How to live a meaningful life: Align with your core values

One of the often-overlooked ways to experience a greater sense of meaning is aligning with our core values – the next installment in this series on how to live a meaningful life.

When we align our lives with our core values, we by definition feel a greater authenticity and alignment with who we truly are. The choices we make and actions we take day in and day out become a voice for what’s important to us, and help us more consciously bring things into our lives – whether people, pursuits, or possessions – that contribute to a rich, fulfilling experience of life.

Think of your core values as a life guidance system of sorts, giving you a reference point and pointing the way to both a big picture direction and a day-to-day lived experience that help you feel a greater sense of meaning.

I suspect one of the reasons it’s overlooked is because – well, c’mon, let’s be realistic. How many of us could actually reel off a list of our core values? It’s just not something we have ever been taught.

It might feel like a daunting task to figure out your core values, but there’s an approach you can take that’s really pretty simple.

The image above is a screenshot of the spreadsheet I used in my own values exploration. Here is the simple step-by-step process I used.

1. Start with a list of values

You can find the list of 214 values I started with at the bottom of this post.

2. First run-through

I did a first run-through and highlighted the values that jumped out at me. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I just went with my natural response as I scanned through.

3. Compiled values

I took the values I had highlighted and compiled them in a separate column.

4. Core values

I went through the compiled values column and highlighted the ones that felt most important to distill it to my core values.

5. Core core values

For good measure, I went through and identified the cream of the crop, the values I felt the strongest response to. My core core values, if you will.

6. Aspirational values

As I was going through the list, I ran across a few values that felt like core values. And even though they felt important, I also felt like I wasn’t doing a great job of actually living them. So I decided to call them out in a separate list and call them aspirational values. 

The opportunity here is to be aware of opportunities to bring my life (and my choices, and my actions and reactions) more in alignment with these values that are getting underserved.

OK, now what?

OK, great, so you have a better picture of what your core values are. Now what?

You can use that insight in a number of ways. For example:

Evaluating priorities

Understanding your core values provides a frame of reference for evaluating priorities and making decisions.

Do you say yes or no to a particular opportunity? When facing a decision, what brings me most into alignment with your core values? How do you choose to spend your time? What use of your resources (time, money, etc.) best align with your core values?

Evaluating your current life

You can use your list of core values as a lens to look at your current life through. How are you in alignment with them? How are you out of alignment.

This gives you an opportunity to build on the existing alignment and make changes where you’re out of alignment.

Exploring opportunities

You can also use your core values as a point of departure for brainstorming opportunities to bring more that aligns with them into your life. For example, one of my core values is making a difference. Knowing that, I can start asking, “What are all the ways I could make a difference?”

These might run from something small and mundane, like smiling at a stranger in the grocery store, to bigger and more far reaching, like starting a non-profit.

The more you have ideas for aligning the content of your life with your values, the more potential there is to actually live those values.

Values list

And finally, here is a list of values to get you started. Keep in mind that you don’t have to get it “right” right out of the gate.

Go through the process outlined above and see where it takes you. Use that as a lump-of-clay version of your core values list. Explore how it applies in your life. Apply it and see how it feels. Revise and refine as needed. Let it be a work in progress.  

—

Like what you see? Subscribe to this blog here!

—

Got stress?

Download my ebook, The Aliveness CODE First-Aid Kit, FREE!