YOUR VALUES ARE YOUR COMPASS

As a career coach, I often work with people on finding their passions and finding themselves. But what does it mean to find ourselves? How could we have lost ourselves if we’re always with ourselves?

We loose ourselves when we spend too much time letting the outer world dictate how we live our lives.

We come pre-programmed with ancestral messages encoded in our DNA. Family patterns of thinking and behaving that are passed down through the generations. And then there is the messages of culture. Both ancestral and cultural messages are delivered to us when we’re very young. Most humans are largely unaware of this as we are just living out many cultural agreements that we never question. But if we begin to take notice we can see our cultural agreements are everywhere. From the clothes we wear to the ways we talk to what careers we decide to explore, if we aren’t actively seeking to create our own standards and compass for the journey ahead, culture at large will create a map for us.

Go to school, get a job, start a family, have kids, go on trips, get old, and die. That is the default.

Many, including me, have come to realize that the default map isn’t enough. It’s not inherently meaningful to have a traditionally successful career, kids and a family. And when we passively follow a cultural compass that does not make sense to us, it can lead to apathy.

We are all different and our goals for life are unique. Therefore, our values and where will find meaning and purpose are unique. It is important we spend time exploring our inner world to locate our values and live into them.

So how can we know what our values are? Well, you can read the work of Brene Brown and others who share their perspective on values, and will give you a list of values to circle. This is a good first step.

We can go deeper though. Values are underlying everything we do. By studying our behaviors, thoughts, words and beliefs we can come to know the deep forces that are ever guiding our behavior. Of course, just like everything else, our values will change over time, but there are some that remain throughout our lifetimes. We can come to know what I call lifeline values by looking back across our life journey and noticing common threads that weave themselves through our entire life.

The idea is to study ourselves like we would study a subject in school. Begin with an open mind of curiosity to explore yourself as if from the outside. Look at your thoughts, behaviors, words and beliefs over time by looking underneath your choices to find the motivating factors. This is not a one and done! Set aside time and keep coming back to this process to gain even more from it.

What I’ve discovered about my lifeline values is that service is an underlying force that has always been present with me, guiding my behavior. I notice it in all the jobs I have ever done from starting as a organic farmer when I was 21, as a nutritionist, a global hunger researcher, in various non-profits and now as a career and life coach. Service is one of my core lifeline values that travels with me always.

When we discover our values, we can lean into them by finding ways to express our values more. We can use our core lifeline values as our compass whenever we get off track. They are the closest thing to a compass we will ever have to get back to ourselves when we need to reconnect at feel that sense of self.

Here’s a list of Brene Brown’s values from her book Dare to Lead. This is not a comprehensive list of all the values that exist. You can make up your own if you find something that consistently guides the way you live your life. Have fun and enjoy the process of reflecting on your values!

Accountability
Achievement
Adaptability
Adventure
Altruism
Ambition
Authenticity
Balance
Beauty
Being the best
Belonging
Career
Caring
Collaboration
Commitment
Community
Compassion
Competence
Confidence
Connection
Contentment
Contribution
Cooperation
Courage
Creativity
Curiosity
Dignity
Diversity
Environment
Efficiency
Equality
Ethics
Excellence
Fairness
Faith
Family
Financial stability
Forgiveness
Freedom
Friendship

Fun
Future generations
Generosity
Giving back
Grace
Gratitude
Growth
Harmony
Health
Home
Honesty
Hope
Humility
Humor
Inclusion
Independence
Initiative
Integrity
Intuition
Job security
Joy
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Legacy
Leisure
Love
Loyalty
Making a difference
Nature
Openness
Optimism
Order
Parenting
Patience
Patriotism
Peace
Perseverance

Personal fulfillment
Power
Pride
Recognition
Reliability
Resourcefulness
Respect
Responsibility
Risk-taking
Safety
Security
Self-discipline
Self-expression
Self-respect
Serenity
Service
Simplicity
Spirituality
Sportsmanship
Stewardship
Success
Teamwork
Thrift
Time
Tradition
Travel
Trust
Truth
Understanding
Uniqueness
Usefulness
Vision
Vulnerability
Wealth
Well-being
Wholeheartedness
Wisdom