Know Your Values

Most people have never sat down and seriously thought about what they actually value. Not what they think they should value. Not what their parents valued, or their employer, or the culture they grew up in. What they, specifically, genuinely care about when everything else is stripped away.

This matters more than almost anything else in goal setting. Because a goal that conflicts with your values will always lose. Not immediately, not dramatically, but quietly and consistently. You’ll procrastinate. You’ll self-sabotage. You’ll find reasons why now isn’t the right time. And you’ll blame your discipline when the real problem was always alignment.

Why values matter more than motivation

Motivation is temporary. It arrives when you’re inspired, rested, and optimistic, and it disappears when you’re tired, stressed, or facing something difficult. Relying on motivation to pursue a goal is unreliable by design.

Values are different. They’re stable. They’re the things you care about regardless of how you’re feeling on a given Tuesday morning. When a goal is properly aligned with your values, you don’t need to feel motivated to work on it. You just do, because it matters.

Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory explains this with precision. Autonomous motivation, the kind that comes from goals aligned with your genuine values and interests, produces significantly better outcomes than controlled motivation, the kind that comes from external pressure or obligation. People pursuing self-concordant goals, goals that genuinely reflect who they are, show higher wellbeing, greater persistence, and stronger performance than people pursuing goals they feel they should have — Sheldon and Elliot’s work on self-concordance shows this directly.

The difference isn’t talent or discipline. It’s alignment.

What values actually are

Values are not goals. They’re not outcomes. They’re the principles and qualities that matter to you as a way of living, independent of any particular achievement.

Freedom might be a value. So might security. Creativity. Connection. Honesty. Adventure. Family. Mastery. Service. These aren’t things you achieve and tick off. They’re the standards by which you make decisions and the qualities you want your life to reflect. Schwartz’s cross-cultural research on values finds much the same handful of basic types recurring across dozens of countries — among them exactly the kind of list above.

The problem is that most people have never made their values explicit. They operate from them unconsciously, which means they can’t deliberately use them to evaluate whether a goal is genuinely worth pursuing. They set goals based on what looks appealing or what seems like the right thing to do, and then discover halfway through that the goal requires them to compromise something they care about more.

That’s not a motivation problem. That’s a values problem.

The values conflict trap

Here’s how it typically plays out. Someone sets a goal to earn significantly more money. Entirely reasonable. They work toward it. They get the promotion, or the clients, or the business growth. And then they discover that achieving it requires working seventy hours a week, being away from their family four days out of five, and making decisions that compromise their sense of integrity.

The goal was never really theirs. It was something they wanted in the abstract, without examining whether the reality of it fit with what they actually cared about. The money was real. The conflict with their values was also real. And values win.

This is what Cartesian Questioning was designed to surface. But values alignment goes deeper. It’s not just about what you’re giving up when you achieve a goal. It’s about whether the goal itself is an authentic expression of who you are.

How to identify your values

There are several ways to surface your values. None of them are perfect, but all of them are better than operating unconsciously.

The first is the peak experience method. Think of three or four moments in your life when you felt most alive, most yourself, most satisfied with what you were doing. Not necessarily the happiest moments, but the ones where you felt most congruent. What was present in each of those moments? What qualities or conditions made them feel right? The answers point toward your values.

The second is the frustration method. Think of the things that make you genuinely angry or deeply uncomfortable. Not minor irritations, but the things that feel like violations of something important. What’s being violated? The inverse of what frustrates you most is usually something you value deeply.

The third is the eulogy method, borrowed from Stephen Covey. If someone who knew you well were to speak at your funeral, what would you most want them to say about how you lived? Not your achievements. Your character. The way you treated people. What you stood for. The answers reveal what you actually value versus what you currently prioritise.

Values versus shoulds

One of the most important distinctions in this process is learning to separate your genuine values from the values you’ve absorbed from elsewhere and mistaken for your own.

Shoulds are values that belong to someone else. Your parents, your culture, your industry, your peer group. They often feel like values because you’ve held them for so long. But there’s a tell. When you pursue a goal driven by a should, there’s a flatness to it. A sense of going through the motions. Of doing what’s expected rather than what matters.

When you pursue a goal driven by a genuine value, it feels different. Even when it’s difficult. Even when it’s uncomfortable. There’s a quality of rightness to it that motivation alone can’t produce.

Learning to tell the difference is one of the most valuable things you can do before you build any significant goal.

Aligning your goals with your values

Once you have a clearer sense of your values, you can use them as a filter for every goal you set.

Before committing to a goal, ask three questions. Does this goal express or support something I genuinely value? Does pursuing it require me to consistently compromise something I value more? And when I imagine having achieved it, does it feel like an authentic version of my life, or a performance of someone else’s idea of success?

If the answers are yes, no, and authentic, you have a values-aligned goal. It will still be difficult. It will still require effort and persistence. But it won’t require you to fight yourself every step of the way.

That’s the difference values alignment makes. Not easier. Just not working against yourself.

Your first step

Set aside twenty minutes. Work through the peak experience method, the frustration method, and the eulogy method. Write down what surfaces from each one. Look for the words that appear repeatedly across all three.

Those are probably your values.

Then look at the goals you’re currently pursuing or considering. Hold each one up against what you’ve found. Ask honestly: does this fit?

If it does, you’re building on solid ground. If it doesn’t, you’ve just saved yourself a significant amount of time and energy chasing something that was never really yours.

Further reading

1. Ryan, R.M. & Deci, E.L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
2. Sheldon, K.M. & Elliot, A.J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482-497.
3. Covey, S.R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Free Press.
4. Schwartz, S.H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1-65.