How to Discover Your Core Values (and Why They Change Everything)
This article is part of my Starting Your Spiritual Journey? series — a beginner-friendly guide for moving from survival mode to soul alignment.
Most people don’t know what they really want.
They wander through life in complete darkness. They don’t know who they are or what drives them. They believe that they have no control over their circumstances, so they continue to let life happen to them rather than through them.
This is what happens when we move through life without ever meeting our true self—the self that lies beneath societal programming and human conditioning.
The first step to understanding who you really are is to identify your core values.
A core value is a deep belief or guiding principle that shapes your behaviour, decisions, and sense of purpose. It represents what matters most to you at the soul level—it’s the qualities or ideals you want to live by, regardless of circumstance or external pressure.
Core values are at the root of your being—it’s how your soul wants to express itself in this lifetime. Making decisions aligned with your core values is how you align with your soul—your true self. They are your internal compass guiding you toward the life you truly desire.
And I’m not talking about material desires like the big house or the fancy car (though you can have those things too). It’s about living a life so unique and authentic to you that you wake up every day with a sense of purpose, peace, and joy.
If you are ready to discover your core values, move on to the exercise below. You will need a few pieces of paper and a pen.
The exercise is from a book titled The Energy of Money by Maria Nemeth. In the book, she refers to core values as “standards of integrity”. To her, integrity means “whole and complete”—your original condition, who you truly are in your heart.
I like this exercise because it’s a powerful place to begin. When you’re not sure who you are yet, it’s easier to recognize truth when you see it reflected in someone else. The qualities you admire in others are mirrors of the values that already live inside you—sometimes hidden under years of conditioning and self-doubt.
Exercise: Discovering Your Core Values
On the left side of the page, make a list of all the people who have qualities you admire. This could be a parent, friend, colleague, religious or political figure, or someone from your past. It doesn’t even have to be a real person—maybe the last book you read had a daring heroine that you admire—add her to the list.
Look at each name, starting with the first and working your way down. Record the qualities or traits you admire about the person. A quality is something that inspires you, such as trustworthy, loyal, intelligent, and so on. Go to the next person on the list. If that person shares qualities with the first, put a check mark next to that attribute. List any additional traits not found in the first person. As you go through the list, you will develop a list of qualities, with check marks that indicate when that quality was noted more than once.
The list can be as short or long as you like; just be as complete as possible.
Take out a clean piece of paper and look at each trait. For each attribute, ask yourself:
How does this word make me feel? Does reading it out loud warm my heart?
Do I like being in the presence of people who have this quality?
Repeat this process until you have completed each word on your list. You may have transferred all of them, or just a few of them. If any other traits occur to you as you do this, add them as well.
4. Once you're done, write the traits down on a small piece of paper. These are your core values. You can put them in your wallet, hang them up on the fridge, or put them on your vision board.
And voila—you’re done!
In the beginning, you’ll want to take your list out often. Get in the habit of looking at or thinking about your list before you make a decision, to see if it’s aligned with your values. Over time, making aligned decisions will become second nature, leading you towards a purposeful and peaceful life.
I hope you found these insights helpful. For more guidance on how to move from survival to thriving mode, check out my other blog posts. I also post helpful videos on YouTube at The Conscious Rebel Collective.
With love and gratitude,
Leighton
