What are your highest values? What is your “true north?” What principles or qualities do you treasure the most in life?
Knowing, and living, your highest values, often called core values, is a key to a thriving life. By knowing your “true north,” you can consistently grow and mature into the person you were created to be.
While many organizational mission and vision statements include a list of values, knowing your own list of values, and having them prioritized, helps you in self-leadership and mastery. And to become more self-aware of your own risk for burnout or moral injury.
This little cartoon illustrates how your values give direction to your life:
The car is your life, everything that is in your own “yard,” as we saw with boundaries.
Your values steer your car in their “preferred” direction (if your values don’t align with each other, and one wants to go here and the other there, you get incongruity and inner conflict resulting in significant stress).
Your thinking, along for the ride, will then direct and choose your behaviour.
What are values?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of a value is “something such as a principle or a quality, intrinsically valuable or desirable.”
A value for you may be how you desire to relate to others, such as “kindness.” It may be an ethical standard, such as “truthfulness.” It may be a habit or a discipline, such as “physical fitness.” It may be a spiritual devotion and belief, such as being a disciple or follower of Jesus.
Values are what you aspire to become. When properly aligned and congruous (being in agreement or in harmony), they help you answer the following profound questions:
- Who am I?
- What will be the centre of my life?
- What will be the character of my life?
- And what is the direction (purpose or mission) of my life?
Knowing, pursuing, and living your highest values adds immense satisfaction and meaning to life. Unfortunately, many have never done a value discovery exercise and therefore don’t have their own “true north” compass. Rather, many people live reactively out of what we could call “de-values”, those mostly painful things in life they work hard to either deny or numb.
Some examples of possible de-values are anger (offence, unforgiveness, retaliation), pride, jealousy, greed, or dependency (substances, pornography, or people-pleasing).
“Courage is a value. My faith is the organizing principle in my life and what underpins my faith is courage and love, and so I have to be in the arena if I’m going to live in alignment with my values.”
Brené Brown
Discovering your values
Taking the time to reflect and to go through a values clarification exercise is well worth your time and is highly recommended. There are several ways to do the exercise. Typically when done alone, one starts with a master list to select maybe as many as 10 values that seem to fit you.
Here is such a master list of values by Brené Brown, part of her excellent Dare to Lead book and worksheets.
Or here is a printable list arranged as cards that you can cut up and then sort into piles – that’s me, that’s not me.
As you choose your top 10 values from these lists, make sure they fit your worldview or philosophy of life. Everyone of us have a set of glasses through which we interpret reality. Your worldview will incorporate your beliefs, especially about an invisible spiritual realm and the after life. Or alternatively, your world view may be atheistic with the belief that there is no invisible realm outside the visible universe. Others may have an Eastern worldview where matter and spirit are seen as one.
Once you have your top 10 values, rearrange them in priority from the highest to the lowest. This can be hard and should not be rushed. Your 3 or 4 highest values should answer the questions, “Who am I?” and “What will be the centre of my life?”
Lastly, you will write a sentence around each value describing how you will know that you are actually living and achieving this value (e.g. “When I (value) then I …”).
So, it is essential that your values are congruent, or in harmony with each other. Keep them handy, either in your wallet or on your phone. Use them so that the direction of your life and your choices become clearer and more focussed. And when to say “no” to asks that do not align with your values.
When values conflict
There are times when your own values are in conflict with others around you. It may be the dominant culture, or your workplace, or other family members. Having healthy boundaries and self-confidence are key to resolving the inner conflict this creates. There are times that one needs to agree to disagree.
Moral injury is more significant though. It is the damage done to your own conscience or moral compass when you are forced to perpetrate, or witness, or even just fail to prevent, acts that transgress your own moral beliefs and values.
Moral injury was first identified in the military, but has also been identified as a risk factor for burnout and resignation in healthcare workers. In the context of healthcare, moral injury describes the challenge of simultaneously knowing what care patients need but not being able to provide it due to constraints beyond their control.
The Covid-19 pandemic, with high rates of physician and nurse burnout, have brought moral injury to the fore. It is essential that healthcare leaders recognize these risks and take provide necessary assistance to their staff.
If you are feeling conflicted or unsure of your own values, reach out to a close friend, mentor, or counselor to help you gain more clarity. Or find a group workshop for an opportunity to discover your values through group activities. There are fun exercises to help participants recognize what they place high worth on.
Contact us at IHTC if you or a group would like to host a values workshop.
Compassionately,
