Working out what you value
Goals are things you achieve and then no longer have to do. Values are directions you keep moving in. Confusing the two is why achieving things sometimes changes nothing.
The distinction, as chapter 18 puts it
Both matter. Values are the more fundamental of the two, and the one that gets skipped.
Specific achievements — get a job, find a partner
Directions of living — being a good friend, living authentically
Concrete, and finished once reached
Ongoing, and embodied rather than completed
Can be achieved while your life gets no better
Give the goals somewhere to point
“Find a partner”
“Being someone people can rely on”
When a goal fights a value
Chapter 18's central practical point: goals chosen without reference to values produce conflict you cannot name.
| The goal | The value it can collide with |
|---|---|
| Find a partner | Independence — the relationship starts feeling like a loss of self |
| Get any job | Freedom, or creativity — the job is achieved and something goes flat |
| Be liked by everyone | Integrity — being liked requires not saying what you think |
| Never be a burden | Connection — the goal rules out the thing that makes closeness possible |
| Stop feeling intensely | Being fully alive — the goal is aimed at the same sensitivity that carries the good things |
Identifying yours
Chapter 18 gives a list to react to rather than asking you to generate values from nothing: family, friendship, creativity, growth, helping others, independence, adventure, stability, integrity, love, health, learning, spirituality, accomplishment.
- The five from that list that land hardest, without over-thinking:
- Of those five, the two I would keep if I had to drop three:
- A time I acted in line with one of those two, and what it felt like:
- A time I acted against one, and what that cost:
- One small thing this week that would be in the direction of one of them:
Why this is harder with an unstable identity
Chapter 18 sits late in the book for a reason. Identifying values assumes there is a stable self doing the identifying, and instability of self-image is one of the features chapter 4 describes: values, goals and self-description shifting depending on context or company.
This produces a specific and disorienting experience. Sitting with the list, several options feel true — and you cannot tell whether that is because they genuinely are, or because you are currently in a frame of mind, or with a person, that makes them feel true.
The practical response the book takes is behavioural rather than introspective. Rather than trying to determine your values by thinking harder, you look at what has actually cost you something. A value you have paid a price to keep is more reliable evidence than a value that resonates on a list.
It is also why values work is presented as a foundation rather than a finishing exercise. It is one of the few things that addresses chronic emptiness directly, because the emptiness is partly the experience of having no fixed centre to return to when nobody else is in the room.
Values are supposed to be the thing that stays constant, which is precisely the difficulty.