage to talk to me about it rather than just being mad.
Before the conversation, I set an intention that I wanted this misunderstanding to improve our communication and build trust. I wanted to set the record straight and let my friend know I would prefer her to come to me and ask instead of assuming things about me.
The conversation started with chit-chat. I asked more about the text message and gave my side of the story. My friend seemed genuinely surprised that there was another option than the one she had dreamed up, but she accepted it. I would have liked an apology, but being able to put this situation behind us was a good step.
This misunderstanding could have been a relationship-ending event had we been unwilling to talk it through.
Instead, we chose courage over comfort and addressed the issue head-on, right away.
I have no doubt that if my friend and I ever have another misunderstanding, we’ll be even better at solving it because we now have the experience of working through a tough situation with respect and an open mind.
We need to have more tough conversations in this world, so I hope that knowing your values will help you make the best decisions for yourself so you can live into them and act from them when interacting with the people you care about.
Here are some additional resources to help you find your values:
