Identifying your core values – Step 3
This is a 5-part series on how to identify your core values. I am defining a core value as a primary motivating factor that influences your decisions in every area of your life. Please note that this is not a process whereby you just pick a value you want to focus on. No. This is about looking at what is already there – the values that influence your decisions, often subconsciously. If you are just stumbling upon this, you can read my first post in the series and then start working on Step 1.
YOUR TASK: Grouping the values from Step 2.
Now that you’ve written your 5-7 stories from Step 1 and identified the driving motivations in Step 2, we are ready for Step 3. You will want to look at my example below for reference.
Look at your stories (from Step 1) and note the things you considered from Step 2. Now you need to list out, on one sheet of paper, all of the things you considered from all of your stories. As you can see in my example below***, I identified my driving motivations as: time, hospitality, community, family, ease, convenience, knowledge, need to be prepared, making a good impression, sense of responsibility, need to feel accepted, and connection.
Once you get all of those factors written out on your sheet of paper, you will likely notice some themes. You might like to take highlighters or different colored pencils and mark words that are related or the same. For ex. I might decide that “hospitality,” “community,” “connection,” and “need to feel accepted” are similar enough to me that I will group them under the general idea of belonging to a community of friends.
“Ease” and “Convenience” speak to my desire for things to be simple, but I know in my heart that what I was really looking for was convenience. So I will group ease and convenience under just convenience.
“Knowledge” and “need to feel prepared” are similar and if I think about them, basically I really wanted to feel confident and prepared, like I knew what I was doing. So, “knowledge” and “need to feel prepared” actually represent feeling confident. And, when I think about making a good impression, the underlying issue there was my insecurity and the fact that I DIDN’T feel confident. So, I will put “making a good impression” under feeling confident, too.
Out of my list, I still need to categorize time, family. and sense of responsibility. Time is a pretty general one. I am always concerned about how long something is going to take. So, I will leave that as time. Other things could easily fit into this category, maybe “distance” if you had considered the commute for a new job. In considering distance, you might actually be thinking about the time involved in traveling, not really the distance itself. Family is also a pretty general category. I have a husband and 3 kids and, no matter what I do, I have to take them and their needs/desires into consideration, so I will leave that as Family.
I also noted that I felt a “sense of responsibility” when hosting Thanksgiving. If I look deeper at that, what I see, now, is that I wanted to be in control! I wanted to feel control over what was happening, whether people were enjoying themselves, whether the food and the atmosphere were how I wanted them to be… And, I realize that even “need to be prepared” and “knowledge” could actually speak to my deeper need for control.
So, now I have grouped all of my driving motivations into a few main categories:
- belonging to a community of friends
- convenience
- feeling confident
- time
- family
- control
When you’ve gone through this exercise with all of your stories, you will notice some themes like this. You will see that, no matter what your story is about, it will reveal some similarities about how you approached the situation. These are KEY!
So, spend some time grouping all your driving motivations/considerations from your stories and make your list. You might end up with anywhere from 8-20 main categories.
In the next step, we will narrow these categories down even further and learn how to make them work for you.
***MY EXAMPLE***
My husband really loves cooking thanksgiving dinner. He hates traveling at that time and, with 3 little kids, we decided it was just easier to stay at home.(FAMILY; EASE/CONVENIENCE) But there’s always so much food left over, we decided we wanted to invite some friends to share the meal with us. (COMMUNITY) We thought about which friends we knew who either didn’t typically celebrate thanksgiving or didn’t have family in town, and so might be willing to join us. (CONNECTION; COMMUNITY; HOSPITALITY) I sent them text messages and asked if they would like to come for dinner. (CONVENIENCE; HOSPITALITY) I had read a blog post about how to do a better turkey, so I printed out the recipe and added it to our pile of Thanksgiving Day notes. (KNOWLEDGE; NEED TO BE PREPARED) The week leading up to Thanksgiving, I tried to do as much stuff ahead of time as possible. (TIME; NEED TO BE PREPARED) I didn’t want people to be sitting around waiting for the food to come out or for the food to all come out at different times so that some items got cold before the meal was all ready. (TIME; MAKING GOOD IMPRESSION; HOSPITALITY) I knew I wouldn’t have time to make homemade biscuits, so I bought the cans of Pillsbury dough. I also knew it would be easier to just have ready-made pies. (CONVENIENCE; TIME) The day before Thanksgiving, I spent the entire day cleaning the house and setting up the tables. I wanted it to be pretty, but I also wanted our friends to feel welcome and like this was something special. (HOSPITALITY) I wanted them to see that we could pull this off and have it be GOOD. (MAKING GOOD IMPRESSION) When everyone arrived, I was super stressed out and nervous and couldn’t relax. I wanted to just set up the party and then leave for everyone else to enjoy it! (SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY; NEED FOR SOLITUDE) I was so worried about everything turning out perfectly, that it was hard for me to just sit down. (NEED TO FEEL ACCEPTED) I couldn’t tell if people were enjoying themselves. Because WE were the ones hosting, because WE had invited them, I felt a huge responsibility to make sure everything was perfect. (SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY) I knew that the better thing would be to relax and just appreciate the food and friendship, but I couldn’t shake the fear that it wasn’t turning out exactly as I wanted – or good enough for everyone else to be glad they came. (DESIRE FOR COMMUNITY, ACCEPTANCE)
Intro Post: How to identify your core values (and why it matters!)
Step 2: Name and summarize the various factors you considered important, as revealed by your stories
Step 3: Group the values as revealed in Step 2
Step 4: Identify your core values & learn how to make them work for you
