Are Your Goals in Alignment With Your Values?
Nikki Kett, Boon Coach
Clarifying our core values can help us gain important clarity around our identity. Our values are shaped by our experiences and reflect what is most important to us. Living in alignment of our values impacts our well-being and our happiness. When we use our values while making decisions, we can make sure that we are living our most fulfilled lives, and are in alignment of all the things we find most important to us.
When we go after goals that are out of alignment from our values, we may feel an initial hit of dopamine, but the feeling won’t be long-lived. We won’t feel the same satisfaction when we reach our goals. And when we don’t set goals around important values we hold, we are suppressing important parts of ourselves. When we continue to go after goals that are outside of our core values, we might start to feel disconnected from ourselves, unmotivated, or burnt out. This can happen often though, as a result of societal pressures and people imposing their own values on you without deeper self-reflection of what you want.
It’s important to recognize that every person has had different life experiences, and because of that, they hold a different set of values. While it’s can be helpful to talk over decisions and goals with peers and mentors, it’s important to recognize that nobody has the same values system as you, and because of that, only you know which goals will be most in alignment with the person you want to be.
Our values change over time and are deeply influenced by our experiences. As an example, the pandemic has resulted in many people changing jobs. This is likely due to a recognition of new values resulting in different goals. Instead of staying at a job that requires individuals to compromise their family and personal time, many Americans have opted to leave for jobs that offer more flexibility.
If you are feeling unfulfilled and disconnected to yourself, the first thing you might want to do is reflect on your own personal values. Here’s an exercise you can do to start reflecting on your values:
1. Rank the words below 1-5. 1 being least important, 5 being most important.
2. Circle your 4s and 5s.
3. Group any similar words and choose which resonates for you.
4. Narrow down your top 5 values (try to make sure they are well-rounded and you don’t choose the a similar word for them).
5. Prioritize the Top 5 1-5
Accountability
Achievement
Adaptability
Adventure
Altruism
Ambition
Authenticity
Balance
Beauty
Being the best
Belonging
Career
Caring
Collaboration
Commitment
Community
Compassion
Competence
Confidence
Connection
Contentment
Contribution
Cooperation
Courage
Creativity
Curiosity
Dignity
Diversity
Environment
Efficiency
Equality
Ethics
Excellence
Fairness
Faith
Family
Financial stability
Forgiveness
Freedom
Friendship
Fun
Future generations
Generosity
Giving back
Grace
Gratitude
Growth
Harmony
Health
HomeHonesty
Hope
Humility
Humor
Inclusion Independence
Initiative
Integrity
Intuition
Job security
Joy
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Legacy
Leisure
Love
Loyalty
Making a difference
Nature
Openness
Optimism
Order
Parenting
Patience
Patriotism
Peace
Perseverance
Personal fulfillment
Power
Pride
Recognition
Reliability
Resourcefulness
Respect
Responsibility
Risk -taking Safety
Security
Self-discipline
Self-expression
Self-respect
Serenity
Service
Simplicity
Spirituality
Sportsmanship
Stewardship
Success
Teamwork
Thrift
Time
TraditionTravel
Trust
Truth
Understanding
Uniqueness
Usefulness
Vision
Vulnerability
Wealth
Well-being
Wholeheartedness
Wisdom
(Adapted from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead)
Once you have your top 5 values in terms of priorities, you can keep them with you as you go about setting goals for yourself.
Once you have your top 5 values ranked, ask yourself:
How do I live out my values?
What values am I disconnected from? What goals might I want to set so that I can reintegrate these important parts of my life?
Do my current goals reflect the person I want to be? If the answer is no, how can you reframe your goals so that they are in alignment with your values?
Because our values shift over time, doing this exercise every 6-12 months can be very helpful. We want to be grounded in our identity, but also flexible for new experiences to shape our lives and what we define as important. After a year in a pandemic, you may have realized the importance of family and friends and want some help setting goals to bring this back into your life. Or you may be ready to take on a new project at work after having more down time in the past year due to Covid-19 restrictions. Taking time to reflect on your values and their priority ranking every six months will help you make important decisions on how to set goals that are fulfilling to your life and can strongly impact your quality of life and well-being.
A Boon Coach can help you reflect on your values and set goals that are in alignment with those values.
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