FCTB013: How to Identify and Prioritize Your Core Values

For today’s episode, we will tackle Core Values. Identifying your personal core values is guaranteed to help you grow, but most people do not see this as a top of mind thing to do. However, we often realize how important core values are once faced with conflicts and decisions where we find it hard to arrive at a resolution.

As defined, value is the relative worth or importance of something. While we all can value a lot of things, we also have our core values. If we look back to the balance wheel which we’ve discussed a few weeks ago, its spine/foundation is your core values, and it steers how you traverse your life.

Some of the points I’ve raised are:
How our core values determine how you spend your time, money and resources, how you treat other people and how you will be treated, what you will stand for, fight for and what you let slide (2:20).

Quotes about core values that I would like to share to all of you so you get to have a better grasp and understanding of the concept (3:20; 3:40; 24:31).

• “Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave ’em all over everything you do.” – Elvis Presley
• “It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” – Roy E. Disney
• “Begin each day with the blueprint of my deepest values FIRMLY in mind then when challenges come, make decisions BASED on those values.” – Stephen Covey

Looking back on my personal evolution and seeing that even I wasn’t fully aware of my personal core values years ago, and this drove me into being an advocate of learning (4:36).

How knowing our core values help us with communicating our stand better, dealing with relationships, understanding ourselves and the people around us, and realizing that despite differences or our own truths not echoing with the majority’s stance, it is alright (5:48, 12:15).

An exercise with a list questions to help you identify your values are listed below. I also share my answers to the questions, anecdotes, and confessions just so you also get an idea of what my values are (7:14).

• What makes you happy and brings you joy (7:34)?
• What frustrates you and ticks you off, and why (7:42)?
• Where do you spend your time and money (7:48)?
• Where do you want to be spending your time and money (7:51)?
• What do you worry about repeatedly (8:01)?
• What are you most proud of (9:36)?
• What brings you a sense of fulfillment (10:03)?
• Who do you admire and why (10:07)?
• Who do you dislike and why (10:12)?
• What do you think positively about (13:16)?
• What’s the biggest argument you’ve had, and how was it resolved (13:28)?
• When have you gone out of your way to help someone, and why did you do that (16:19)?
• What sacrifices have you made for others (16:27)?
• What decisions do you regret (16:35)?
• What decisions would you make again in a heartbeat (16:41)?
• What things, peoples, events, etc. do you feel drawn to (16:47)?
• What things, peoples, events, etc. do you pull away from (17:03)?

How to identify your Core Values through this exercise by:

• Checking what are the common themes that run through all your answers (17:59).
• Identifying the values that keep coming up for you (18:29).
• Taking the 3-5 most common themes (18:35).
• Asking other people who know you well what they think your values are (19:00).
• Prioritizing your core values (19:35).

The most important part of this exercise, however, is aligning your thoughts, words, behavior, and decisions around your core values. I also illustrate by sharing my experiences how knowing the prioritization and order of my core values made it easier for me to arrive at a decision.

I hope that you take the time to really reflect on this, maybe even journal about it, so you can realize your personal truth and core values.

When you’re done with this, I’d love to hear the results of this exercise for you, give me a shout out in the comments section, or by directly emailing me at [email protected]. If you find this episode useful to you, share it to your social circle and see how they’ll benefit from it too.

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