Your Values

Life is a lot about getting to know yourself better and better, and becoming increasingly honest with yourself. When you are honest with yourself you increasingly make choices that will help with your long-term sustainable wellbeing. So how can you go about getting to know yourself better? By discovering  your values.

Values make for a great compass in life. Also, values, unlike goals, is something that you get a new chance to live by every single day. That’s just awesome. Where goals are about destination, values are all about direction. As such, values are very empowering. There are many advantages to defining your values.

• It sets you on a journey of getting to know yourself, and as such being increasingly honest with yourself.

• It helps build mental resilience so that you can more easily navigate tough situations and events in life.

• It builds trust with people around you, because they know who you are and what values you stand for, and that consistency builds trust.

• It gives you energy to work for the direction of your values.

• It helps you make all kinds of choices.

There are many ways you can go about discovering and defining your values, but the most important thing is to get started. Ending up with a handful of values linked to what you want to do and how you want to do it is a good start. Check out some of the value discovery methods below as well as a list of my personal values that hopefully can inspire you to discover yours.

Invest in yourself by defining the values that will govern the direction of your life.

Values can be both about What you want to do and How you want to do it. In essence, it’s things such as behaviors that you value. The Cambridge Dictionary defines values as: “the beliefs people have, especially about what is right and wrong and what is most important in life, that control their behaviour” (ref).

To get examples of values you can check out the many sites collecting lists of values, for example:

Science of People

Brené Brown

Soul Salt

Scott Jeffrey

James Clear

However, don’t limit yourself to values that are on this list. Think expansively about what you value and see below How you can discover what values are most important to you.

There are many different ways to discover what your deepest and most important values are. I would argue that a combination of a process and different exercises is a solid place to start.

Process

Here is a process that you can follow to get to a first version of your values, and also iterate on them throughout life.

Getting to a first version of your values:

1. Seek broad input - This is where you are expansive and seek broad input and stimuli via for example the exercises listed below.

2. Draft a long list - Don't hold back. Add every value you believe may be part of who you want to be on this list.

3. Group values - As you go through the list you will probably see trends emerge. Group the values that are similar together.

4. List core values - Distill the list to 5-10 values that are about what you want to do and how you want to do it. Too many values will be hard to live by, too few values will not provide enough direction.

Iterate on your values: As you start to try to live by your stated values every single day, you will start learning more about yourself and who you want to be. As you do that you may want to change some of your values to better mirror who you want to be. My biggest advice is for you to be honest with yourself, that is so important.

Exercises

Here follows a list of potential exercises that you can take on to discover your values. This list is in no way exhaustive, but it’s intended to get you started.

Role models

You can list for example 5-10 people that you look up to, and then next to that list write down why you look up to them. In that list of why's you will probably be able to find several of your values.

Outlier diary

You can keep a diary about your so-called outliers. This is when something is very positive or very negative, i.e. outliers. Both of them have the potential to speak to some of your values. If something positively excites you and makes you very happy, as well as if something disgusts you and makes you very sad. Write these outliers down as you come across them, and after a couple of weeks review your notes and look for trends.

Ask friends

Your friends probably know you quite well. You can simply ask them what values they believe you are all about. Also consider asking what values they believe you are not at all about.

Think about your funeral

This may seem like a depressing method. That said, think about what you want people to say about you at your funeral. Whatever you want people to say about you probably hides some of your most important values.

Self coach yourself

There are several questions you can ask yourself to self-coach yourself to discover your values. For example:

What’s most important to me? / When do I lose track of time?

What would my ideal day look like?

What do people come to me for advice about?

What does success look like over the next year?

What skills do I want to learn or grow?

Run through the process and exercises until you land in a first version of your values that you can start to try to live by every day, and iterate upon as you get to know yourself better and better.

Once you have an idea of what your values are there are many ways in which you can incorporate them in your life to truly live your values. Here is a list of examples:

Weekly check-in

You can have a “Values meeting” with yourself every week where you check in how well you lived in-line with your values last week, and what you can do next week to do it even more. I love this routine and try to do it every week on Sunday evenings. It helps me anchor in my values before embarking on the next week.

Annual planning

Around new years is a great time to take a step back and reflect upon how you want to live your life. Take the time to anchor in your values as you make a plan for the year in terms of how you will invest your time

Do it again

If you recognize that you’ve done something in conflict with your values, immediately press pause and redo it more in-line with your values. It can be how you have treated another person in the moment, or a choice you’ve made. By acknowledging openly that “this is not how I want to do it” and do it again in a better way you both anchor the values-based behavior you want to live by in yourself, but also build trust with the people around you about that you’re serious about your values.

Change a recurring situation

You’re probably finding yourself in some recurring situations such as riding the train, going for a run or shopping for groceries. As you are in a recurring situation, assess how you would normally approach it, and then consider if there is something you can change to live more in-line with your values in this situation. One example from my own life is that one of my values is to leave places nicer than I found them. As I’m out running a lot, I considered what I can do to leave the running track in a bit better mental shape than I found it. This led me to start smiling and greeting the people I meet. When doing this, I feel so much that I’m living more in-line with my values, and running is even more fun and less anonymous. I love it!

Remember that every day is a new day, and a new opportunity to live in-line with your values. Enjoy!

I’m sharing here my values to hopefully serve as some sort of inspiration for you. Every day I challenge myself to live in-line with these values, and a couple of times per year I challenge myself if any of the values have changed in any way. I hope this will help you move forward in life with a clearer sense of direction.

Mission: Improve sustainable wellbeing for everyone

What I want to do

Live purposefully - This is all about making conscious choices throughout life instead of just going with the flow or become a victim of circumstances.

Build loving relationships - With everyone. Humans have a tendency to only build loving relationships with likeminded. I want to do it with everyone. This is why spending time with other people is a top priority for me.

Take care of myself - This is all about investing in my sustainable wellbeing. Physical wellbeing (sleep > 7 h/night, exercise >3 times/week, eat healthy), mental wellbeing (thankfulness routine, spending time in nature, always learning new things), social wellbeing (investing in relationships) and planetary wellbeing (live an increasingly sustainable life).

Build a better society - I always think about how to be more net positive to society and I engage deeply in a number of projects linked to this.

Be a valuable leader - I consider leadership an earned privilege, not a right. As such, I want to add real value to the people I lead and take on a servant mindset.

Have a working base - This is acknowledging that I want to have working logistics at home such as fixing the broken door and doing the laundry. By calling it out as a value it becomes more meaningful and fun.

Learn and innovate - The world will keep changing so I will keep learning and innovating. To continuously learn I want to have an open mind and enjoy being wrong, because when I’m wrong I probably learned something new.

How I want to do it

Love - I always want to take a starting point in love. I fundamentally believe that we will never be able to win over hatred or difficulties using anything but love.

Be thankful and positive - Every morning before I go up from bed I stop and think to myself how thankful I am that I am alive and that everything else positive I will count as an undeserved bonus.

Seek the truth and be transparent - I believe it’s of utmost importance to govern the concept of truth. Without truth all becomes a spectacle and the biggest wallet will pay for the most blinding lights. Seeking the truth is much much harder than not doing it. I will also always rather be too transparent than the opposite as I believe it leads to more diverse and great decision-making.

Leave places nicer than I found them - This is all about my legacy in the big and small. I want to pick up the paper from the floor in public bathrooms. But I also want to say “hi” to people I meet when out running, since then I believe I’m leaving the running track in a bit better mental shape than I found it.

Ask for forgiveness and forgive - 100% of people make mistakes, so that’s already a given. As such, when, not if, I make mistakes I will ask for forgiveness. In the same way whenever someone ask me for forgiveness I will always forgive them. Always.

Be present - Research suggests that being present improves the likelihood of good mental wellbeing. Also, research suggests that we cannot multitask. As such, I want to always be present and make choices so I can be that. For example, either I’ll join a meeting fully, or not at all.

Don’t guess, test - I often find people guessing about things that they could easily test. I always want to default towards trying to see if/how I can best test something before starting to guess. It will often help me make better decisions.

Be kind and empathetic - I’m a huge fan of kindness and empathy. I believe there is almost never a reason to not be kind and empathetic. It’s sometimes much harder to be that, but it’s still right.

I hope all of this inspires you to start discovering and living in-line with your own values. Have an amazing life ❤

Johan A Eriksson