Values Clarification

Values Clarification does three things in order. You pick the values that matter to you, narrow to between five and seven, then rank them. The narrowing is the exercise. Agreeing that honesty, kindness, family, achievement, freedom, security, creativity, and loyalty all matter tells you nothing, because they matter to everyone. Forcing a top seven, and then an order, is where it starts to be useful, because that is the point you find out what you would actually trade. Then, for your top three, you rate how much last week reflected each one. Not last year, last week. That gap is the finding. Most people rate a value highly, look at their diary, and find almost nothing in it that served that value, which is worth knowing before you set another goal. The exercise runs through cognitive behavioural therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and most coaching practice. In ACT particularly, values do the work that goals cannot. A goal can be finished. A value only ever gets acted on or not. Ranking feels artificial, and people resist it. Do it anyway. The discomfort of putting one above another is the information. Come back to it once a year, and after anything big changes. Values shift more slowly than goals, and faster than you would think.