319 - What are My Values?
What are values?
Broadly, there are a few definitions of values or personal values, from "a set of beliefs or opinions that influence how you live your life” to “the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work” and “broad, trans-situational, desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people’s lives.” We can also have social or cultural values from the community we grew up in, and although values stay fairly stable throughout our lives, they’re not rigid by any means and can absolutely change sometimes.
Research on values
Although surveys and research done on values is extensive, we can’t go into detail about all of its findings, so these are the important ones to know:
We tend to hold values both as being very desirable and very important. People see their personal values as closer to their ideal selves than their personality traits and wish to modify them to a lesser extent than they wish to modify their own personality traits.
Humans tend to order our values in hierarchies. Some are extremely important, others less so. The higher a value in the hierarchy, the more motivated the person is to rely on it as a guiding principle in life.
Most people have similarities between value hierarchies.
Developing values
The research takes two perspectives into consideration to address the forces that shape our values.
Phylogenetic perspective: The idea that there are cross-cultural similarities in values because of humans needing to survive together.
Empirical research shows widespread pan-cultural agreement on the most important values. Scientists discovered in a value hierarchy study of 63 societies that benevolence and self-direction were almost always at the top.
Benevolence helps maintain in-group cooperation, solidarity, and stability.
Self-direction is prioritized “likely due to its importance for encouraging and supporting plasticity by motivating independent initiatives and novel ideas and solutions.”
Ontogenetic perspective: This perspective has to do with how we develop our individual value hierarchies. The process starts as early as age five, but one’s values change and stabilize during adolescence, and then often do not shift majorly in adulthood because they become an integral part of our identity.
What are my values?
There are a myriad of exercises to figure out your values, but one of our favorites is from MindTools.com:
Identify some times in your life that you were the happiest. What were you doing? Were you with other people? Who? What factors contributed to your happiness?
Identify some times in your life when you felt proud. Why? Did other people share your pride?
Identify the times when you were the most fulfilled and satisfied. What need or desire was fulfilled? How and why did this contribute meaning to your life?
Looking over the things you wrote, are there common themes? What has been most important to you? During this step, it can be helpful to look at lists of value words, like empathy, independence, freedom, etc. and pick out the ones that make sense, then condense into a list or hierarchy from there.
Reaffirming: When you look at the list of values, do they make you feel good about yourself? Are you proud of your top three values? Would you be comfortable and proud to tell these values to people who you respect and admire? Do these values represent things you would support, even if your choice isn’t popular?
An alternate approach could be looking forward instead of backwards in time, since the MindTools exercise relies on one’s already lived experiences. For some, looking forward towards things you aspire for may be more helpful than looking back. The things that you’re yearning for can have clues as to what motivates you, what is important to you, and what guides you.
Another exercise is about dreams, not values, but the two overlap to an extent.
Think about your life dreams (not necessarily tangible ones), such as having more freedom, experiencing peace, going on a spiritual journey, etc.
Discuss with a partner. Take turns asking each other open-ended questions about each dream. Is this connected to your childhood? What would happen if you couldn’t fulfill this dream? Is there a deeper purpose in this for you?