When faced with a big decision, it’s natural to choose based on what you think will help you best achieve your goals.  For example, you take a promotion knowing it will provide more money for your family.  Since your family is so important to you, you think this will make you happy.  But after months at the job, you aren’t very happy at all. What happened, why don’t you feel good since family is your top priority?  The job requires longer hours and more travel.  While meeting your intended goal, the actions actually took you farther away from what truly mattered, actually being with your family.  

I see this type of situation play out frequently with people who come in to see me wondering why they are so exhausted and depressed.  They’re working so hard to achieve their goal, maybe even reaching it, and yet they feel empty.   In these situations, it often helps to take a step back and think clearly about the bigger picture – your values.  By clarifying and prioritizing your true values, only then can you make decisions that will support a life that brings satisfaction.

Values are desired qualities of your life; who you want to be and how you want your life to feel.  They are guiding principles that when lived by bring you joy.  Values are not rules.  They are freely chosen qualities, like the “pursuit of knowledge”, “kindness”, or “non-conformity”.  As soon as we feel like we have to follow a value, it becomes a rule or something we feel we should do, which drains our sense of vitality.

People tend to  report more life satisfaction when living their values and feel frustrated and depleted when their values are suppressed.  Values are ongoing, like a guiding light or the north star.  They tell you which direction to head, but you never really get there.  Goals, on the other hand, are finite.  They are the steps that we achieve along the way as we aim toward our values.  So setting our goals to be in line with our values will be important in making sure our efforts lead in the right direction.  In order to help evaluate this, a good visual to use is a Bull’s Eye .  First think about your values in the four areas of work/education, relationships, personal growth/health, and leisure.  Picture these values at the center of your bulls eye, the center you want to aim toward.  Next place an “X” on the target for each of the four areas to represent where you stand today, how close to your desired values you feel you are living in each area.  The farther away you place your “X” from the center, the more you feel you have lost touch with your values.  Now you can think about goals and action plans (think of these as arrows).  By engaging in these goals or action plans, will this help you move closer to the Bull’s Eye of your values?  Like in our example, making more money, which meant travel and long hours) did not support the real value of feeling close and connected to family.

There are no rights or wrongs in choosing values.  In fact, the more honest we can be with ourselves, the better.  For example, people often feel they should have “kindness” or “giving” as a top priority.  But when you volunteer for fundraising, you find it draining.  In fact, curiosity may be a higher value for you, and your time might be better spent reading or doing research.  Values are not exclusive, either.  They are flexible.  We can combine them, such as doing research to help a charity, or choose to prioritize one over the other in given situations.  We may need to prioritize our value of justice in dealing with employees at work, and humor with our friends.

Below is a list of potential values.  I invite you to look through them and rank them as very important, not so important or low importance.  Don’t overthink it or judge your choices.  The more honest you can be about your values, the more you can shoot your arrows in the direction of your satisfaction.  It’s a great feeling when you reach a goal that lands close to your values.  Like every sport, however, it takes time to learn, and we miss the mark a lot in the beginning.  But show up to practice, analyze your goals and efforts, and you will see and feel like a winner!!