What are values? What do you stand for?
Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. Values can assist you to determine your priorities, and help you measure whether life is turning out the way you want it to. They are best thought of as our personal guiding principles, or our “True North”.
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You may not have thought much about values or identified ones that are important to you. This is because values can be very abstract, so an activity such as doing a Values Care Sort can be helpful.
How to use the Values Sort Cards
Print out the pdf and cut each box out. Then use the cards “Not Important to Me,” “Somewhat Important to Me”, “Important to Me”, and “Very Important to Me” as column headings. These are the cards with the golden dot circle. Go through the rest of the cards and place each value next to one of the importance cards, as appropriate.
You can lay the cards out on a large table, your bed or floor. The most important thing is that you can see all the values and how important they are to you.
Once you have done this, focus on the cards in your “Very Important to Me” column. Choose your top 10, or if you really wish to narrow things down use your top 5 most important values. Write these down. There are no right or wrong answers. Our sets of values are unique to us.
Some questions you can reflect upon are:
What do I think about my top values? Am I surprised, reassured or have some other response?
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Have my values changed? Would I have chosen the same values 5 years ago? 10 years ago?
Have there been any significant life events which have affected my choice of values?
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Am I putting my values into action during my daily life? Or have they just been ideals? How can I incorporate living according to my values more into my lifestyle?
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Do I have “very important” values in common with my partner, friends, and family?
You may not have thought much about values or identified ones that are important to you. This is because values can be very abstract, so an activity such as doing a Values Care Sort can be helpful.
