What Are Your Values — And Are You Actually Living Them?

What goals do I want to reach? What matters most to me in life? Am I spending my time how I want to? Do I actually feel fulfilled?

These are the kinds of questions that values-based living asks us to sit with. They're harder to answer than they might seem. That’s why Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) focuses and entire skill on this topic: Accumulating Positive Emotions in The Long-Term. AKA, Values. This blog post breaks down the basics of this skill, why it’s important for your mental health, and how you can practice it.

What Are Values?

Values are the principles and beliefs that matter most to you in life. They’re not what you do, they’re what drive what you do. They can act as an internal compass, guiding you towards what’s worth your energy, and what may not be.

In DBT, identifying your values and then living by them is a key for building your “Life Worth Living” — your most joyful and fulfulling life; the ultimate goal of DBT. Just like your personal Life Worth Living, your personal values are unique to you. Yes, your family of origin, childhood community, religion, or culture can heavily influence your values. But, at the end of the day, only you can truly know and choose your values.

Why Values Matter for Mental Health

If you don't know what you want or what matters most to you, it's much harder to create a life that feels meaningful. If you’re building your life around what you think you’re supposed to want, or what you think other people want, or what you think other people want for you, rather than what you actually want, you’re more likely to feel empty, resentful, bored, or lost. (And this is the case even if you’re living a life that other people do, in fact, envy! )

That’s why living within your values is a key emotion regulation skill in DBT. The more you reach important goals or spend your time doing things that are important to you, the more you will experience pleasant emotions. When your daily choices align with your values, you're more likely to feel content, connected, and satisfied. When you reach goals that align with your values, you’re more likely to feel proud, fulfilled, and accomplished. When they don't, you're more likely to get stuck or emotionally vulnerable.

Values help you figure out what to pursue, what to let go of, and what to appreciate more deeply right where you are. Thus, knowing your values is one of the foundations of emotional resilience.

How to Identify Your Values

If you don’t know your values, don’t worry, that’s pretty common. It can take time to reconnect and figure them out. There's no single right way to figure out what your values are. Here are a few approaches to try:

• Pay attention to your emotions. Notice when you feel most happy, content, peaceful, connected, or alive. What's happening in those moments? What are you doing, who are you with, where are you? Patterns in those answers often point directly to your values. Also notice when you feel angry or hurt — what's being violated in those moments is often something you care about deeply.

• Learn from others. Review lists of common values online. (DBT’s skills manual has one, too.) Think about who your role models are — what do they stand for, and why do you like them? Think about the values you were raised with — which ones do you want to keep, and which do you want to leave behind? Talk to close friends about what matters to them, and see what resonates.

• Reflect on how you want to be remembered. What words do you hope people use to describe you? What do you want to be known for? Whose opinion would matter most to you? Your answers can reveal what matters most to you at the deepest level.

• Examine different areas of your life. Break your life into categories — family, friends, community, dating/partnership, work, health, pleasure, rest, self-development, and so on. For each one, ask: How do I know when this part of my life is going well? What Do I love doing in this area? Why am I doing it? What do I hate doing in this area? Why am I doing it?

• Fantasize freely. Ponder life experiences you wish you could have — communities you want to be part of, things you want to create, goals you want to achieve, things you want to see, the kind of person you want to become. Don't evaluate anything as realistic or unrealistic — just notice what comes up when you let yourself dream. (I walk through this and more techniques in detail in an article I previously wrote for Psyche.)

As I said, if you have difficulty connecting to what you want, that's okay. Many people have had experiences — trauma, difficult childhoods, cultural or religious pressures — that disconnected them from their emotions, bodies, and desires.

One simple practice: every day, ask yourself What made me feel good today? Over time, your answers will start to reveal your values.

Living Your Values

Identifying your values is just the beginning. The real work — and the real payoff — is in living by them.

Values-aligned actions don’t have to be big. They’re often not. A Life Worth Living is built in small choices and actions, repeated over time. And one of the most powerful things you can do is simply pause and notice when you're already living in alignment with your values — and let yourself feel good about that.

Once you have a sense of what your values are, ask yourself:

• Where am I already living in alignment with my values? How could I do more of that?

• What goals do I want to set that align with my values?

• What in my life does not serve any of my values? How could I let go of that?

• What's one small, value-based action I could take today in order to step towards a value-based goal, live within my values, or savor and appreciate a way in which I’m already living within my values?

Then, every once in awhile, re-evaluate. How’s it going? It’s natural for values to shift and change and re-prioritize across different times of life. And, like all DBT skills, Accumulating Positive Emotions takes practice. As long as you’re trying your best, and nonjudgmentally examining and appreciating that you’re trying your best, you’ll slowly over time start to find more fulfillment.

Need more guidance? Want to go deeper?

This guide I wrote for Psyche walks through the full process of building a Life Worth Living — from identifying values to setting goals to taking action steps.

My book Self-Directed DBT Skills walks you through all of the emotion regulation skills, including identifying your values Accumulating Positive Emotions in the Long-Term.

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