You wake up each morning and go through the motions. Work, commitments, responsibilities, endless to-do lists. But when was the last time you stopped and asked yourself if this life you’re living actually reflects who you really are? Not who you think you should be, or who your family expects you to be, but who you truly are at your core.
Many of us live and work on autopilot, knowing when situations don’t feel right but not really understanding why. There’s this nagging sensation that something is off, yet we can’t quite put our finger on it. Maybe you’ve felt it during a meeting at work where you nodded along despite disagreeing completely. Or perhaps it surfaces when you’re saying yes to commitments you don’t want, simply because you feel obligated. The truth is, you might be living out of sync with your deepest values.
So let’s get started on this journey of honest self-reflection. This isn’t about becoming someone new or chasing some idealized version of yourself. It’s about peeling back the layers and discovering what genuinely matters to you.
The Foundation: What Are Core Values Really?
Core values are the deeply held beliefs and principles that shape our choices, actions, and the very essence of who we are. Think of them as your personal compass. They’re not abstract concepts floating around in motivational quotes on social media. Values can be simply described as things that are especially important to us, such as family, health, security, freedom, or trust.
Here’s the thing though. Personal values are not set in stone, as we accumulate new experiences and insights, our priorities may shift, and what matters most to us in one stage of life might take on a different or less significant role later. You’re allowed to evolve. What mattered intensely to you in your twenties might feel less urgent now. That’s growth, not betrayal of your former self.
Core values influence the careers we pursue, the relationships we build, and the decisions we make daily. Yet most of us have never sat down and truly identified what ours are.
The Disconnect: When Actions and Values Don’t Match
If you’ve spent the past fifteen years climbing the corporate ladder when you say you want something else, your actions contradict what you’re saying; there is a value disconnect, and when it comes to values, what you do matters far more than what you say. Honestly, this is where things get uncomfortable.
Look at how you actually spend your time and energy. Does it reflect what you claim is important? When we are out of alignment with our values we can feel it in our hearts, minds and bodies. That persistent exhaustion you’ve been attributing to a busy schedule might actually be the result of constantly betraying your own principles.
Living out of alignment is a source of stress, dissatisfaction and poor decision-making. You end up making choices based on external pressures, societal expectations, or simply what you think you should do. The result? A life that looks successful on paper but feels hollow inside.
Signs You’re Living Out of Alignment
Common indicators include feeling constantly unfulfilled despite achievements, experiencing frequent internal conflict about decisions, feeling inauthentic in relationships or work, persistent anxiety about life choices, and a general sense of living on autopilot rather than with purpose. Sound familiar?
Maybe you’ve achieved everything you thought you wanted, yet you’re not happy. Or perhaps you find yourself dreading Mondays with an intensity that feels disproportionate. So many of us live full lives where we are pulled in countless directions by competing priorities, roles, and demands; it can feel difficult to slow down and make space for what we deeply value, yet without that alignment, something begins to wear down inside us, and we can feel it in our head and in our heart when we’re living out of alignment with what matters most.
Identifying Your True Values: Getting Brutally Honest
Allow yourself to contemplate and recall moments or experiences in your life where you have felt you were being you or were true to yourself; these can be experiences you shared with others or on your own, and capture as many of these experiences as you can. Think about when you felt most alive, most yourself. What were you doing? Who were you with?
Strong emotions, both positive and negative, are often tied to your values; when something makes you angry or upset, it might signal that a core value is being violated or triggered, while moments of joy or gratitude often align with values being honored and recognized. Your emotional responses are trying to tell you something important about what you truly value.
Here’s an exercise that actually works. Start by simply reading through lists of values, then circle those that feel very important to you, and slowly refine and reduce your list until you can identify your top five. Be ruthlessly honest during this process. Not what sounds impressive, but what genuinely resonates.
The Reality Check: Testing Your Values Against Your Life
Now comes the part where you compare what you’ve identified as your values against how you actually live. Look at your calendar from the past month. Where did your time go? Values are very important even when making small, everyday decisions and choices, such as what foods we choose when shopping, how we spend our free time, and what we spend our money on; these seemingly insignificant choices accumulate and after several months or years of systematic repetition, they are no longer meaningless.
Check your bank statements too. Money follows values, whether we admit it or not. If you claim family is your top priority but you haven’t taken a vacation with them in years because you’re too busy accumulating more money, well, your values might not be what you think they are.
When faced with decisions, ask yourself: Does this align with my values? Does it serve a meaningful purpose? These questions became a filter, clarifying what deserved my time and energy.
Making the Shift: Aligning Your Life with Your Values
At some point you must tell yourself that your life as it is now is no longer acceptable; you just need to decide that enough is enough and that it is time for a change, and once you make that commitment, learning to live your new values will be easier because you will have exerted a new force on your life and begun the process of changing its course. This takes courage, let’s be real.
Start by identifying areas where your current actions or decisions don’t align with your core values, explore why these misalignments exist (whether due to external pressures, societal expectations, or personal habits), determine which areas require immediate attention and which can be adjusted over time, and begin making small, incremental changes to bring your life more in line with your values.
You don’t need to quit your job tomorrow or blow up your entire life. Small, consistent adjustments compound over time.
The Challenges: When Living Your Values Gets Messy
Let’s be honest, living out your core values is simply easier said than done; consistently living by your values can be complex, challenging, and quite messy. You’ll face situations where honoring your values conflicts with what others expect from you. You’ll inevitably encounter circumstances where fully expressing your values feels impossible or potentially damaging to important relationships, and these situations when you feel caught between honoring your core values and responding to external pressures can be particularly challenging.
The intersection of personal and organizational values often creates a dynamic space where conflicts and opportunities for growth arise; left unexplored, this potential misalignment creates a feeling of unease, strain on your mental well-being, and a decline in your job satisfaction, and feeling like you are constantly compromising your integrity can lead to a gradual erosion of your overall commitment and adherence to your ethical standards.
Sometimes the path forward means difficult conversations. Other times it means walking away from opportunities that don’t serve your authentic self.
The Rewards: What Happens When You Get It Right
When we live in alignment with our values and make what matters most truly matter, we feel like our most authentic and wholehearted selves; our days feel richer, we feel a deeper sense of fulfillment, and the beautiful thing is, we give others permission to live within their values too. There’s something contagious about authenticity.
Aligning your life with your core values simplifies decision-making, as they act as a filter, helping you quickly assess which options align with your principles, and when your choices reflect your values, you face less uncertainty and stress. You stop agonizing over every decision because your internal compass is calibrated.
Identifying your core values provides a deep understanding of who you are and your beliefs, allowing you to clarify what truly matters to you and helping you align your actions and decisions, and living in alignment with your core values provides you with a greater sense of authenticity, integrity, and pride.
So here’s your challenge. Take the next week and pay attention to the moments when you feel energized versus drained. Notice when you feel proud of your choices and when you feel like you’re pretending. Continually assess your alignment with your values through self-reflection, and adjust your course as needed to stay true to your principles. This isn’t a one-time exercise. It’s an ongoing practice of checking in with yourself and making course corrections when necessary.
Are you ready to be honest about the gap between who you say you are and how you actually live? What would change if you closed that gap? Think about it.
