How to Find Your Core Values (And Actually Live By Them)
By Miri Lenoff
·May 25, 2026
Most people have never seriously asked what they actually value. They have a vague sense — family, freedom, success — but they have never worked through it carefully enough to know which values are genuinely theirs, which ones are inherited from their upbringing, and which ones their actual life reflects.
This distinction matters enormously. When you make decisions that conflict with your real values, you feel it — a persistent discomfort, a sense that something is off even when things look fine from the outside. When your life aligns with your real values, daily life feels different. More deliberate. More yours.
Here is how to find your actual core values.
Step 1: Separate Your Values from Your Parents' Values
The first task is to distinguish between the values you were raised with and the values you have actually chosen. For many people, these overlap significantly. For others, they diverge in important ways that have never been consciously examined.
Ask yourself: Which of the values I hold did I adopt because I chose them, versus because I was taught them and never questioned them?
This is not an invitation to discard your upbringing. It is an invitation to own your values deliberately — to hold them because you have thought about them, not just because they were handed to you.
Step 2: Look at Your Behavior, Not Your Beliefs
What you value is not what you say you value. It is what you actually do with your time, money, and energy.
If you say you value health but spend no time on it, health is not actually a core value for you — yet. If you say you value relationships but cancel plans constantly to work, work is actually a higher value than relationships right now.
This is not a criticism. It is information. Your behavior is a more honest signal of your current values than your stated beliefs.
Look at how you spend your time on a typical week. Look at where your money goes. Look at what you protect fiercely and what you sacrifice easily. This is your real value system in action.
Step 3: Generate a Long List
Start with a list of 30-50 values: freedom, security, adventure, creativity, loyalty, achievement, family, health, learning, contribution, integrity, independence, connection, humor, excellence, spirituality, justice, wealth, beauty, service.
Read through the full list slowly. Do not analyze — just feel which ones resonate strongly. Circle everything that feels genuinely important.
Most people end up with 15-25 values that feel real.
Step 4: Narrow to Your Top 10
Look at your circled values and start making decisions. Which are truly central to who you are, and which are things you care about but that are not quite at the core?
A useful test: if you had to give up one of two values — which would you be less able to live without? Work through your list this way until you have your top 10.
Step 5: Rank Them
Ranking is harder than listing, but it is where the real insight comes from. When your values conflict — and they will — which one wins?
If security and freedom conflict, which do you choose? If family and achievement pull in opposite directions, what do you actually do?
Your rankings reveal your true hierarchy. They also explain a lot of past decisions that may have confused you.
[Use the free Values Compass](https://knownsuccess.com/tools/values-compass) to work through this process — pick your top 10 from a full list, rank them, and see which ones your current life reflects.
Step 6: Check Your Life Against Your Values
Here is the most important step. Take your top 5 ranked values and ask honestly: does my current life actually reflect these?
If freedom is your #1 value and you are in a job with no autonomy and a lifestyle with no flexibility, you have identified a major source of dissatisfaction. If connection is in your top 5 and you are regularly isolated and lonely, you know what needs to change.
The gap between your values and your life is where to focus.
Living By Your Values
Finding your values is only the first step. The next step is making decisions that are consistent with them.
This means saying no to things that conflict with your top values, even when they look attractive. It means using your values as a filter when you have a difficult decision to make. It means checking, when you feel persistently dissatisfied, whether your life is actually aligned with what you said mattered.
Values are not a personality quiz result to screenshot and share. They are a tool for living more deliberately. Use them that way.