How do I identify my core values?
TL;DR
To identify your core values, recall moments when you felt happiest, proudest, and most fulfilled. Note what made those moments meaningful. Then select 20 values from a structured list that align with those experiences, narrow to 10, then prioritise your top 5. Use them as a filter for career decisions, job offers, and understanding workplace friction.
Your values are the principles that guide your decisions, even when you're not consciously thinking about them. They shape what you prioritise, what frustrates you, and what makes work feel meaningful or hollow.
Why do values matter for your career?
Most people have never sat down and deliberately identified their values. Instead, they operate on instinct, making career and life decisions based on a vague sense of what feels right. That works until it doesn't. When you're navigating a career change, weighing up a job offer, or trying to understand why a role that looks perfect on paper leaves you feeling flat, your values are usually the missing piece.
Knowing your values gives you a filter. When you're clear on what matters most to you, decisions become simpler. Should I take the higher-paying role or the one with more autonomy? Should I stay in an organisation whose culture clashes with how I want to work? These questions get easier when you can test them against something concrete rather than relying on gut feel alone.
This exercise takes about 30 minutes and helps you identify your top five core values. You don't need any special tools. Just somewhere quiet to think, and something to write with.
How do I identify my core values?
Give yourself 30 minutes to work through this exercise, free from distractions.
Step 1: Recall moments you felt powerful emotions
Start by identifying the times you felt the following emotions:
Happy
Proud
Fulfilled and satisfied
Step 2: Identify what made those moments meaningful
What was it about each of these times that made you feel that way?
Step 3: Select 20 values from the list that align with those experiences
Next, review the list of 100 values below, and select 20 that you feel align with the reasons why you felt happy, proud, satisfied and fulfilled in those experiences.
Step 4: Narrow from 20 to 10
From that list of 20, narrow it down to 10 values. You may wish to consider which ones are similar and which you are more drawn to.
Step 5: Prioritise your top 5
From that list of 10, prioritise your top 5 values.
Step 6: Test them for a week and adjust if needed
Write those values on a post it note or piece of paper, which you can keep somewhere visible for the next week or so. Keep checking in on whether your actions are congruent with your values.
If you find a value isn’t working for you - change it. Try out another for a week and see if that works better.
list of values
Abundance
Achievement
Adventure
Affection
Altruism
Appreciation
Attention
Authenticity
Authority
Autonomy
Balance
Beauty
Belonging
Boldness
Calm
Challenge
Change
Charisma
Charity
Citizenship
Collaboration
Community
Compassion
Competency
Connection
Contribution
Courage
Creativity
Curiosity
Determination
Diversity
Empathy
Endurance
Equanimity
Excellence
Fairness
Faith
Fame
Forgiveness
Fun
Generosity
Grace
Gratitude
Growth
Happiness
Honesty
Humanity
Humility
Humour
Influence
Innovation
Insightfulness
Integrity
Intelligence
Intuition
Joy
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Love
Loyalty
Meaning
Openness
Optimism
Passion
Patience
Peace
Pleasure
Poise
Popularity
Protection
Quality
Reciprocity
Recognition
Renewal
Reputation
Resilience
Respect
Responsibility
Security
Self reliance
Self respect
Selflessness
Service
Sincerity
Spirituality
Stability
Status
Strength
Success
Support
Tolerance
Trust
Truth
Wealth
Wisdom
What do I do with my values once I've identified them?
Once you have your top five, use them. Values aren't a one-off exercise you complete and file away. They're a practical tool for making better decisions.
When you're evaluating a job opportunity, ask yourself: does this role allow me to live these values day to day? If three of your five values are in tension with the role or the company culture, that's important information, regardless of the salary or the job title.
Values can also help you understand friction in your current or previous roles. If you value autonomy but your last company micromanaged everything, that's not a personality clash. That's a values conflict. Naming it means you can look for it deliberately next time, rather than ending up in the same situation again.
Your values may shift over time, and that's normal. What mattered to you at 25 may not be what matters at 40. Revisiting this exercise every year or two keeps your filter current.
Last updated September 2026.