20. Core values -> Life Decisions
August 1, 2025
More this week on the idea of living our lives according to our values. This is an abstract idea, and I want to try to make it more concrete. I see values more as principles or ways of doing things rather than as activities. Looking at the list of values from Brene Brown, this list is a bit of a mish-mash - it includes things like Adventure, Belonging, Collaboration, which are more “how” you do things, but also includes Parenting and Travel, which are more activities. So, this list is a place to start, but not perfect. You may care most about something that is not on this list.
To figure out what your values are, think about what you care most about, what lights you up, what are non-negotiables for you. I mentioned in a previous essay my penchant for composting. I say that composting makes me “unreasonably happy” and by that, I mean it makes me happier than one would think something like composting would. So, that’s a clue to my values. I’d say I have a keen value of sustainability. But also, I did just take a airplane trip to Europe, which some people say is not something that someone who values sustainability should do. However, for the decision to take a long airplane flight, my values of adventure and exploration were more important than my value of sustainability. When it comes to food waste, my value of sustainability outweighs my interest in convenience. See how that works? The most relevant values for each decision take precedence. Incidentally, this is why I am quite suspect when anyone claims to have unwavering values that they hold as a priority 100% of the time. That just does not seem realistic.
So what does it mean to live our lives in accordance with or in alignment with our values? There are times that our values may drive us to change big things in our lives – our relationships, our jobs, where we live. For example, there are examples of people who have resigned in protest when their employer does something that is not aligned with their values, and stories of people who sold everything they own so they could travel the world, presumably because this aligned with their values. But most days, most of us do not have a lot of opportunities to change significant parts of our lives. In fact, it is common to stay in a job, even when we no longer respect our boss or the organization’s mission; it is common to stay in a relationship even when it is not giving us everything we need; it is common to live in a place or in a situation that is not completely what we’d like it to be. And this is because of other things we care about.
Jobs, relationships, moving - these are big, complicated decisions with significant repercussions on many things. We usually are not able to make these big decisions only based on our primary values, because we also have to take into account other impacts. In decision making vocabulary, these are called trade-offs. For example, at one of my jobs, it became clear to me that the direction they were going was not a good fit for me. But my husband had just left his job to start his own company, so I stayed another few months to make sure his business was successful before I left. Those months were hard, and I certainly did not feel like my life was aligned with my values, but I did it, so that we’d have an income and some stability during that transition.
So, living a life according to your values is more about *how* you do things than *what* you do. For example, you are doing the activities of life – having a place to work, a place to live, food to eat, ways to spend your time, people to interact with. If you value “family,” for example, you will do more of these things with your family, especially when you are planning out how you’ll spend your time. If “power” or “financial stability” are strong values, you’d likely aim to choose a job that could lead to more of those. If you value “collaboration,” you will invest in building relationships with others. Your focus and efforts are ideally aligned with your values, to the extent possible.
All of us have specific values and, as I mentioned last time, they are all likely different from each other. Maybe you will find a group of friends that has the same value as you – such as Adventure – and you’ll plan lots of fun exciting trips together. The point is, knowing what your values are does not automatically tell you what to do – it simply tells you what *types* of things would bring you the most life fulfillment, so you can lean towards those, when you have the chance.
In this exploration of your core values, it might be useful to go back and think about major decisions that you’ve made, or that people you are close to have made, and see if you can discern what the values were underlying that decision. Also, think about whether there are any things that make you “unreasonably happy,” and see if you can uncover what values are behind that. As I’ve said earlier, we do not commonly talk about values underlying decisions, but I think if we did, it would help us to understand ourselves and others with a new perspective.
