How to workshop your core values
Finding clarity in your decision-making and being your authentic self
Whether you are conscious of it or not, everything that you do is guided by your values, because your values are what you have decided are most important in your life. But honestly, how many people actually know what their core values are?
Until I workshopped my core values last year, I didn’t. Perhaps I had a rough idea — I knew that independence and growth were important to me, and that viewing things through gratitude every day had changed my life, but I was not completely conscious of what my core values were and certainly couldn’t have listed them if asked.
Why workshop your core values?
Workshopping your core values is about finding roughly five values that feel most important to you. It is simply about learning more about yourself — when you are conscious of the values that are important to you, they can guide you to make better decisions, be true to yourself, and live more authentically.
Intentional decision-making
Discovering my core values has given much more clarity in my life in general, but specifically with decision-making. Last spring for instance, I had a job offer that would have taken me back to one of my favourite places in the world — the Canadian Rockies. But when the offer came through, it was a different role to what had been agreed in the interview. Something about it didn’t ring true to me.
With my values in mind, I ended up making a good old pros and cons list, and when the cons greatly outweighed the possible pros, I made the tough decision to turn it down. Though it would have brought me back to where I desired to be, it would have been at the expense of my values, and would have caused me to neglect my true self. Instead, I ended up right where I needed to be, in a place that did truly align with me.
My core values
I have had slightly different results both times that I have workshopped my core values, and often still find communication or respect or compassion fighting for their place, yet I remain steadfast in my top five:
Honesty
Growth
Gratitude
Independence
Health
Don’t get me wrong, it is tough to narrow them down! All of the values listed in the photo above (and more that aren’t listed) are still significant to me, and play a role in the person that I am. But by doing this exercise, you will discover that you already have an hierarchy of values that have been subconsciously guiding you through life.
How to workshop your core values
When I first workshopped my core values in February last year, I listed a few values off the top of my head and used them as a basic template. However, when I decided to do it again in December, I found a much more thorough list of 230 core values to work with.
That might sound incredibly daunting, but it doesn’t have to be! I really enjoyed this exercise, and it is a great way to gain more understanding of yourself and your motivations in general.
Step One: 20-25 values
Go through the list and indicate 20 - 25 values that resonate most with you.
Yes, the majority of these values will resonate with you to a certain extent — for example, I value cleanliness, but it is not a driving moral principle in my life. This is why it is important to start with 20 - 25 values before we narrow it down, because as you make your way through the list, the values of most importance will begin to stand out to you.
To make this easier, you could even indicate 50 values that ring true to you, and then go back through them to find the 20 - 25 of most importance.
Step Two: 10-15 values
Narrow it down to 10 - 15 values.
You may start to notice that some values overlap — honesty, truth, sincerity, loyalty, candor — and that’s okay. If these values are something that feel true to you, choose the word that encompasses the value best. You may find yourself going back and forth a few times — take your time and trust your gut (it already knows the answer).
Step Three: Write down the most important experiences that have shaped your life
This step is quite broad, and it really could be anything.
A time you have struggled with grief. A time you made a big decision on a whim. The best day of your life. The worst day of your life. Winning a competiton. A family day out. A career change, moving abroad, a relationship.
Once you have identified a few of these, unpack them a little. Use or a mind map, or simply list off the values that stood out to your most during each experience.
Were these values being met, or were they overstepped? Was a particular experience so negative because your boundaries, and values were crossed, though you weren’t conscious of it at the time? This can give great insight into your emotions during the experience, and help you to make sense of your reactions too. (Though this is more inner work, which I will perhaps touch upon in a later post…)
Step Four: 5 or 6 values
Narrow down your core five or six values.
From step three, you are likely to begin to notice that many of your important experiences have a few values in common — your core values are beginning to stand out to you.
Narrowing down to just five or six values is obviously the hardest step, and shouldn’t be rushed. For me, honesty, growth, and independence were non-negotiable, and I then spent ages going back and forth between gratitude, communication, health, and respect. If you are really struggling, that’s a good thing! It means that these values are all important parts of what makes you you. Just remember that by not picking one, that doesn’t write it off as unimportant — the original 20 or 25 are still a part of who you are. Finding the core five just solidifies which values hold most importance in your life.
If you are really struggling, I would recommend taking a break — go for a walk, and see if things fall into place whilst you are out walking, or come back to workshopping your values the following day, when you may have more clarity. Often, you may find that after stepping away and not thinking about it, your subconscious has already figured it out.
Step Five: Solidify your values
Ask yourself a few questions to see how firmly important your values are to you.
At your happiest moments, have these values been met?
Have you ever lost these values in times of stress?
Would you give up one of these values for $1,000,000?
Will you likely have the same values in 20 years time?
This is the easiest way to make sure that you have correctly identified your core values. If one can hypothetically be ‘bought’ from you, then it is obviously not as important to you as you first thought.
Step Six: Test them out!
I keep my five core values pinned in my notes app on my phone — not because I necessarily need them there to remember them, but to serve as a reminder to check in with myself, and make sure that my actions continue to align with my values and with my true self.
For example: one of my core values is health. I was born with Cystic Fibrosis, and at the age of twenty-two I also developed an autoimmune condition that has had a profound impact on my health and mobility. Keeping on top of my health has always been important me for this reason, and also because I have always been very physically active and kept to a healthy, balanced diet.
If you tell yourself that health is important to you, and yet you find yourself avoiding exercise, and eating fast food every day, then clearly health isn’t one of your core values. By identifying that it is, I am able to be more disciplined — going to the gym on days when I lack motivation, because I know that by going, I am being true to myself and I will thank myself for it later.
It’s okay to be wrong — when I originally workshopped my core values, I only chose four, as I had mostly thought of them off of the top of my head. It was only when I did the above exercise that others stood out to me, and I ended up finding the values that had been missing.
Reflections
If you made it through the workshop, congratulations on getting to know yourself better and becoming more self-aware. Self-work can be hard, but finding your core values is a great and accessible place to start.
Everyone is different, and I would love to hear about which core values you identified in the comments below!
This is my first post related to self-growth, which is a subject that I am going to be writing more more in coming articles. Though I recently started UnWravel, and begun by discussing my writing and travel adventures, in many of my posts my core values and my drive to seek authenticity have consistently cropped up and taken over, so I am excited to be following my gut and branching out into sharing more of my self-growth journey with you.
For now — thank you so much for reading, and I wish you a blessed day!
-El
Thanks for sharing this, I’m definitely going to do this myself. 🙂