Value-aligned living
What are values and why are they important?
According to Russ Harris, values are “desired qualities of action: how you want to behave; how you want to treat yourself, others, and the world around you.” They are the principles that guide and motivate us throughout our lives, and they require action to live and move in the world.
Here are three important steps in the process:
1. Identifying key life domains.
Often, it can be helpful to view values based on which life domain is involved. Your values will likely differ across these domains. Life domains that are important to most people include: physical health, family relationships, parenting, romantic relationships, work, learning/education, personal growth/psychological well-being, and play/recreation.
2. Determine the importance of and satisfaction with life domains.
Next, it’s helpful to get a sense of where you are in terms of values alignment right now. This can help you figure out where to intervene and when. To do this, first rate how important the life domain is to you overall from 1–10. Note: the rankings are not ordinal. You can have multiple items rated as 10.
Second, rate how consistently aligned your actions, behaviors, and choices have been in that life domain from 1–10 over the last week. Try not to overthink this and focus on critical self-assessment of how unsuccessful you felt you were. We want to get a sense of what you’ve been trying to do. For instance, let’s say the valued domain of physical health is a 10 to me, but I broke my leg. It does not automatically mean it will be rated 0. If I have not engaged in any exercise, ate poorly, and stayed up all night binge-watching Netflix, I might get a 1. But, if I worked out my upper body with weights, did physical therapy 3 times a week, ate well, and emphasized sleeping it might be an 8 or 9.
You can use these ratings as well as the domain’s current priority in your life as indicators for change, and the degree of internal and external barriers will help determine where to take action first.
3. Aligning goal-setting and committed action with values.
After clarifying values, it is important to monitor how your actions and behaviors align with them. Some questions to ask yourself when trying to decide how to act or which goals to set include:
(a) What are the most important valued domains for me right now?
(b) What actions are consistent with those values (or move me towards them) and which ones are inconsistent (or move me away or block my progress towards them)?
(c) What is a specific, measurable, articulable, relevant, and time-based goal that I can set for action in this area?
Important things to remember about values?
Values are flexible and context-driven. Our values can change over time. In a given moment, you may notice that some values are a bigger priority than others. How I live and act in line with my values will likely differ depending on the context and situation.
Values are not goals. These are two different concepts. Goals can be attained, checked off, achieved, and completed. There is an endpoint. Values are guiding principles, there is no endpoint — they are continuous and ongoing. Values are like the points on a compass (e.g., west). Goals are the place you’re going to (e.g., Austin). You can’t get to Austin (goals) without figuring out which way is West first (values clarification). And you can never obtain or achieve West as an endpoint — the directions on a compass are an infinite loop.
Values are freely chosen. There are no “shoulds” or “have tos.” Values are also not rules or beliefs about how we “should” act or behave or what we “should” want. This is not about deciding what you think you could or should hypothetically achieve or what you or others think you deserve.
Values relate to our own behavior. They don’t depend on what others do or don’t do. This is a critical part of values-clarification because many of us base our choices on what other people will think, feel, or do — all things that we have no absolute control over.
With that, take a moment and reflect on your values, identify how you’d like to move forward, and plan out some value-aligned behaviors to action!
