Do you ever feel caught up in the chaos of your busy schedule?

Do you find yourself constantly going to events or making time for activities that maybe are not very important to you? Or do you find yourself overwhelmed by the thoughts and opinions of others?

Are you often wondering, am I doing this because I want to do it or am I doing it for other people?

If so; you aren’t alone! There are a lot of people that feel the same way!

Something that can help to take a step back and reset can be identifying your values. When you
identify your values, you are essentially identifying what is most important to you.

Through the identification of your values, it can become easier to drown out the outside noise and voices that sometimes crowd up our mind. Through identifying our own personal values, we can focus on what is meaningful to you and even create some healthy boundaries along the way.

Values often work to guide our choices and decision making in a way that feels authentic to us.

To identify your values, you can reflect on different values or key characteristic words
that you know are already important to you. Maybe you already know that you place a lot of
worth and importance on things like family time and friendship.

How do you know this? Well, maybe you know that you make an extra effort to carve out extra time to spend time with friends and family even if you have a really busy work week. If friendship and family are important values to you, you may also discover that spending dedicated time with loved ones allows you to feel loved, appreciated, happy, and cared for. These are just a few indicators that family and friendship may be important values to you.

If you need additional help identifying personal values or just want to explore other values that may suit you, you can do a quick google search of value words. You can easily find hundreds of value words this way! Go through the words and see what stands out to you as important.

Remember that these words only need to feel important to who you are, they do not have to reflect who anyone wants you to be or who you may be expected to be by others.

Take some time to identify a few words that feel like they shape the person that you are.

Ex. Creative, honest, dependable, confident, adaptability, goal oriented, daring, faith, generous etc.

While identifying personal values can be incredibly helpful in allowing you to live your
truest and most authentic life, it can be even more helpful to break down different values that
reflect on the different facets of your identity. For example, I am my own individual person and I
always want to live authentically to who I am, but I am also so much more than that. I am a
partner, I am a sister, a friend, a daughter, and someone who is career focused. Because there
are multiple facets to my identity, maybe my core individual values do not all fit neatly into these
other aspects of my life.

For example, some core values that I hold close to me and help to guide my choices and decision making are humor, warmth, openness, relaxation, and loyalty. I try to reflect on these values daily and reflect on them in order to make sure that I am being the truest version of myself.

While these are all great values that can bleed over into other aspects of my life, they may not all be the perfect fit.

For example, at work I think warmth can be viewed as a value that carries over. Warmth is important because when working with people it is important to me to be warm and approachable to others. However, when I think about my professional identity, other values like professionalism, knowledge, learning, and achievement stand out as more important values that need to be focused on.

Just like with work and career life, other aspects of my life may call for other values that are reflected on in order to help guide my decision making and allow for me to live authentically.

With this being said, it may be beneficial to reflect on the different aspects of your life or identity and find the words that shape that piece of your life.

Are you a significant other? A parent? A brother or a sister? Career focused?

Take some time to explore the different sides of yourself that make you whole!

So how do we uphold our values once identified rather than work against them?

An important tool to use to look out for when trying to understand if you are upholding your values would be checking in and reflecting on how you feel.

For example, honesty as a partner in a relationship is a value that is very important to me. If I withhold something from my partner and I am dishonest, that could lead me to feel very uncomfortable, upset, sad, or even nervous.

Those uncomfortable feelings are a cue to me that maybe I am doing something or I made
some decision that has worked against my values. Because I am behaving in a way that is not
authentic to me, I am feeling uncomfortable and experiencing negative emotions. When we live
authentically it does not mean that we will never experience an uncomfortable emotion, but it
does mean that we will live in a way that helps us to reach our goals, gain a sense of purpose,
and bring in more of those positive emotions by being true to who we are.

When being true to who you are, you are living an authentic life based on your own morals and values.

If you find yourself struggling to identify the values that allow you to be authentically who you are, our therapists at Solid Foundations Therapy are here to help you! Visit our website at www.solidfoundationstherapy.com or give us a call at 630-633-8532 today.