Do you feel aimless and adrift in life? Do you feel like something is missing? Well, do you understand your core values? Do you live according to them? Because I know from personal experience that you can lose touch with essential pieces of yourself when you don’t live according to your values.
For me, it caused a feeling of emptiness that often intermingled with and fueled my bipolar depression. Things became much easier when I finally got in touch with what was truly important to me and started living in tune with that.
Let me share with you how I did it, so maybe you can do it, too.
1. Be honest about what truly matters to you.
The process of getting in touch with your values isn’t necessarily as complicated as you think. Many people get tripped up on trying to identify their values because they don’t really know how to look for them. However, mental health experts remind us of how important it is to know yourself, for the betterment of your life and mental health. It’s worth taking the steps.
The easiest way to identify your core values is to sit down and consider the following questions. What stirs your emotions? What creates passion in you? What do you feel strongest about? Now here’s the important question – why do you feel that way? What about that situation causes you to feel so strongly?
Strong emotions are a good signal that your values are either being honored or violated.
In my case, I realized I had a strong leaning toward “justice” as a value. It surrounds us all the time. I first felt the spark of justice when I was living in poverty as a young man. I felt it later in life as an adult, trying to get mental health help from an overburdened, underfunded system with wait times in the months.
It made me angry, and it still fires me up now. I’ve met so many people who have been hurt by the systems that are supposed to help us, usually just to save a couple of bucks.
2. Differentiate between your values and society’s.
Many confuse cultural expectations or family pressures with their own values. Rather than living in tune with what appeals to your personal values, you may find that your values have been drowned out by other conditions in your life.
You have to kind of sift through your different opinions and beliefs to identify what’s yours and what belongs to society. Ask a simple question: “Would I still make this choice if no one else knew about it?”
In my case, I grew up in a conservative area around the kind of people that are perfectly fine with underfunding services because they don’t want their tax dollars wasted on helping strangers, but don’t bat an eyelash at giving billions in subsidies to companies like SpaceX and Lockheed Martin. That’s just not who I discovered myself to be, once I actually examined my own biases and beliefs.
3. Write down your top five values.
Clarity comes from specificity. You want to be specific about what your values are so you can better embrace them. Narrow your list down to a handful of guiding principles, such as justice, compassion, and freedom. That way, you don’t get lost in the vagueness of philosophy while trying to understand the foundation of who you are.
But what if you are having a hard time identifying them? Maybe you just don’t feel strongly enough to really identify with core values. Well, that’s why people turn to religion and philosophy. That’s what I did.
It was far easier to understand myself, exploring the world through those other eyes. I found that I identified with the tenets of Stoicism – to act with Virtue, Justice, Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance. That made it much easier to extrapolate and explore how I should better interact with the world.
4. Audit your daily life for alignment.
Dr. Miki Kashtan writes that much inner conflict comes from not being true to yourself. Take the time to think about how you spend your time, money, and energy. How does that interact with the values that you wrote down? Are you using your putting your time, money, and energy into the things that matter most to you? Do your actions honor your values?
If the answer is no, well then you know where to start. The next step is to think about how you can incorporate those values into your everyday life more. What can you do to live more in tune with your values?
In my case, one of the ways I stepped into authentic alignment was through doing volunteer work to help people who needed it.
5. Use your values as a decision filter.
When you’re faced with a tough choice, let your values guide your decision-making. “Which option is most aligned with my values?” By thinking this way, you are turning your core values into a compass that will lead you in a specific direction, rather than an abstract ideal that will leave you lost.
Due to my mental illness and previous trauma, I found that my moral compass isn’t always the most reliable thing. In fact, there are sometimes when it just spins like a top. However, what I started doing is filtering my thinking through Stoic Virtue.
Are my actions Virtuous? Are they Wise? Courageous? Fair? Moderate? And if the answer was no, I’d think of another solution that was more in line with my values.
6. Revisit and refine as you grow.
As you make this change, you want to periodically go back and consider your values. You may find that they grow and change with time. You may find that other values start speaking to you with greater clarity as you gain new experiences with the way you’re conducting your life.
It’s totally normal to grow and evolve, so you’ll want to periodically reassess and make sure you’re still in-tune with yourself. As you first start to do it, you’ll want to think about it about once a month or so. After a few months, and you’re sure that you’re in tune, then you can space it out further.
I generally reassess about once a year, or when I start feeling strongly one way or another about something unexpected.
Final thoughts…
What this practice gave me was peace of mind with myself. Prior to my diagnosis, therapy, and self-examination, I did a lot of questionable things that I really shouldn’t have. I didn’t realize just how off and different my mental and emotional landscape was from other people due to my autism and bipolar depression.
It can work for you too, but understand that it’s not an overnight solution. I can’t speak for what it will do for you, but I can tell you that choosing to live more in tune with healthy values provided me with a peace of mind and clarity I had been missing for a long time.
I hope it does for you, too.
