7 Worksheets for Identifying Your Core Values
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Our core values influence how we live our lives.
When we know our core values, making decisions becomes easier. We are also less likely to be swayed by other people’s opinions.
Everyone has their own set of personal core values. Whether you’re aware of them or not, your personal values shape your relationships, determine your choice of city to live in, and even come into play when you are looking for a place to eat.
Going against your core values leads to frustration, often resulting in destructive behavior. Thus, it is essential to know your core values so you can effectively handle various situations in your life and find peace within yourself.
Worksheets, quizzes, and other self-discovery tools for identifying core values can help determine what is most important to you.
Today, we’re sharing our collection of core values worksheets. Hopefully they can help you live life in accordance with what you truly believe.
What You Will Learn
1. Ask Why
Defining your life’s purpose brings clarity, motivates you, keeps you focused, and helps you live longer. Uncovering this purpose begins with asking the question, “Why?”
This worksheet helps you uncover your core values by prompting you to ask why they are important to you. You’re supposed to answer multiple times until you reach a point where your answer cannot be distilled down any further.
Then you’ve found your why.
2. Values Exercise
via Carnegie Mellon University
In this worksheet, you are provided a list of core values in order from A-Z. You choose all the core values you’re drawn to.
Then you put the values you’ve chosen into groups. The groupings must mean something and make sense to you.
After that, you choose a single word that resonates most with you from each group. These words are your core values.
3. Virtus
via Some Thoughts On Strategy, Leadership, And Corporate Culture
Similar to the sample above, this worksheet provides you with a list of core values.
Your task is to group the core values that belong together. There are five boxes where you can write down the values belonging to the same categories. Again, the groupings will depend on what makes sense to you.
From there, you can choose one value from each group. These will be your top five core values.
4. Understand Your Values
via Tomi Llama
If you’re not aware of what your core values are, there’s a good chance that you’re working against them.
As we mentioned earlier, this “unknowing” negatively impacts your life.
This worksheet helps you determine if you’re working with or against your core values. It uses the terms “above the line” for working in sync with a core value and “below the line” for working against it.
First, you need to identify what your core values are. Then, using the worksheet above, you need to determine how you use these values in an “above the line” way.
This worksheet also prompts you to identify scenarios where you could be using the core value in a way that negatively impacts you or others.
Finally, it has a column for your answer or proposal on how you can use your core value in a more “above the line” way.
5. Values Map
via The Daily PlanIt
Your core values are your guiding principles in life. They are the points on your life map that tell you how to navigate every experience.
This worksheet helps you develop a value statement by letting you identify different types of values that serve as your guiding principles.
It includes boxes you need to fill out with the following information:
Identifying these values can make it easier to create your personal value or mission statement.
6. A Clue on What to Do
via Vacay Vans
This worksheet provides step-by-step instructions for identifying your personal core values.
It has an extensive list of core values to choose from. Lisa, the worksheet creator, invites those who use the worksheet to add more core values if what they resonate with isn’t listed.
After choosing the words that resonate most with you, you are invited to group them in categories that make sense to you. The worksheet suggests using the following groupings:
You then select up to five words that resonate most with you from your curated list.
Finally, you’ll fill in a section of the worksheet where you can write down actionable sentences using each of your chosen core values.
7. Digging Deeper
via Camy Kennedy
Worksheets like this one are often used by companies to help their employees determine their core values by exploring different sources of influence.
For example, you are asked to name a person you admire and to list down the core values you think they hold.
Moreover, the worksheet encourages you to specify actionable steps that show how your core values can help overcome challenges that you might encounter.
Final Thoughts on Identifying Your Core Values
Identifying your core values by filling out a worksheet is just one way of developing self-awareness.
When you’re aware of what is truly important to you, you begin to align your life with these values. They will serve as your anchor, even in the most turbulent moments of life.
If you need a primer on what these core values are, you might want to check out this post featuring 100 examples of values to live by.
Also, quizzes can be quite helpful when it comes to discovering your core values. Check out this article for a review of core value quizzes to help identify what’s important to you.
