Discover your core values (with exercise and step-by-step instructions)
Posted on November 11, 2021 by Dominic Junghaenel, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
Knowing your core values can help you make good career choices, become an authentic leader and in general experience more fulfillment in your life.
What are core values?
Simply put, your personal core values are your fundamental beliefs. They reflect what you stand for, what’s important to you. Your core values guide your behavior and your decisions. The emphasis here is on YOU; we’re not talking about values in a sense of morality or social norms.
Why core values are important
As a career coach, personal values are one of the most important tools in my work with any client, and one of the first things I want to get clarity on. For me, those values form the base for all subsequent work, such as creating a personal mission statement, building a vision or setting career goals.
If our goals are not set in line with our values, we’ll have a much harder time mastering the challenges along the way. Similarly, if your job does not satisfy your personal values, you’re more likely to experience a lack of motivation and fulfillment in the long run. Knowing your values can therefore help you make the right career choice.
And there are other reasons why identifying your core values is beneficial, such as
*Making good decisions
Knowing your personal values is one of the best tools to make difficult decisions. If you’re crystal clear about what you want and what’s important to you, you can eliminate a lot of inner dialogue and arrive at decisions more efficiently and with more confidence. Or put the other way around, I believe the best decisions we make are the ones based on and aligned with our values.
*Experiencing more fulfillment
People who live by their values tend to experience greater fulfillment and happiness. In other words, if we neglect our personal values, we suffer mentally and emotionally. I have experienced this in my own life too. Dr. Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, claims that our values are even more important than our goals, because “we might not reach our goals, but we can always choose to live by our values”.
*Becoming an authentic leader
Getting clarity on your own values is also a critical step in becoming an effective and authentic leader. Studies have shown that leaders who are seen as inspiring tend to have consistent values that they display every day. It seems that people become effective leaders when they are rooted in who they are and what matters most to them.
Visit my website to find an exercise with step-by-step instructions to help you discover your core values!
