VALUES: INNER GUIDE, OUTER SHELTER
Remember magic 8-balls? When we were young, we’d ask them all kinds of big (to us) life questions: Does Timmy like me? Will I become a lawyer or a ballet dancer? Does this outfit look stupid?
As I’ve gotten older and the life questions have gotten even bigger, I’ve often wished I had my 8-ball again. How cool would it be to ask it, should I leave my job? Should I stay in my marriage? Should I move to Mexico? and have its little blue reply direct me with confidence?
Within us all lies something just as magic as the 8-balls we hid in our backpacks and consulted under our covers at night: our core values.
A core value is a deeply held, very personal guide for how a person makes decisions, communicates, and takes part in the world around them. It reflects what is most essential to their sense of self, influencing their behavior, choices, and sense of fulfillment.
In my background in leadership development and organizational culture, we told clients all the time that their organizational core values should inform all their business decisions: when the business acted consistently with its values, it was easier to communicate those decisions, meaning employees were more likely to understand them and get on board. And when organizations made decisions that ran afoul of their organizational values, employees would revolt, engagement would go down, and the culture would suffer.
The same is true for individuals, in personal and professional life. When you act out of alignment with your core values, you feel it: stress rises, confidence fades, headaches abound and sleep dissipates. Conversely, staying rooted in your core values will help you make decisions and self-advocate with clarity and purpose. In fact, multiple studies have shown that people who are strongly rooted in their values make clearer decisions and communicate those decisions with directness and integrity (see references, if you want some light reading!). Moreover, when people act in alignment with their values, they actually feel less stress when meeting life’s critical moments.
So, how do values do so much good work for us? Let’s play it out in parallel coaching conversations.
Let's meet an early-career professional faced with a decision: do I move far away from home, all of my friends, and the roots I’ve begun to put down in my professional space to chase a really great job offer, or do I stick it out in my current role and stay with the people I love?
Scenario 1: Family
Coach (C): “What do you value?”
Young Professional (YP): (After some thought) “Family.”
C: “What does ‘family’ mean to you?”
YP: “Family means my parents, my siblings, and my best friends since I was little. Most of them are still here. The people in my life are everything to me, and it’s important to me to be there for all their big moments. I really want to be part of their lives.”
C: “Describe to me what your life looks like in 10 years if you let this value guide you.”
YP: “I still live here in town, and I have dinner at least once a week with my parents and at least one sibling. I have a spouse, maybe a kid or two. There’s always someone around our house: cousins, friends, neighbors. Our house is a safe place for the community we’ve built.”
C: “Close your eyes and imagine you’re there, sitting at the dining room table, surrounded by those people. How do you feel?”
YP: “I feel warm and happy, like I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
C: “So, in this reality, did you take the job and move away?”
YP: “Of course not.”
Scenario 2: Adventure
C: “What do you value?”
YP: “I value adventure.”
C: “What does ‘adventure’ mean to you?”
YP: “Adventure means going out into the unknown. It means trying things, even if they’re scary, because there’s so much to learn out there. I guess I personally have never gotten anything from staying put, and the world is so big so why not get out in it?”
C: “Describe to me what your life looks like in 10 years if you let this value guide you.”
YP: “I have no idea…and honestly, that is so exciting. I’d imagine I’ve traveled, I’ve met wild people, I’ve learned new skills and languages, I’ve eaten weird food. But I don’t even want to box it in too much now, because part of the fun is the surprise.”
C: “Close your eyes anyway, and imagine you’re 10 years richer in whatever experience you’ve had. How do you feel?”
YP: “I feel inspired. I feel wiser. I feel in love with the world, and proud of myself that I got out in it…and excited for what’s next.”
C: “So, in this reality, did you take the job and move away?”
YP: “Hell yes, I did.
Values can get you to “of course not” or “hell yes” by highlighting what really, truly matters to you.
After providing the initial clarity, values are necessary shelter from external and internal headwinds. We are not lone rangers—our inner critics, our families, our jobs, our networks, society at large all exert a huge amount of force on us every day. While those connections can provide a lot of safety, encouragement, and love, they can and will shape a path for us without our consent. This path is often sold to us as “the right way,” the “best bet,” the “safest choice.” But right, best, and safest don’t make it yours.
When your path diverts from theirs, you can expect resistance. Loved ones might express concern that you’re taking on too much risk. People at work might tell you you’re abandoning the team. Society might tell you you’re breaking the rules and you’ll get ostracized. You might even tell yourself that you don’t have it in you, you need more education and experience, you’re just too lazy to get it done.
Identifying what matters most to you (and thinking about it often) can buffer your response to external pressures. It can also quiet the inner voice that tells you that you can’t—because it gives you a louder voice that says “I must.”
Values enable us to be honest and vulnerable while still being sure and steadfast. As Brené Brown puts it in Dare to Lead: “Here’s the thing about values: while courage requires checking our armor and weapons at the arena door, we do not have to enter every tough conversation and difficult rumble completely empty-handed.”
Let’s go back to our young professional.
Scenario 1: Family (continued)
Coach: “So, back to real life. What’s making this a hard decision for you?”
Young Professional: “I’m getting a lot of pressure from my old college advisor, whom I’m still close to. He tells me how much potential I always showed, and that I really shouldn’t be scared to leave what I know. He thinks this job is the best thing for me and my professional future.”
C: “When you think about leaving, do you feel scared?”
YP: “No, I just feel sad. Like I’d be lonely and like I’d miss so many important moments.”
C: “What about making new friends and connections?”
YP: “Sure, I could. I did that when I went to college. But it wasn’t the same, and I’ll never forget how I felt when I came back home to put my own roots down here. It felt so right.”
C: “So, if ‘family’ is the thing you really value in this scenario, what could you say to your advisor next time he pressures you?”
YP: “What matters most to me is the family I have here and the lasting home I’m creating. I won’t let anything come between me and that group of people.”
Scenario 2: Adventure (continued)
C: “So, back to real life. What’s making this a hard decision for you?”
YP: “My parents really want me to stay. They say things like, ‘you’d break our hearts if you left,’ or ‘can’t you find a dream job that isn’t so far away from home? Don’t you want to be around us?’ It’s hard to think about hurting them like that. It makes me sad.”
C: “When you think about staying, how do you feel?”
YP: “Bored. Boxed in. Sad. Frustrated. I could go on.”
C: “OK, so you’ll be sad either way. Which sad is better?”
YP: “I know my parents love me…and I think if I really told them why I want to go they’d get it eventually. I’d still miss them, of course. But, I guess I’m saying leaving feels better than staying, because it feels more honest.”
C: “So, if choosing the adventure is what you value, what could you say to your parents next time you’re with them?”
YP: “I could say, ‘I love you guys. And, the prospect of this adventure and all the things I’ll learn, the stories I’ll gather, and the things I’ll experience is too much to turn away from. I won’t let anything stop me from experiencing as much as I can from the world as long as I’m in it. And I can’t wait to share those stories with you when I come back home to visit.’”
So, values get you to the “of course not” and the “hell yes”—and they help you stay the course by articulating what matters most to you, even and especially when it’s hard. And make no mistake, some conversations will be very, very hard. With hard, honest conversations, though, a cool thing happens: your relationships will get more honest, more vulnerable, and more resilient. And there may be times when, after lots of hard conversations and deep reflection, you do decide to compromise; that choice is yours, as well, and one that you can make with conviction that you’re compromising for the right reason. There may be other times when your relationships get worse, which begs the question, “do I want to stay close to a person who doesn’t respect what I value?”
Ultimately, identifying your values is a great way to know yourself, speak stronger, truer language for yourself, and make decisions that get you closer to what matters. Knowing your values won’t lessen any external pressures—those winds are strong, cold and constant. It will, though, fortify you against those battering winds and light a warm fire within. And while you wait out the storm, you can pull out your magic 8-ball and ask it, “should I keep listening to myself?”
From the blue depths within, an answer will emerge: ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES.
References
Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts. Random House.
Creswell, J. D., Welch, W. T., Taylor, S. E., Sherman, D. K., Gruenewald, T. L., & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16(11), 846–851. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01624.x
Patrick, V. (2023). The power of saying no: The new science of how to say no that puts you in charge of your life. Sourcebooks. https://www.vanessapatrick.net
Schmeichel, B. J., & Vohs, K. D. (2009). Self-affirmation and self-control: Affirming core values counteracts ego depletion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(4), 770–782. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014635
Sherman, D. K., & Cohen, G. L. (2006). The psychology of self-defense: Self-affirmation theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 183–242. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38004-5
Van Bavel, J. J., FeldmanHall, O., Mende-Siedlecki, P., & Crockett, M. J. (2015). The neuroscience of moral cognition: From principles to action. Nature Neuroscience, 18(8), 1169–1174. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4083
