This is part 2 and the final part of the “Self Knowledge in a time of Pandemic” series. If you haven’t seen it yet, part 1 is available here.
We’ve previously made the case that the current world crisis could be a perfect opportunity for you to spend some time getting to know yourself, in order to live the life that you truly want. We’ve laid out the “When”, “Why”, and “What” of Self-Knowledge and Values.
You’ve guessed it, It’s now time to go through the actual “How“.
Values – What the heck is this again?
Your values are the answer to the question: “What do I really care about in Life?” or “What’s most important in life for me?”, except that the answer won’t be just your job, your partner, stalking celebrities or some other weird hobby of yours, but it’d be a set of abstract concepts that these activities allow you to fulfill.
What’s the point of identifying those abstract concepts and making life complicated instead of just directly undertaking these activities that you care about?
Well, Great Question! Here’s one main reason:
- Identifying your values allows you to drastically expand your sphere of potential personally meaningful activities to pursue in your Life, giving you the opportunity to live a richer and fuller experience as a human being.
Once you identify your values, you could start drawing meaning from almost an infinite pool of activities based on your values instead of being stuck and relying only on one or two things as a rigid framework for your life. This means that you will no longer be tied up to just your particular domain of work that you like or your weekly visit to the Museum as meaningful activities in case these became unavailable for some reason or you want to move on to something else.
You would know for example that “Curiosity” and “Beauty” are actually what matters to you, not just your “Science Course” and “Enjoying Paintings at the local museum”, which are just particular instances of these values. This gives you tremendous Freedom and flexibility when navigating this world and in dealing with the ups and downs of Life as you can adapt to any situation and find new sources of meaning based on your values.
6 Steps for identifying your Values
Alright, it’s finally time to start digging down those core values of yours. Here’s a 6 steps guide to identify your values. Grab your favorite note taking or word processor tool and write down your answers to these questions.
Step 1: Exploring Peak Moments
Recall the 3 most fulfilling and happiest moments you had experienced in your life.
- What were you doing and what was happening?
- What made this moment special?
- What Values were satisfied behind that experience?
Now, Recall 3 experiences you have lived when you felt really proud of yourself, even if no one else around was sharing that feeling with you.
- What have you just accomplished that made you proud?
- What values were honored and fulfilled through that achievement?
Step 2: Filtering Values
You should now have some raw material for your values on which you can build.
First, Have a look at the list of values below, cross check it with your answers generated from Step 1 above and make sure you put a name on each one of your values.
Additionally, feel free to add new values to your list if you found new ones that resonated with you from the picture above.
Step 3: Define your Values
In this step, select each one of the values you have identified, and write a short definition (2 or 3 sentences) for what that Value means to you.
Everyone can have a different interpretation for a particular value and it can mean different things for different people. Hence, it’s important that you specify and write down exactly what this value means to you.
For example, if Curiosity is one of your values, a potential definition could be: “Curiosity means for me a deep desire for learning, knowledge and understanding. Travelling and discovering new cultures also satisfies my Curiosity”
Step 4: Group Values Together
Once you define your values, and if you feel that some of them are similar or have a common theme, then you could group them together under the same umbrella value. This will also make the next step easier.
For instance, if you have connection, family, intimacy in your list, then these could belong under the same central value of Love.
Or if you have Curiosity, Knowledge, Discovery, then these could also be grouped together under the central theme of Curiosity.
Step 5: Prioritize your Values
This is one of the final and most challenging steps of all: Choosing which values are more important to you than others.
This is a critical step, as it helps you clarify what’s most meaningful to you and informs the important decisions you will make in Life. Sometimes, you will have to make choices between two distinct options satisfying different values of yours. In these instances, knowing which values are most important to you and which ones are slightly less important will help you see things more clearly and make the right decisions.
You will need to compare all of your values against each other, and rank them from most important to least important. The goal is to obtain a list of your Top 10 Core Values.
For this purpose, you could follow either one of the following two processes:
1st Option (If you are the Geeky type and you like sorting algorithms)
- Compare the first two values in your list
- Ask yourself: “Let’s imagine I have 50% of Value A and 50% of Value B in my life right now. Would I be more satisfied and fulfilled with 60% of Value A and 40% of Value B? Or the opposite?”
- Answer yourself and pick the most important value of the two. Let’s say you picked Value B.
- Now compare Value B with the next one on your list and choose which one is the most important.
- Continue comparing the latest most important value you obtained with all your list.
- Once you are done, you obtain your most important value overall. Now put that value aside and redo this entire process with the rest of the list.
- Do this with all the values in your list until they are all sorted in the order of priority.
Voila!
2nd Option (If you prefer a more visual process but you are still the geeky type anyway)
If you would like to make the process of comparing your values more visually appealing, I would suggest using a Paired Comparison Analysis.
You might have more fun comparing your values with a Paired Comparison Analysis and seeing the overall picture of comparison rather than doing it in an algorithmic way.
When comparing each value with another one, remember to ask yourself this question: “Let’s imagine I have 50% of Value A and 50% of Value B in my life right now. Would I be more satisfied and fulfilled with 60% of Value A and 40% of Value B? Or the opposite?” and then go ahead and choose the most important value.
Step 6 (Final Step): Is this me?
Alright, You have your personal list of Top 10 core values, neat, organized, with clear definitions, prioritized from the most important to the least important.
Now look at your list of values and ask yourself:
“Is this me? Do these words represent what I truly care about in Life? Does this accurately represent the most important things in life for me?”
If you have even the slight hesitation to answer a clear and loud “YES” to these questions, then go back to the steps above, think more, and adjust your values list: Maybe the names you chose for your values are not quiet right yet for you, maybe they are not in the right order, or maybe you missed one important aspect of your life that you value and that you haven’t included in this list.
It could be anything, so take your time, and keep on tweaking and reviewing your list until you can clearly look at it and say full of excitement: “Damn yeah this is Me!”
Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end. That was quiet a bit we’ve gone through, so be easy on yourself, it could take weeks, months, or even years to properly identify one’s values and have a list that’s really authentic.
What’s more important is that you start down that process and start thinking. Because as soon as you start connecting back with your authentic self, things begin to change.
Slowly, you stop running away from yourself, and start looking for ways to align your life with your core values, align what you do with who you truly are.
You begin claiming back your life and taking full responsibility for it.
You start realizing that you are the master of your own fate, that no one can tell you what to do but yourself. You get off the autopilot mode of your mind, and start being the pilot of your life.
You are born anew, You know who you are, and you know what you want out of your time on Earth. And that’s when, suddenly, a gleam of light enters the dark night of your Soul.
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