Gina Kawalek, Life at Play

A value is defined as a strongly held belief about what is valuable and important. Take some time to reflect on what you deeply care about. Jot down any words that resonate with you (i.e community, freedom, joy, love, creativity) and then narrow it down to your top 3 or 4 values. Not selecting a value in your top values doesn't mean you don’t value it.

To help, ask yourself:

• What pisses you off about other people? You might value the thing they’re not doing.
• When were you most proud, fulfilled and happiest?

Remember: You can change your mind.  Just because you select something as a core value today does not mean it will ALWAYS be your core value.

If you’re stuck below, “List of Values” is an excellent list to refer to for inspiration.

Once you have defined your core values

Ask yourself if you are honoring those values with your time and money. If not, look carefully at where you are spending your time and money.

Most of us fritter away a good percentage of time and money on things like impulsive shopping, duplicate items, and poor habits. When I looked at where I was spending my time and money I was shocked to realize how much I spent on dining out and how little I devoted to things I deeply care about like education and travel. So, look at your values list and ask yourself:

• What do you want to spend more time doing?
• Where do you want to invest more of your money?
• What areas can you scale back on?

List of Values

If you are using the list, I recommend either deleting or highlighting — green (keep) or red (reject) — the values below, which do not stand out as your top ones. Cut the list in half, and then cut the remaining ones in half, then again, and again until you have 3 or 4 values remaining.

Accountability

Accuracy

Achievement

Adventurousness

Altruism

Ambition

Assertiveness

Balance

Being the best

Belonging

Boldness

Calmness

Carefulness

Challenge

Cheerfulness

Clear-mindedness

Commitment

Community

Compassion

Competitiveness

Consistency

Contentment

Continuous Improvement

Contribution

Control

Cooperation

Correctness

Courtesy

Creativity

Curiosity

Decisiveness

Democraticness

Dependability

Determination

Devoutness

Diligence

Discipline

Discretion

Diversity

Dynamism

Economy

Effectiveness

Efficiency

Elegance

Empathy

Enjoyment

Enthusiasm

Equality

Excellence

Excitement

Expertise

Exploration

Expressiveness

Fairness

Faith

Family-orientedness

Fidelity

Fitness

Fluency

Focus

Freedom

Fun

Generosity

Goodness

Grace

Growth

Happiness

Hard Work

Health

Helping Society

Holiness

Honesty

Honor

Humility

Independence

Ingenuity

Inner Harmony

Inquisitiveness

Insightfulness

IntelligenceIntellectual Status

Intuition

Joy

Justice

Leadership

Legacy

Love

Loyalty

Making a difference

Mastery

Merit

Obedience

Openness

Order

Originality

Patriotism

Perfection

Piety

Positivity