Values
Values
Everyone has values. Most people have never put them into words. That is the whole exercise: not deciding what you should care about, but naming what you already do. Work through it in one sitting if you can. Nothing here is saved, so use the copy button at the end before you close the page.
Tick anything that matters
0 selectedGo fast. Do not weigh each one up. If a word makes you nod, tick it. Twenty or thirty is normal at this stage, and the list being too long is the point of step two.
Cut it down to five or six
0 of 6Now it gets uncomfortable. From what you ticked, choose the five or six you would defend if someone argued with you. Not the ones that sound best. The ones you would actually lose something over.
Group them, then name the group
Some of your words are pointing at the same underlying thing. Put those together and give the cluster your own name. The name you invent is usually more accurate than any word on the list, because it is yours.
Put them in order
Ranking feels artificial until two of your values collide, and then it is the only thing that helps. Move them until the order looks true, not admirable.
The questions
Naming a value is the easy half. These five ask whether you are actually living by it. Answer in whatever length suits you, but answer with real memories rather than general statements. A specific afternoon beats a paragraph of theory.
What would you want someone to say about you at your funeral, and would they be able to say it today?
The first half is easy and pleasant. The second half is the exercise. The gap between the two is the distance between wanting a value and living it, and that gap is usually where the useful work is.
Think about the last seven days. Where did your time, your money and your attention actually go, and which of your top values do they point at?
Values you claim live in your head. Values you hold live in your calendar and your bank statement. This one is deliberately hard to answer flatteringly, and if a value in your top five shows up nowhere in the last week, that is worth knowing.
Think of a time you lost respect for someone. What did they actually do?
We often cannot name what we value, but we can name exactly what disgusts us. Whatever they did is the inverse of something you hold. Someone who says they cannot describe their values will still tell you, in detail, about a colleague who took credit for their work.
Values are usually tested in the difficult stretches of life, and sometimes they change there. When were yours challenged?
A value you have never had to pay for is a preference. This question looks for the moment one of yours cost you something, or the moment you discovered you did not hold what you thought you held. People often find their values were restructured by something and they never registered it happening.
Think of someone you admire. What specifically earns that respect, and do you have that thing?
Admiration is a reliable signal. What you notice in other people is usually something you either hold or want to. Use a real person rather than a figure you have only read about, and be precise: not "she is strong" but "she says no without apologising for it."
Name one habit that contradicts a value in your top five, and the smallest change you will make this week.
Not a resolution. Something small enough that you will actually have done it by the time we next speak, and specific enough that we can both tell whether you did. This is the only part of the session with a deadline on it.