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Find Your North Star: A Single Step to Make Better Decisions

Plus, a curated list of values to help you define your personal compass.

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🌠 Do This One Thing for Emotional Stability

✨ TL/DR: What Are Personal Values?

đź’ˇ Sol Bites: Personal Values Discovery Session

🦋 How to Align Your Actions with Your Values

🦉 Words of Wisdom

Welcome to Wisdom & Sol and to the 1,324 people who have joined us since last week! If you haven’t subscribed, join our community of 41,416 intelligent, curious folks who want to boost their emotional well-being by subscribing here.

We write a lot in these newsletters about identifying and defining personal values. We do it because solid emotional well-being often hinges on having a well-defined set of personal core values. Values are like a life map that guides us through challenges and obstacles, helping us achieve our goals.

However, many of us try to navigate life without this map. We often rely on gut feelings and hope for the best when facing tough decisions. The trouble is, gut instincts can sometimes lead to choices we later regret, whether selecting the wrong job, the wrong friends, making the wrong decision about getting married, or another significant life commitment. So today, we’re going to help you get really specific about identifying your values—hopefully, you’ll come away with six to eight that resonate profoundly and will guide you in your decision-making.

TL/DR: What Are Personal Values?

Values are guiding principles that help you make wise decisions when uncertainty or strong emotions, like fear or anger, arise.

Understanding your values can be as helpful as finding a map if you are lost in the wilderness. It won't solve all your problems, but will help you tackle them confidently and skillfully.

Sol Bites: Personal Values Discovery Session

This approach uses a curated list of values, similar to the one developed by Dr. Russ Harris, author of The Confidence Gap and a noted expert in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

Although we’ve written articles about defining your values using exercises, this one is more straightforward.

All you need to do is select your top six to eight values from the list provided. Remember, values represent your deepest aspirations for your conduct as a human. Your values are not what you want to acquire or accomplish but how you wish to behave and interact with yourself, others, and the world. While there are countless values, this list includes some of the most common ones. Not every value will resonate with you, and it’s important to remember that there are no “right” or “wrong” ones.

Values List: Choose 6 to 8 that you want to live by

1. Acceptance: Being open to and accepting of myself, others, and life
2. Adventure: Actively seeking, creating, or exploring novel or stimulating experiences
3. Assertiveness: Respectfully standing up for my rights and request what I want
4. Authenticity: Being genuine, honest, being true to myself
5. Beauty: Appreciating, creating, nurturing, or cultivating beauty in myself, others, the environment
6. Caring: Being loving towards myself, others, and the environment
7. Challenge: Continuing to challenge myself to grow, learn, improve
8. Compassion: Acting with kindness towards those who are suffering
9. Connection: Engaging fully in whatever I am doing and being fully present with others
10. Contribution: Helping, assisting, or making a positive difference to myself and others
11. Conformity: Being respectful and obedient to rules and obligations
12. Cooperation: Being collaborative with others
13. Courage: Being brave; persisting in the face of fear, threat, or difficulty
14. Creativity: Being innovative
15. Curiosity: Being open-minded and interested, exploring and discovering
16. Encouragement: Fostering and rewarding behavior that I value in myself or others
17. Equality: Treating others as equal to myself, and vice-versa
18. Excitement: Seeking, creating, and engaging in activities that are stimulating or thrilling
19. Fairness: Being fair to myself or others
20. Fitness: Looking after my physical and mental health and wellbeing
21. Flexibility: Adjusting and adapting readily to changing circumstances
22. Freedom: Living freely, choosing how I live and behave, or helping others do likewise
23. Friendliness: Being companionable or agreeable towards others
24. Forgiveness: Being forgiving towards myself or others
25. Fun: Seeking, creating, and engaging in fun-filled activities
26. Generosity: Giving to myself or others
27. Gratitude: Being appreciative of the positive aspects of myself, others, and life
28. Honesty: Being truthful and sincere with myself and others
29. Humour: Seeing and appreciating the humorous side of life
30. Humility: Being modest, letting my achievements speak for themselves
31. Industry: Being industrious, hard-working, dedicated
32. Independence: Being self-supportive and choosing my own way of doing things
33. Intimacy: Opening up and sharing—emotionally or physically—in my close relationships
34. Justice: Upholding justice and fairness
35. Kindness: Being compassionate, nurturing or caring towards myself or others
36. Love: Acting lovingly or affectionately towards myself or others
37. Mindfulness: Being conscious of and curious about my here-and-now experience
38. Order: Being orderly and organized
39. Open-mindedness: Thinking things through, seeing things from others' points of view, and weighing the evidence fairly
40. Patience: Waiting calmly for what I want
41. Persistence: Continuing resolutely despite problems or difficulties
42. Pleasure: Creating and giving pleasure to myself or others
43. Power: Strongly influencing or wielding authority over others, e.g., taking charge, leading, organizing
44. Reciprocity: Building relationships in which there is a fair balance of giving and taking
45. Respect: Being polite, considerate, and showing positive regard
46. Responsibility: Being accountable for my actions
47. Romance: Displaying and expressing love or strong affection
48. Safety: Securing, protecting, or ensuring the safety of myself or others
49. Self-awareness: Being aware of my own thoughts, feelings, and actions
50. Self-care: Looking after my health and well-being and getting my needs met
51. Self-development: Continually growing, advancing, or improving knowledge, skills, character, or life experience
52. Self-control: Acting following my own ideals
53. Sensuality: Creating, exploring, and enjoying experiences that stimulate the five senses
54. Sexuality: Exploring or expressing my sexuality
55. Spirituality: Connecting with things bigger than myself
56. Skilfulness: Continually practicing and improving my skills and applying myself fully when using them
57. Supportiveness: Being helpful, encouraging, and available to myself or others
58. Trust: Being trustworthy; being loyal, faithful, sincere, and reliable
59. [Your Value]: Insert your own unlisted value here
60. [Your Value]: Insert your own unlisted value here

🎉 Congratulations! You've just curated your personal playbook of values—your new compass guiding every adventure.

Review, reflect, and revisit these exercises periodically. Your values will evolve with your experiences, just like an epic playlist. 🎶 Let the world know what you stand for, and lead with intention.

Explore two areas of your life where your values matter most.

Words of Wisdom

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Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values,  your values become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi

Along the Same Lines…

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Mona & The Sol TV Team ❤️

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