How to define the values you want to live by

The idea of setting New Year’s resolutions or any long-term goal can feel daunting. If you’re someone who dreads January’s focus on bettering oneself and preparing for the year ahead, know that you don’t have to set any goals. But if you’ve been thinking you’d like to make some changes in your life, or just generally want to feel better, the new year is a good opportunity to start building some new habits. 

Often, one of the biggest obstacles to setting achievable goals is getting clear on what you actually want. If you make it your goal to walk 10,000 steps every day just because your friend is doing it, or you decide you want to meditate every day even though you hate sitting still, you’re probably not going to keep up the habit for very long. 

Here’s where values come in. Defining your values, which are essentially the tenets that you live by, can make it easier to choose goals that are in alignment with what’s truly important to you, explains Racqueal Brown-MacMorris, MSW. Below, we outline what values are, how to define yours, and how to use your values to live a more fulfilling life. 

What are values? 

“Values are tenets that govern one’s behavior, their beliefs, their mindset, and also their expectations of themselves and even sometimes others,” says Brown-MacMorris. They’re basically your guide for how you show up in the world, and a summation of what’s important to you. 

Some examples of values include humility, integrity, patience, service to others, trustworthiness, punctuality, and excellence. Whether you’re conscious of them or not, your current lifestyle is based on a set of values. Maybe you were taught to value punctuality growing up, and now it’s important to you that you’re always ten minutes early to everything. Or maybe you value compassion, and that’s why you pursued a career in health care. 

Defining your values and reflecting on them can help you live more intentionally. It’ll help you understand why you do what you do, and what’s important to you. It can also help you uncover who you are and who you want to be, and help you identify some values that you might be ready to let go of, says Heather Bowden, LCSW. 

How do I define my values? 

To get clear on what’s important to you, Bowden recommends listing your top five values in each of three categories: nature, nurture, and what you want to focus on at this particular stage of life. Keep in mind that it’s okay if you write the same value down for multiple categories. 

The nature values you list should be an inherent part of who you are, principles you’ve valued for as long as you can remember. 

Your nurture values, on the other hand, are ones you learned through your upbringing. They’re likely principles that were important to your parents, so they became second nature to you. 

The last category is self-explanatory—any values that you’d like to embody in your day-to-day life, even if they don't come naturally to you. 

As you get started on your list, it’ll probably help to look at a master list of values and their definitions for some inspiration. This list from behavioral scientist Jason Hreha is a good resource with 117 options to choose from. If you find yourself struggling to sort your values into the three categories Bowden suggested, you can also just list the 10 values that are most important to you in order of priority, with one being the most important and ten being the least important. 

If narrowing down your values feels difficult, consider working with a therapist. A mental health professional can guide you through the process and help you get into alignment with what’s most important to you, says Brown-MacMorris.

How can defining my values improve my life? 

Your final list of values will become a helpful tool that you can use to reflect on how you’re living your life and whether you’d like to make any changes. Let’s say one of your top values is service to others, but you spend your days fixated on yourself and your job, never making time to volunteer or help your community. That’s what Brown-MacMorris calls a misalignment: when you say that you value something, but your actions and lifestyle don’t line up with that value. 

“When we’re misaligned with ourselves or who we say we are, that is counterproductive to progress. It keeps you in a state of being stagnant,” she explains. Living in a way that goes against your values can also lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety. If you’re not prioritizing what’s truly important to you, you’ll likely deal with feelings of disappointment, shame, and self-blame—all of which can negatively impact your mental health. Once you notice a misalignment or two, you can start working to bring your actions in line with your values which will lead you towards greater satisfaction. 

As you define your values, you might also uncover some values that you’re living by that are no longer important to you, says Bowden. For example, maybe you were taught to value orderliness growing up, and now spend the whole day cleaning and feeling stressed out before guests come over. Through reflection, you might realize that orderliness isn’t actually that important to you, it’s just something you learned to prioritize. If that’s the case, you can let that value go in order to make room for a different one that feels more authentic to you. 

Ultimately, defining your values is a great exercise in introspection. It can help you identify what’s important to you in this chapter of your life, and figure out whether you’re currently living the way truly you want to. If you’re feeling stuck and want to make some changes, your list of values can serve as a framework for what to prioritize in order to experience more day-to-day satisfaction.