“What are your core values?” She asked me, looking at my face on the other side of the zoom camera, miles away from me, as if she was asking me the most trivial question anyone could ask. My manager took me by surprise. After all, you're supposed to know what your core values are, right?
“Hmm... responsibility, independence, respect, care, integrity, honesty…” I started to answer her with a long list of beautiful words and qualities that I have always found great. As I continued, she stopped me:
“Carol, if you have more than two or three values on your list, then everything is important and nothing is important. Values are the things that really move you. They are your compass, your guiding light in dark moments.”
At this point I felt a little embarrassed and I realized:
- First, I had never really stopped to think about what values were.
- Second, the values I had on my list were not really mine. They were actually aspirations that I had. Things I would like to be my true values, but which were not.
After we hung up, my journey to find my values began - and I never imagined how helpful it would be to know them when, years later, I found myself on a fork road.
The journey in finding the values
One of the things I did after that call was to look up the definition of values. According to the Oxford Dictionary, values are "principles or standards of conduct; one's judgment of what is important in life”. Sounds simple, but how do you find them?
The first step was to commit to being brutally honest with myself. To try to find the things that really define me, with their beauties and their ugliness, and not to try to find a version of myself that I would like to present to others. And boy, is it easy to fool yourself. How cool would it look to tell my boss that my core values are leadership and respect? Or telling my husband that my core values are really family and love?
The best way to approach this? This is a conversation between you and yourself. You don't have to share your values with anyone if you don't want to. With that in mind I did some exercises, some coaching sessions and the result I got was "adventure". Really? Adventure? I didn't even know that could be a value... It seemed a little superficial and conventional. But the more I reflected on my life, the more I noticed that "adventure" was guiding my choices and bringing me fulfillment. The desire to try something new and the butterflies in my stomach that come with it, the interest in so many different things, the curiosity, the permission to try, fail, and move on, even my love for sports and nature were all connected to adventure.
The second step was to understand how my value translates into behaviors. After brainstorming, I came up with three behaviors that were a translation of me living my value: saying yes to trying new things, being curious and asking lots of questions, and just doing stuff even when I was not sure of the outcome.
As I wrote these words, I thought about moments when I fully lived this value:
- when I decided to leave my country and try to see what it would be like to live in another place and culture,
- when I raised my hand to be in charge of a project that I was not sure I could do but was really excited about,
- when I signed up and did a mini triathlon without any previous experience in swimming or biking.
While remembering those moments and how I felt I could see it clearly: I was at my best when I was living my value.
And the opposite was completely true. I saw the behaviors I had when I was not fully living my value and how they did not give me a sense of pride. I remember being silent in an important meeting, wanting to ask a lot of questions but not trusting myself to say what I was thinking. Or the other time I decided not to try wakeboarding for the first time because I was too afraid that others would see me as a big failure. In all of these occasions, there was a slight sense of shame for not showing up, for not stepping into my true self.
At this point, it seemed that I understood my value and how to live according to it.
The Fork in the Road
Fast forward to the future and you would find me at the fork in the road I mentioned earlier. Life was busy, I was a mother, a wife, had my social life and my sports. Just writing all of this makes me feel exhausted. I was rushing through it all.
I had a meaningful job, well paid, wonderful colleagues, but something was wrong. In fact, I began to feel more and more tired after each day of work, even though I was trying to bring so much joy to all the other important elements in my life, like friends and physical activities.
I thought about my worth and the choices I was making. And the truth is that even though I was letting adventure guide my choices, eventually each adventure becomes routine and your new comfort zone. Could this be what had happened to the job I loved so much?
I decided to revisit my values and see how much I was living by them through my work. I thought about the elements of adventure: excitement, intensity, novelty, unusualness, risk. As I watched myself at work and tried to identify when these elements manifested themselves, I didn't find many examples.
Of course, sometimes you can't have it all. I tried to create adventure in activities outside of work: exploring a new place on vacation, learning something new, writing stories, anything that could bring me some of these elements. And they did! But the price was a life of rushing through things to fit everything in. And that was exhausting.
What if I could live out my value most of the time, not just in snippets of free time at the end of the day? How would I feel? What if I could experience that in my job again? These thoughts became more and more frequent, and I began to fantasize about saying goodbye to work, what my routine would be like without a 9-5 job, and all the things I could do if I had the time. The dream of a different life became a constant. And I knew it was time. Time to honor my worth and live by my value again.
Whether it is changing jobs, starting a new business, or just being aware that you are exactly where you need to be, knowing your values can be a powerful way to connect with yourself and how you want to live your life.
Do you already know your values?
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Caroline d'Essen is a life and career coach for women with a background in campaigning and people and culture in the non-profit sector. In addition to adventure, she loves to share her experiences through writing. You can find her at her happiest on the beach playing volleyball or on the dance floor. You can learn more about her at: www.linkedin.com/in/carolinedessen or contact her at: carolinedessen@gmail.com
