How Living by Your Personal Values Helps You Become More Intentional in Your Life Decisions
Two days ago, I received a text message from a friend.
The note read: “Hey man, I’m thinking about quitting my job and taking a year off. You free for a catchup on Friday?”
This is the same friend who, almost a year ago, while we were catching up over a cup of coffee, asked me this question about success: “Who’s the most successful person you know?” To which I replied, “How do you define success?”
Society at large defines success as the monetary value of your net worth, and unfortunately, so does my friend. But I don’t. When it comes to defining success, I’m someone who aligns with the values of Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
But we’re not here to argue about what success is and what it isn’t. Let’s save that for another time. What we’re here to discuss is how the sheer gravitational pull of our personal values drives our everyday choices, actions, and behaviors.
You see, too often in life, we either do things because everyone else seems to be doing them, or because, like an idle sailboat bobbing about in the open sea, we somehow drift into them.
I know this because I’ve been there myself.
A few years ago I found myself in the wrong career, then in the wrong relationship—one that I didn’t actually want to be in—and later on, building myself the wrong kind of business. I found myself living a life that looked so good on the outside but felt incredibly wrong on the inside. And it didn’t take long for me to recognize the underlying current that was constantly pulling me back in the wrong direction.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I want.
It was that I didn’t know what kind of person I wanted to become.
Why? Because I had no internal compass to guide me—I didn’t know what my values were. I didn’t know what I stood for, and so I didn’t know how to show up in my everyday life or what opportunities I should pursue.
What are Personal Values and Why do They Matter?
According to psychologists, personal values are “broad desirable goals that motivate people’s actions and serve as guiding principles in their lives. They affect people’s preferences and behavior over time and across situations.”
Our personal values mirror the motives behind our actions.
And whether conscious of them or not, our personal values represent what is important to us. They’re fundamental beliefs that guide our decisions and influence our actions in all aspects of our life—career, religion, and relationships.
That’s exactly why when I asked my friend how do you define success, he replied with this: “Basically, who’s the person you know who’s made the most money?”
It was then and there that I realized how different our value systems were. He valued money above everything else. Personally, I value authenticity, kindness, and fulfillment before even considering the question of financial wealth. Why? Because the way I see it, how could someone wealthy be deemed successful if he or she is totally miserable, unhappy, and had to take advantage of so many people in pursuit of that wealth?
The salient point here is this: When you don’t set your own values, you will end up losing yourself in the values of other people. Your identity, self-worth, and the way you lead your life will then become totally contingent upon the value system of others.
Hence, you might find yourself swiftly drifting into that same space I lingered in exactly two years ago: Leading a daily life that looks glamorous on the outside, but incredibly empty on the inside.
And truth is, if you don’t know what your core personal values are, you will have no compass to guide you through life, and thus, you won’t have a chance to experience the liberating beauty of intentional living.
Intentional Living is About Living a Life That is True to You
Plain and simple, intentional living is about living a life that is true to you.
It doesn’t matter what your parents advise you to do, or what society thinks of you, or what your friends think you should do. What matters most is how you feel inside yourself and what you decide to do for yourself. That’s it.
Putting yourself first, slowing down to just be with yourself more often, catching yourself saying “no” more than “yes,” sculpting the space that allows you to create more than you consume, sharing your progress instead of your goals, and questioning the very kind of lifestyle you want to lead—these are all signs that you’re starting to become more intentional about how you want to live your life.
At its core, intentional living is about scripting your personal values and then actively living your daily life in alignment with those values. It’s about being deliberate instead of aimless. Because that’s how you start moving towards what you genuinely desire and moving away from what you don’t. And that’s how you finally begin to connect your inside with the outside.
Make a List of Your 10 Core Values and Vow to Live by Them; This Will Help You Make More Intentional Decisions
Values Clarification is a technique used in cognitive-behavioral therapy. It aims to help people understand their value systems. The way it works is quite simple: Identify your personal values, create a hierarchy of their importance to you, and then use that value system as an everyday guiding compass toward making decisions, assessing opportunities, and improving the overall quality of your life.
Similar to my friend who’s thinking of making a major life change, over the last month, I also had to reflect upon critical choices I had to make. I’ve had some new career opportunities present themselves to me. To arrive at a decision, I found myself asking this question time and time again:
“What matters most to me?”
In order to identify what’s most important to me, I decided to write a list of my own core values. This list is now something I return to whenever I’m feeling lost.
Here’s the list of my 10 personal values and how I define them:
Authenticity. Stay true to who you are at all times, regardless of who you’re with or what other people think of you.
Self-sufficiency. Be reliant on yourself and no one else—financially, mentally, and emotionally. Self-sufficiency equals freedom. Achieve that freedom by creating your own income streams, by practicing habits that build real mental strength, and by cultivating a home inside yourself.
Fearless Love. Live from a place of love, not fear. And be the love you want to receive in this world. Open your heart to whatever you do and whoever you’re with. Seek depth in your relationships, especially with the people you genuinely care for and face fear with courage, hate with kindness, and greed with generosity.
Joyfulness. Do fun things every day that bring you joy: Read, write, nap, drink good coffee, watch the sunset, go to the beach, spend quality time with friends and family. There’s no point in doing work you don’t enjoy or in hanging out with people you don’t like. Life is meant to be enjoyed.
Curiosity. Take responsibility for your own growth. Keep seeking new experiences that push you out of your comfort zone and into your growth zone. Keep evolving, stretching, and expanding. Dig deeper, always. Seek to learn and better understand by asking better questions, especially toward the topics that interest you—that becomes a source of joy in your life. But accept that there are things you can never understand, and that’s okay too.
Optimism. Always believe that the future can still be beautiful, even if you can't imagine it to be so today, and then willfully act and work today to manifest that future. Live by these seven principles of optimism.
Creativity. Consistently express yourself through one or several forms of art. Whether it be dancing, singing, writing, painting, or baking, live like an artist who tells a story and gives more to the world than he takes from it. In other words: Create more, consume less.
Impact. Be kind, be helpful, be a passionate changemaker. Focus on making an impact, not an impression. Think long-term, not short-term. Nourish your roots and expand your branches so that one day far into the future, someone can thank you for your fruits, shade, and wise grace.
Simplicity. Simplify your life. Don’t take yourself or everyday events too seriously, it complicates things. Don’t rush everywhere, it complicates things. Don’t overthink everything, it complicates things. Stay mindful, aware, present, and observant—that is the epitome of simplicity.
Health. Nothing is worth sacrificing your own mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing for. Spend some time every day taking care of your mind, body, and soul, so that they can also take care of you.
When faced with new choices, I can now weigh them upon the scale of my value system and assess their alignment. Here are some examples of the questions I would be asking myself to evaluate present and future decisions:
If I do this, will I be staying true to myself?
If I do this, will I be able to maintain my own self-sufficiency through it?
What kind of impact will this have on others? Does that fulfill me?
What effect will this have on my own wellbeing?
Does this problem make me curious and am I interested in solving it? Is it something that will challenge me? Will it push me to expand and grow?
Practice What You Preach
Will your values change over time? Of course, they will. As psychologist and writer, Daniel Gilbert says, "human beings are a works-in-progress that mistakenly think they are finished." Just as how a tree sheds its leaves year after year, so will you drop older values to adopt new ones.
For now, your core values are your guiding light in life. They define who you are and what you stand for. And it’s only when you know who you are and what’s truly important to you that you can begin to walk on a more intentional path in life, one that allows you to play by your own rules and no one else’s.
But writing down your values is one thing.
Practicing them, and allowing them to guide you, is another.
As per Lao Tzu’s words below, the truly great do not put on a show of virtue, they practice it, little by little, day by day.
"The truly great embody the spirit, not just the external appearance. They bear fruit—not just blossoms. They do not put on a show of virtue—they practice it."
— Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching
So when my friend tells me, “I’m thinking about quitting my job and taking a year off,” my question for him will be simple: “Why does that matter to you?” Upon which I would expect him to share with me the values that guided him toward such a decision. Unless, of course, he’s not even aware of what his own values are in the first place.
The real question is: Are you?