Values Exercises to Help You Make Better Choices
Community. Friendship. Fairness. Courage. Love. Meaning. Respect.
These were the values I was reminded of last week. I was reminded of the pivotal aspects of my personality, soul, and energy. The parts of me that, when I’m connected and aligned, help inform some of the most difficult decisions in my life.
More often than not, I feel stuck. Or lost. Or overwhelmed. I feel overstimulated by opportunities, roads to take, and passions to pursue. Someone will tell me, “you’d be a great life coach, have you ever considered pursuing it?” and I’ll think, SHIT SHOULD I? I’ll read articles with extremely convincing titles on Medium and consider how I too, could make $100,000 in a year as a writer.
The possibilities seem endless--but not in an anything-is-possible way. In an if-I-don’t-figure-out-right-now-what-I-want-I-might-die kind of way.
Obama once said something to the effect of, “the fewer options I have in my day to day life, the easier it is for me to make the really hard choices.” I’m paraphrasing, but he was speaking to the fact that the more choices we have in life, the more struggle we experience. Choices take an immeasurable amount of energy, whether it’s choosing what dress to wear or whether to quit your job.
In many ways, we can reduce the number of choices we make: adopt a more minimalist lifestyle and have fewer outfit options. Eat only a few food groups and cook the same thing every evening. Pick one coffee shop and make it “your place.” These are reasonable efforts to reduce “choice-fatigue.”
But what about when it comes to even choosing those choices? If you’re an Anxious-Annie like me, you’re probably going, “but which clothes do I even keep?” or “how will I know when it’s my Central Perk?” Or what about the really difficult decisions, like do I want children, who do I put in my will, or should I quit my full-time career?
Recently I did a values exercise that clarified a lot for me in the way of choice-fatigue. The exercise reminded me of what’s actually important to me, at my very core. This reminder, and a concrete list of words that reflected my core being, made it seem a lot easier to contemplate making almost any choice.
Before diving in, let’s do a quick run down of what values are.
What are Values
Values are words that represent core beliefs or personal codes of conduct.
There are over 400 values, because essentially values are just words. Examples might be respect, community, accountability, or freedom. They are concepts that we value to be essential to our way of life, and when we aren’t acting in alignment with them, we feel out of sorts.
Three Questions to Reconnect With Your Values
Last week, for the new moon ceremony, I created a few prompts and questions for my husband and I to journal on and reflect over together. Included was the following values exercise, which I literally found by googling “best values exercise for knowing who you are.”
I had done values exercises before, but I wanted something novel. Something unique. The article I stumbled upon had a few questions that I found really powerful, so I modeled my exercise off of those.
First, make sure you have a copy of a list of values. I used this one.
Grab a pen and paper, and answer the following questions. Try to remember, “first thought, best thought”: whatever comes to you first is probably a great option for this exercise.
1. High Moment
Think about a moment in your life that you would describe as a “peak experience.” It doesn’t have to be the best moment in your life, and it can be recent or in the distant past. As long as it feels like an incredibly high point--an experience you think of as unforgettable.
Write down the experience in detail. What was happening? What did you feel?
Now go to the list of values, and circle any values that you were honoring during this experience.
2. Low Moment
Think about a moment in your life where you were upset or angry. Again, it can be at any time in your life.
Write down that moment in detail. What was happening? What did you feel?
Now go to the list of values, and underline any values you were suppressing. I.E., what values were you not living out, or what values were the people involved breaking that bothered you?
3. Fulfillment
Besides food, water, shelter, safety, and security, what do you need in your life to feel fulfilled? For example, creative expression? Love and connection? Success and power? Write down, in your own words, 3-5 things you absolutely could not feel fulfilled without.
Now go to the list of values, and star any values that pertain to any of what you wrote in the list above.
Connect the dots
On a separate piece of paper, write down any values that had at least 2 markings next to them (i.e., circled and starred, underlined and starred, circled and underlined, or all three).
Next to the values you’ve written down, put an asterisk next to any that had all three markings on the original sheet.
You should have a small list of values. These are not necessarily your core values. But they will absolutely give you a clue into a part of you that is very much who you are, and I imagine it might inform some hard decisions you’ve been thinking of making. If not, it might give you some clarity in the future on how to make choices in such a way that they stem from your values, rather than from a spiral mindfuck of trying to figure out “the right thing to do.”
For me, it was a reminder of what’s really important to me. And not only that, it grounded me in thinking about my intentions with the actions I am making.
If you have any favorite values exercises, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!