The first step to knowing yourself, is knowing what is important to you
For weeks, I moved through the motions of my busy schedule with an unsettling contradiction or confusion inside of me. My life felt full, I was happier than I had been in truly a long time, yet something deep inside felt faded, kind of like a flickering light behind a cloud of fog. I never sat with this confusion or faced it head on, because my life was filled with everything a semester of a student with a chaotic schedule is filled with. The truth dawned on me that I didn’t know what inner values were guiding my daily choices, and that left me feeling unsure of myself.
Values are supposed to be a compass – the invisible principles that shape the way we choose, love, speak and move through life. The dictionary defines them as “a person’s principles or standards of behavior,” but living without them, or without knowing what yours are, feels more like aimlessly wandering. Left without a true north to rely on. I knew I had them. I assumed they were obvious, but going through the motions like I felt I was is not the same as living with intention.
It took a long conversation with two of my closest friends – and a set of 36 questions to fall in love – to finally realize I had been moving through the motions and lacking that intention. Specifically, when we reached question 13, “If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?” and one of my friends said he wished he could know how his values influenced his everyday choices, a floodgate was opened that I didn’t ever realize was closed. When they asked what I thought my values were, my mind went blank. I couldn’t find words to describe what guided me because I hadn’t taken the time to listen to what my heart told me.
My other friend, realizing that lack of self-clarity filled me with stress, smiled at me and told me she once felt the same faded view of her own life – until she sat with a list of common values and realized which words her heart told her to keep returning to. She told me that the words I can’t skim past and continue on to the next from most likely meant something deeper.
Later that night, I let myself listen to my heart. I slowed down and searched for the words that felt like home. With time, there was a shift. It was like someone finally gave me a new battery to the flashlight guiding me through the tunnel of my life.
Identifying your values is not about the perfect or most eloquent words in the dictionary. It isn’t about knowing everything about who you are or writing a big memoir about who you want to be versus who you are and this great journey you will embark on to get there. It is about knowing what roots you when everything else feels uncertain. It is about choosing who you want to be when life pulls you in a dozen different directions at once. It is about knowing why you make the decisions you do, and feeling good about them.
When you know your values, decisions come easier. Relationships become more intentional and meaningful. Boundaries become clearer and less scary to set. You begin to notice what aligns you, what guides you and what you know you deserve in your life.
So yes, this all started with a mid-semester crashout about being too busy, but it ended with a reminder: your values don’t just have to be words on a list; they can truly guide you through life. So take the time to name them. Take time to revisit them. And let them evolve with you.
Identifying your values can be the distant but peaceful hum to a chaotic and noisy head.