The Values Exercise That Changes How You See Your Work | One of a Mind

Everyone has heard the advice to get clear on your values. It sounds simple enough, until you try to connect a word like integrity or creativity to something as concrete as how you run your business or show up to your work day to day. Here's a different way in.

Instead of starting with a list of nouns, start with the last few weeks of your actual life. Pull out three moments when you felt genuinely energized, engaged, or quietly proud of something, and three moments when you felt drained, resentful, or like you were performing rather than contributing. Don't analyze them yet, just name them. The pattern between those two short lists usually tells you more about your real values than any values worksheet will.

If the energizing moments keep involving other people and the draining ones keep involving isolation, connection is probably one of your core values, whether you'd have named it that way or not. If the energizing moments are about solving something creatively and the draining ones are about repeating the same task for the hundredth time, creativity deserves a closer look. None of this requires restructuring your business by next week. It just asks you to listen to the information your own experience keeps handing you.

Here's where it gets more interesting. Once a pattern shows up, ask yourself honestly whether anything on your energizing list is actually there out of obligation, something you do because it's expected rather than wanted. And whether anything on your draining list is still there because stepping away would feel like letting someone down, or like failing. Many of us are carrying commitments we said yes to as a different version of ourselves, based on what we thought was required rather than what we actually wanted. Noticing this isn't about dropping everything. It's about finally seeing it clearly.

Your values are allowed to change. What mattered most five years ago may not be what matters most now, and that's not inconsistency, it's just growth doing what growth does. A values-aligned work life isn't a place you arrive at once and stay. It's an ongoing back-and-forth between who you're becoming and what you're actually doing, one that needs an honest check-in now and then. The real use of identifying your values isn't landing on a fixed answer. It's bringing a better question to the decisions in front of you.

For a fuller framework, Redefining Success: A Journey to Authentic Fulfillment picks up right where this leaves off.