How to Find Your Core Values: The Principles That Quietly Guide Your Life

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“For everything in your life, answer one question: If I could never tell anyone I did it, and no one would ever know that I did it, but I would still reap the rewards/consequences of it, would I still do it? […] Are you saying the things you say, supporting the things you support, and living your life the way you are because doing so brings you joy, contentment, and meaning…or are you doing it for social rewards when people see you doing it? When framed this way, I’ve never steered myself wrong.” – Reddit user u/whitneyanson

Have you ever thought about finding your own core values? Most companies have a list of these posted somewhere (the practice purportedly began with this book), but do they really mean anything? Maybe you’re curious from a personal perspective and want to do some introspection. Or maybe you’re starting your own business and want to determine what guiding principles that business should follow. Whatever your reasons, let’s dive into the process.

Finding your core values isn’t so much a matter of choice as it is of discovery. You aren’t really choosing what’s going to define you. Your core values are what you already live by; it’s just a matter of putting them into words.

This isn’t to say you can’t make choices about your values, or that they won’t change over time and with new perspectives on life. Your values absolutely can and do evolve. This exercise is about ascertaining where you are here and now. If you get to the end of it and say, “This is how I’ve been living my life up to this point, and I want to make some changes”, you can absolutely do that. If you want to create your list now, sit with it a while to see whether or not it’s working for you, and then tweak it a bit, that’s totally okay.

When Core Values Work

I worked at a place once that listed among its values “Doing what we say we will”. I was having an issue with one team at the company that was consistently backing out of events last-minute that I was managing for them, which put me in the awkward position of having to repeatedly let people know that we had changed our minds and wouldn’t be there, and dealing with the disappointment and growing resentment that were damaging our reputation. Finally, when the team tried to back out one more time, I put my foot down and pointed out that we were not living up to our core value of doing what we said we would. After a short period of reflection, the team lead came back to me and said I was absolutely right, that they had changed their minds, and we would attend the event, after all.

When you think of a company’s core values not just as corporate jargon, but as a guide to your own work and how to make decisions about it every day, it brings a lot of clarity. At review time, you can look at what you’ve done and how it relates to the core values, or how you might need to change your behaviors or processes to better reflect those values.

When Core Values Go Wrong

Have you ever worked at a company that didn’t live up to its core values? One place I worked had a serious issue with morale. At first glance, it was hard to see why–they had so many internal events that should have made a much more positive impact, and as a member of the events committee, I got to help with the planning and execution of them. I soon learned it was an open secret that those in the executive suite rarely, if ever, attended the events to commune with the rest of us, and that it was a major source of bitterness throughout the organization. Two of its professed core values were Community and Trust, but their operations were unaligned with those values. Unfortunately, employees and clients alike can see when this is the case. When you’re choosing not to honor your core values, it might be better not to have them at all!

How to Find Your Core Values

“Pay attention to behaviors that you respect or behaviors that piss you off in other people. Then think what value is behind that behavior. […] What values do you idealize? Is there or was there ever a certain way of being you admired? This is another compass to point you in the right direction. Remember, knowing your values doesn’t mean you’ll live them out perfectly. They are aspirations.” – Reddit user u/fierceinvalidshome

There are different ways to go about this. You could just start listing values, and maybe you already have a pretty good idea of what yours will be and can narrow them down quickly. (To help you, there is a huge list of core values at the end of this post. You could print it out and circle, or copy/paste them onto a document and bold the ones you like, or just refer to it…whatever you’d like to do.)

If you would prefer to go through a journey of self-reflection to find your values, the next section contains some thought-provoking questions to guide your way.

If this feels like too much work and you’d rather have someone just quickly give you the answers (hey, we’ve all been there at some point), I also found this exercise useful.

However you go about this, you’re likely going to end up with way too many values at first. This is normal, and it’s the part where you start to narrow it down. You can begin by grouping similar values and choosing just one word to represent all of them. (I chose to pair my values with brief statements explaining what they meant to me, similar to how I’ve seen companies do it, and I utilized some of those similar words in the statements.) From there, start to prioritize your values. If you were faced with a situation where you had no choice but to act based on two of the values from your list, which one would you put first?

Ideally, you’ll want to narrow it down to about 5-7 values. You don’t want to list more values than you can actually remember. At that point, they begin to lose meaning, and you’re no longer truly being driven by your own values. You also run the risk of them conflicting with each other when you have too many.

Answer These Questions to Find Your Core Values

If you want to take the deeper route through this discovery, or just need some help narrowing down your list, consider the following questions:

Look at your own decisions. Whatever steered you in these moments could reveal what matters to you the most.
- Think about a time you had to make a difficult decision. What value(s) came into play that guided that choice?
- When you look back at decisions you’re proud of, what principle(s) guided them?
- Have you ever turned down an opportunity even though it looked good on paper? What value(s) made it feel wrong?
- What would you defend even if it cost you something?
Pay attention to anger and frustration. When you have a strong negative reaction, it likely means one of your values has been violated.
- Think about a time someone’s behavior angered you. What value(s) did they reject in that moment?
- What kinds of workplace behavior frustrate you the most? (Dishonesty? Laziness? Arrogance? Disrespect?)
- When you feel deeply uncomfortable in an environment, what principle is usually being ignored?
- What type of criticism bothers you the most, and what value(s) does it oppose?
- What kind of injustice makes your blood boil?
- What do you wish more people in the world valued?
Notice what you admire; your admiration could reveal the values you aspire to.
- Who do you admire most, and why? What qualities do they represent to you? (This could be a friend, family member, someone at work, a celebrity, or even a character.)
- What kinds of stories or characters resonate deeply with you? What traits do they share?
- When you see someone you perceive as living well, what about their life feels meaningful or admirable to you?
- When someone praises you, which words or types of comments stay with you the longest?
- What do you envy in other people?
- What kind of behavior earns your immediate respect?
Look at what you seek in life, because your goals might reflect deeper values.
- What kind of life do you want to build for yourself, and what value(s) would make that life possible?
- What do you hope people feel when they interact with you?
- What kind of impact do you want your work to have on others?
Reflect on patterns from your past; these might reveal values more than just isolated moments.
- When have you felt the most fulfilled or alive, and what values were present in the moment?
- When have you felt most unaligned with yourself, and what value was being compromised?
- Looking at your life so far, what themes keep appearing?
- What environment brings out your best self?
Imagine your legacy to clarify what truly matters in the end.
- If someone described your character after you were gone, what value(s) would you hope they mention?
- What principles would you want to pass down to future generations?
- What do you want your life to stand for?

My Values

I went through this process myself and spent a couple of months mulling over it. Here’s what I came up with, arranged into an attractive graphic so I could hang them at my desk:

I had to cut another one because it would have brought me up to eight, but it was “I believe in HEALTH–in tending the body, mind, and heart like a beloved garden from which all other things may bloom.” Although I do find this one important, too, I selected it for the cut because I don’t always do everything I can to live up to it, so it was the most expendable compared to the others.

There are plenty of other values that I also find important and try to portray. But when it comes down to it, these are the ones that appear in my life again and again.

Have you found your own core values? I’d love to hear about them!

List of Values

Just to make this easier on you, I created an alphabetical list that combines all the values I saw on every different source I used when I was pondering mine.

Cordially, Carrington

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