Establishing your personal values, your core values, is a great exercise in understanding yourself better. Once you know your values, you know what you will accept and what you won’t. Your values are the essence of you.
1. Identify five things in life that you would devote a lot of energy to or even die for. In other words, what do you passionately care about and what would you do just about anything to defend?
2. With those answers in mind or written on paper, look over this list of words to see which ones resonate with you. Circle any word or phrase that feels important to you. Pay particular attention to ones that jump out at you. Resist picking certain words because you THINK you should. Don’t think too much during this part of the process.
2. Add any words or phrases to the list that you think need to be included but aren’t.
3. Narrow your list of words down to 10. You are looking for the ones that feel really important. List them here.
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4. Review these words again. Use your feelings to identify those words that really excite you or resonate with something deep inside you. Narrow your selection to four and write them here.
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5. Do these words capture who you really are, in life, not just in business? Are these your personal values that guide your life? If not, keep working on it. You’ll be glad you did.
© Pamela A. Scott, MentorLoft.com, 2016
Photo: Jared Erondu