Knowing your values is an important tool for personal growth and emotional well-being. The reason is simple: When you act in line with your values, you feel connected to who you are. When you haven’t, your mental health suffers. You can find more about how to work with values in my post, To Deal With Emotional Triggers On Your Own, Try The Five Whys.
I first learned about the power of values for mental health through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a mental health treatment modality created by psychologist Steven C. Hayes, PhD. For an accessible explainer, consider reading his book Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
To find your core values, review this list of some common ones. Select the top three to five that are more meaningful to you right now.
- Accountability
- Achievement
- Adaptability
- Adventure
- Altruism
- Authenticity
- Autonomy
- Balance
- Beauty
- Belonging
- Career
- Caring
- Celebration
- Citizenship
- Cooperation
- Collaboration
- Comfort
- Community
- Compassion
- Competence
- Confidence
- Contribution
- Creativity
- Curiosity
- Determination
- Dignity
- Earnestness
- Equality
- Equity
- Fairness
- Faith
- Forgiveness
- Freedom
- Friendship
- Fun
- Generosity
- Grace
- Gratitude
- Growth
- Happiness
- Harmony
- Health
- Home
- Honesty
- Honor
- Hope
- Hospitality
- Humility
- Humor
- Inclusivity
- Independence
- Industry
- Influence
- Initiative
- Integrity
- Intuition
- Inquisitiveness
- Justice
- Joy
- Kindness
- Knowledge
- Learning
- Listening
- Love
- Loyalty
- Moderation
- Multiculturalism
- Nature
- Novelty
- Openness
- Optimism
- Peace
- Play
- Pleasure
- Power
- Pride
- Progress
- Recognition
- Reliability
- Resourcefulness
- Respect
- Responsibility
- Safety
- Security
- Serenity
- Service
- Simplicity
- Spirituality
- Stability
- Status
- Stewardship
- Success
- Surprise
- Teamwork
- Temperance
- Thrift
- Thoughtfulness
- Tradition
- Trustworthiness
- Truth
- Vulnerability
- Wealth
- Wisdom