(2017-06-14) Pearson How To Discover Your Values And Use Them

Taylor Pearson on How to Discover Your Values and Use Them to Make Better Decisions

Have you ever been faced with a difficult decision and not known which direction to take?

You need to have a list of personal values to refer to.

Personal values (sometimes called core values) are broad concepts that can be applied over and over again across a range of circumstances, as opposed to narrow answers to specific questions.

1. Look through this list of examples of personal values and pick five that resonate with you (59: Acceptance, Adventure, Assertiveness...)

Write down at least 10

Next, go through the ones you wrote down and list them from most important to least important

The terms on the list above are just a starting point and not an exhaustive list. You also want to try and pick terms that emotionally resonate with you

2. Save the Top 5 values on your list someplace where you can look at them and update them

3. Look at them regularly

First, I read over them every week as part of my weekly review

Second, I read them whenever I am struggling to make a big decision like moving cities or changing careers

the strategy question only comes after the values one.

If you aren’t conscious of this, you are likely to make the same mistakes over and over again

I’ll give some examples of personal values from my own life

One of my core values is courage

I discovered this was a core value for me, because I noticed a tendency in myself to pick projects that were not risky enough and have them fail as a result