The Importance of Personal Values

How to Define Them And Live By Them
Post VII, [ALIGNED] series

By Mike Brcic,
Chief Explorer, Wayfinders

This is post 7 of the [ALIGNED] series, with tips, tools and wisdom to help you build an Aligned Company (resilient, self-managing, and purpose-driven) and Aligned Life (lived in line with your values, purpose and ideals).

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The Importance of Personal Values

The topic of values has been coming up a lot lately, both in my own life and the world at large.

On a larger level, the Black Lives Matter movement is essentially a conversation around values, and the argument that Black lives have not been valued the same as white ones.

Over the past month or two, we’ve seen the conversation around covid-19 shift from ___ to a value-driven conversation around protecting the health of our citizens (especially the most vulnerable) versus protecting our economies.

On these large scales - national and transnational - values are driven by a process of ongoing conversation and are reflected in our political and societal outcomes through the process of dialogue, legal arguments, and democratic participation (and other, perhaps more nefarious, processes).

Our national values are also driven by conversations had many moons ago.

The values of the United States, for instance, are informed in large part by founding documents such as the Constitution or the Bill of Rights and its ten Amendments. Here in Canada, our Constitution was augmented by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as recently as 1982.

These documents collectively outline the values of a nation as entrenched in law. They are, of course, subject to constant scrutiny and interpretation by our courts, but they provide their nations with a foundation of values that guide much of civic life.

One of the Guiding Principles from my former company, Sacred Rides

On a business level, countless companies have taken a similar approach by writing and adopting their own set of values - ‘Core Values’ in the common vernacular. This is common practice in most companies, and something I’ll cover in a future post: how to write and use values (I call them Guiding Principles) effectively, so that they guide staff behaviour and help create a values-led company that inspires devotion among its staff and customers.

Less common is the process of outlining one’s own personal values. In a conversation I had last week with a fellow entrepreneur, he mentioned feeling adrift during this time of great disruption, and that he didn’t feel he had anything to guide him or help him decide what to focus his energies on.

This led to a deep and wide-ranging conversation on personal values, which led me to writing this post.

Personal Values - Are They Necessary?

I’ve written extensively about Alignment in this series so far. ‘Alignment’, to me, means living in a state where your work and life are aligned with your values, ideals and dreams: your decisions are made in alignment with what you value, and they’re made in alignment with the ideals and dreams you’re striving for.

Living this way inherently feels better; there’s much less friction, much more flow, and much less stress because your time is spent in a way that aligns with your core being. There’s far less ego involved and much more fulfilment.

Crucial to that process is understanding yourself, especially what it is that you value. We all have values that are imprinted on us through formative experiences, yet very few of us take the time to make them explicit.

Taking the time to reflect on your values and write them down allows you to integrate them on a deeper level into your daily life and use them as an important filter when making important decisions. It’s one of the keys to living an aligned life - without self-knowledge you are like a boat adrift in the wind, subject to the ocean’s whims.

Living in line with your values is way more important - and feels way better - than living a life always focused on achievement, which is an easy trap for us entrepreneurs to fall into.

So, are you still with me?

Ok, let’s get started…

How To Write Your Personal Values

Set Aside The Time

I suggest starting this process by finding time in your calendar when you devote an hour or two of quiet time to the process, in a place free from distractions that inspires you. For me, that generally means somewhere in the wilderness, but it can be anywhere where you can devote your full attention to the process.

No Technology

Use a notebook and pencil: a laptop or tablet has too many built-in temptations that will sidetrack the process.

Get In The Right State

Get in the right mental state: this can be a short meditation, some journaling, reading an inspiring passage - whatever helps you get into a relaxed, creative state.

Start Creating Your List

I suggest you start by just dumping your thoughts on paper to start. Some values will be obvious. For me, for instance, adventure has always been important to me: I value new experiences and pushing boundaries and exploring. I don’t have to think too hard to know that adventure is a strong personal value.

Take a few minutes to list some things that come to mind. Try starting with the sentences “I value…” or “I believe…” and see what comes to mind.

e.g.

‘I value diversity in all aspects of life.’

‘I believe in equal economic opportunity for everyone.’

Take A Stand

Think of your values in terms of taking a stand. They are what define you as a person and set you apart from others, so they shouldn’t be wishy-washy things like ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’. Most people will agree with those, so they’re kind of like table stakes in the game of life poker.

Take a stand by defining what really makes you you. For example, risk-taking is a key value of mine; I believe a good and fulfilling life has to embody some measure of risk-taking. Not everyone agrees with this - some people value comfort over risk-taking.

If you do want to include more generic things like honesty or integrity, try qualifying and defining them a bit more (e.g. ‘I value radical honesty and being 100% honest, 100% of the time.’).

Your Wounds = Your Values

Our wounds - especially our childhood ones - have an outsized influence on the rest of our lives. Our wounds and our traumas (we all have them, to some extent) dictate much of how we see the world. For most people, they define what it is they value in a kind of mirroring relationship.

If you grew up in extreme poverty, for instance, the hardships you suffered as a result will likely predispose you toward valuing financial affluence, or at least the avoidance of poverty.

For me, I grew up an only child and I often felt left out of social situations at school and other places. I often felt like an outsider, never quite knowing how to fit in. So for me, deep connection with other human beings is profoundly important to me, and nothing is more important to me than the relationships in my life. Authenticity is another core value, because I always felt pressure to try and fit in by being someone other than myself and it was exhausting.

Consider the wounds you’ve suffered through life and how they have affected you. What might those look like in terms of values?

Here are some examples that might help you:

Experience with physical abuse -> I value peace and living free from violence
Experience with abandonment -> I value loyalty
Experience with a parent who seldom kept their word -> I value commitment

Peak Experiences

When were you happiest in your life? What was happening at that time? Who was with you? What were you doing? These may also be clues to your values.

One of the times in my life when I remember being happiest was when I spent 3 weeks living in a small indigenous fishing village in the province of Michoacan, Mexico. I had very little with me at the time: my flip-flops, a few pairs of board shorts and a few t-shirts. I lived at a palapa owned by one of the local families for $1/day, and ate lots of fresh mango, avocadoes and fish.

It remains to this day the high-water mark of my life in terms of simplicity, and because that simplicity correlated so well with my happiness, simplicity has become one of my core values.

Narrow It Down

By now you may have a list of 10 to 20 (or more) values listed. I suggest you try and narrow it down to your top 5-7 values, which will be more useful to you than a larger list.

Start by grouping similar values together; for example, if ‘exploration’, ‘adventure’, and ‘trying new things’ came up, those are all pretty similar. Find a word that describes all of them, or use one of the words/phrases and scratch out the other, similar ones.

Look at your list and reflect on which values are most important to you, and which aren’t. You should be able to feel, energetically, in your body, when something resonates with you - if you listen closely enough. Reflect on each word or phrase and see how it feels. If it feels deeply resonant, circle it. Otherwise, leave it or scratch it out.

Once your down to 5 to 7 words or phrases, it’s time to prioritize.

Prioritize Your List

Prioritizing your values is really helpful when it comes time to make major decisions.

Often, a decision may be in deep alignment with a certain value but be in conflict with another (for example, my values of simplicity and adventure are often in conflict: an adventurous life can often be a more complex one).

In these cases, it’s helpful to get clarity on just which values are most important (in the example above, adventure is more important to me than simplicity, but I still try to view my adventuring through a lens of simplicity).

With your list of 5 to 7 values, spend some time reflecting on which of those are most important, and rank them in order from first to last. That one at the top of the list is the one you should almost never compromise on.

Write Out Your Value Statements

Now it’s time to write your values out in powerful, resonant language. You may have words like simplicity or leadership or compassion in your list. On their own, they’re not really that helpful. Now you need to write out exactly what these words or phrases mean to you. It’s helpful to use the word because in your values statement as it helps you get down to the why of each value.

For my adventure core value, my value statement is written like this: “I value adventure because new experiences feed my soul and help me push my boundaries and grow as a human being.”

Use words and language that inspire you and resonate with you.

Once you’ve written out all of your values statements, read each one. Do they feel right? Do they represent you at the core, or do they feel like they were written for someone else (e.g. your parents)? Edit as necessary until your statements feel true and inspiring to you.

LIVING YOUR VALUES: The Core Values TRACKER

Like company Core Values, personal values can be meaningless if they end up being nice words on a wall, tucked away into a corner. One of the best ways to ensure you are living a life aligned with your values is to use something called a Core Values Index (CVI). My good friend Michael Assad introduced me to the concept of a CVI a few years back and I’ve used it ever since.

I’ve developed a simple tracker that you can use to assess yourself on a weekly basis as to how well you are living your values. Like the saying goes, ‘what gets measured gets managed’.

The act of tracking your core values on a regular basis will inevitably lead you toward living a life more in line with your values.

DOWNLOAD THE CORE VALUES TRACKER

ALIGNING WITH YOUR PARTNER

If you have a partner, ask him/her to go through the values process as well. Knowing your partner’s values and making yours clear to your partner is extremely powerful, and is a valuable lens through which you can view conflict and achieve harmony.

When you know what is most valuable to your partner, you will understand him/her better, and when you make your values clear, he/she is more likely to want to help you live a life in line with them.

CONCLUSION

In summary… having a clear set of personal values is extremely important for living an aligned, harmonious life. You cannot live a life in line with your values if you haven’t taken the time to reflect and clearly outline what is important to you. Make the time.

I’d love to know what you think. Have you ever taken the time to clarify your values? Leave your comments below.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CORE VALUES TRACKER

WHAT’S NEXT?

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The Importance Of Personal Values