A Meticulous But Practical Way To Finding Your Values And Goals

In today’s whirlwind of a world that’s constantly pushing us toward conformity, it’s easy to lose sight of the the things that define us. A constant and seemingly endless influx of ‘things to do,’ can leave us aimless and unsatisfied. Instead of pursuing the things that truly matter to us we end up wanting to do everything, which often means we end up doing nothing at all.

I speak from experience when I say that this aimless feeling can be paralysing. Saying “yes” to one think means saying “no” to nine others, and when we’re not sure about either ten options, we start doubting our decision before we’ve even started.

I’m sure many of us have tried to ‘find our compass’ by cherry-picking the values that most speak to us from a inexhaustible list, or trying to grip the steering wheel by ranking everything we want to do in order of priority.

While amiable in their intention, these exercises never seem to really ‘stick,’ and outcomes are likely forgotten with the first guitar-playing-DIY-video that appears on our screen.

Reason being (I think) that these exercises don’t consider us as we are: intricate, complex and internally interconnected. Our values or goals do not exist in isolation, whereas these exercises make it seem as if they do.

Consequently, in this post I’d like to walk you through an exercise that I did a few months back. Since the results are still useful to me, I can confidently say that—for me at least—it has been the most effective exercise so far!

Before diving into the details of this rather meticulous approach, I should mention that doing it requires quite a bit of time and effort. The exercise is perhaps more about self-discovery than self-assessment. It involves asking yourself some though questions of which the quality (and usefulness) of the answer is directly proportional to the time spent formulating it.

To illustrate; it took me roughly a day to attain a satisfying result. While at that time I was still developing the method while doing the exercise, I’d say you should schedule at least half a day to complete it. As I can imagine that such a time commitment doesn’t fit your schedule in the near-future, so feel free to book-mark the page and save it for later.

Lastly; the method appeals to my own way of working, which is highly organised and systematic. I am well-aware that this does not speak to everybody, so feel free to tailor it to your own wants and needs. I have attached a brief summary of the method in this footnote[footnote] such that you can quickly get an idea of whether this exercise is worth exploring for you!

In any case; I recommend reading through the whole exercise first, so you can decide for yourself what works best for you practically.

Preparation

To get started, you will need (at least) 5 large sheets of paper and something to write with. I found it useful to have a stack of post-its with me, as it made it easier to move around things at a later stage. If you really want to do it digitally, I recommend using a ‘whiteboard’-style software like MiroBoard.

Atop of each paper separately write down:

• Values
• Aspirations
• Principles
• Goals
• Habits

such that you have one sheet for each.

First phase

In the first phase of the exercise, you are going to fill each sheet of paper with as many of the corresponding elements as you can. If you have post-its; this is where they’d come in handy.

Values

Come up with all the values that resonate with you. A value is a deeply held belief that guides your decisions and actions and reflects what is most important to you. For now, don’t worry too much about the number of values you come up with, just keep going until you really believe you’ve got them all.

Some helpful questions to ask yourself:

1. Think of a time when you were happiest or most proud of yourself, what values were you honouring in that moment?
2. Which qualities in others do you most admire and wish to embody in your own life?

TIP: you can use a ‘value list’ (just google it) to help putting words to your thoughts.

TIP: you might value something which is not quite described by any of the values on a ‘value list,’ in such a case, don’t hesitate to get creative and invent one yourself!

I could not quite find a value that captured the idea of ‘positively touching someone else’s life.’ Borrowing from the word ‘ardency’ (which is derived from the Latin word ‘ardens,’ meaning burning, glowing, or passionate), I named this value ‘ardence.’ It’s not about lingual correctness. Anything goes as long as you understand what it means!

TIP: as you will see later, it is useful to cluster your values around similar themes.

Aspirations

Next, we are going to define our aspirations. To do so, it is important to realise that, for this exercise, an aspiration is not the same as a goal: a goal is something that you can, at some point, say you’ve achieved, such as completing a language course, writing a story, running a marathon… etc. An aspiration is something that is by definition unachievable, you can only ‘aspire to it.’ It involves things like being independent, living self-sufficiently, being immaterial, or being fit.

Here too, write down as many as you can come up with! Some questions that might help you:

1. What qualities or states of being do you consistently strive for in your personal or professional life, even if they seem like a work in progress?
2. Imagine your ideal self in five or ten years—what key attributes or ways of living define this version of you?
3. What are the broader impacts or contributions you wish to make in your community or the world, recognizing that it’s a continuous journey rather than a final destination?

TIP: because goals and aspirations appear very similar, it might be helpful to combine this exercise with the next. After something comes up in your mind, ask yourself; “is this an aspiration or a goal?”

Goals

As you might have noticed, we are getting more and more specific. As explained above, goals are measurable achievements that you can, indeed, ‘achieve.’

Here you can ask yourself:

1. What is one achievement that, if accomplished within the next year, would make you feel proud or fulfilled?
2. Is there a particular challenge or event you’ve always wanted to tackle, such as running a marathon or learning a new language?
3. What specific project or task that you have wanted to achieve have you been putting off?
4. What goals you are currently working on?

Principles

Principles are fundamental beliefs or rules that guide behaviour and decision-making. Try to write down as many principles as you (would want to) live by.

1. What non-negotiable rules or standards do you (want to) live by, regardless of the situation or outcome?
2. Reflecting on your life’s most significant decisions, what underlying beliefs guided those choices?
3. What are ‘standards’ that you set for your relationships?

Habits

What are the things you feel like you should be doing on a consistent basis? Working out? Journaling? Or calling at least one far-away friend each month? Write down as many as you can think of! While the frequency doesn’t matter (daily, weekly, annually, or continuously), you might find it useful later to write this down too.

1. What daily or weekly activities do you find essential for maintaining your health, productivity, or happiness?
2. Looking back over the past month, which habits have contributed most to your sense of well-being and satisfaction?
3. If you could introduce one new routine into your life that you believe would have a positive impact, what would it be?

You should now have a table full values, principles, habits, goals and aspirations. During the next phase, you may want to redefine, aggregate or disaggregate some of the things you’ve written down. That’s fine!

Before going to the next phase however, I want to briefly explain some theory behind it.

Intermezzo: the theory behind the second phase

As I mentioned in the introduction, us humans are intricate, complex and internally interconnected. While the exercises before have challenged you to extract some ‘end-points’ of your persona, we are now going to exploit this interconnected aspect to fill in the blanks.

Here I think it is fair to point out that the method was inspired by the idea presented in Stephen R. Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people of developing a ‘personal constitution.’ However, in the book, Covey does not employ a systemic strategy, nor a clear hierarchy which will—as we will see—be very useful to turn the results into a powerful practical tool.

You might have already noticed that there is a strong overlap between all the things you’ve written down so far. First of all; that’s a good sign, it tells you that all these aspects of your ‘inner philosophy’ are at least to some extent aligned.

There is however, some kind of hierarchy between these elements. At the bottom, we have the ‘what,’ the principles, goals and habits, as the concrete things we believe, want to achieve and do respectively. However, each of these should ultimately contribute to one of our aspirations, i.e. the person we want to be (‘who’). Lastly, we have the ‘why:’ why do we want to be that way? What is it that we value so much about it?

While these lines don’t always run as smoothly as in the diagram above (you might have a principle that made you adopt a habit that contributes to a goal), you should always be able to relate each element of the hierarchy to an element of the one above it. This is what makes the exercise of finding out all these things about ourself so powerful: it allows us to uncover our ‘blind-spots’ and ‘false beliefs’.

A false belief appears when an element (often at the bottom of the hierarchy) does not contribute to anything above it. You might be trying to achieve a goal that constitutes an aspiration that you were ‘talked into’ by your environment, but which really doesn’t contribute to anything that you actually value. A common example of this can be seen in someone’s pursuit of a prestigious career solely due to societal or familial pressure. As the motivation for pursuing these goals is mostly extrinsic, finding fulfilment in pursuing them will be a fruitless endeavour.

Conversely, we might do things or uphold beliefs that brings us a strong sense of fulfilment and authenticity, but which cannot be placed under our aspirations or corresponding values. While these blind-spots can have various causes (lack of self-reflection, the absence of a word that describes it), uncovering them can open up new chapters in your life-book. How wonderful it is to discover that your gardening habit is more than a hobby, and deeply connects to your core values of sustainability, nurturing, and growth!

Second phase

The second phase likely constitutes a number of iterations through which we will align The elements we have previously defined in 3 steps: simplify, connect and evaluate. For practical reasons, we will execute these steps from the top of the hierarchy (values) to the bottom (principles, habits and goals). For each, I provide a personal example, which is summarised visually below.

You’re probably going to go through the steps in random order. That’s completely fine! I just describe them here as separate steps for the sake of explanation.

Simplify

Look at all the elements you have defined and group them thematically. Is it possible to connect these elements in a way in which you can find one overarching, or core element?

I started with 26 values, that in some way all contributed to (what I ended up calling) Eudaimonia[footnote: Encompasses living in accordance with virtue and realising one’s full potential, leading to a deeply fulfilling and meaningful life]. Additionally, I identified 5 ‘clusters’ of values, and for each I identified the most central one. For ‘wisdom,’ ‘growth,’ ‘curiosity,’ ‘learning,’ and ‘understanding,’ I identified ‘growth’ as centre value. This is what I used to connect my aspirations with.

Connect

Connect your simplified collection of elements to one or more elements of the layer above.

After thematically grouping and aggregating/disaggregating some of my aspirations. I found five that particularly connected with the cluster of values around growth: ‘expanding my expressive skills,’ ‘better understand reality,’ ‘expand my physical limits,’ ‘better understand human psychology,’ and ‘be compassionate.‘

Evaluate

Is there any element that could not be connected? Carefully assess whether:

• there is a blind spot—what element(s) could be missing in the layer above? Add it to the list! or;
• there is a false belief—it really doesn’t have a place in the foundation of your inner philosophy. Remove it!

For this, see the examples of blind spots and false beliefs in the intermezzo above.

Keep doing this, from top to bottom, until you feel you have acquired a comprehensive and completely connected overview.

There is no absolute perfect structure. The only requirement is that it makes sense to you, the person whose inner philosophy it is supposed to represent. Nevertheless, here is part of my ‘personal constitution.’

This concludes the core part of the exercise, and after doing it you probably feel exhausted—we’ve taken quite the inner journey. Nevertheless, I’d urge you to make sure you record the foundation of your inner philosophy because, as the next session will show, it can become a powerful guide for a fulfilling life.

Using the foundation of your inner philosophy

Here I will explain what you can use this structure for