essay about values brought us to success

Essays About Values: 5 Essay Examples Plus 10 Prompts

Similar to how our values guide us, let this guide with essays about values and writing prompts help you write your essay.

Values are the core principles that guide the actions we take and the choices we make. They are the cornerstones of our identity. On a community or organizational level, values are the moral code that every member must embrace to live harmoniously and work together towards shared goals. 

We acquire our values from different sources such as parents , mentors, friends, cultures, and experiences. All of these build on one another — some rejected as we see fit — for us to form our perception of our values and what will lead us to a happy and fulfilled life.

5 Essay Examples

1. what today’s classrooms can learn from ancient cultures by linda flanagan, 2. stand out to your hiring panel with a personal value statement by maggie wooll, 3. make your values mean something by patrick m. lencioni, 4. how greed outstripped need by beth azar, 5. a shift in american family values is fueling estrangement by joshua coleman, 1. my core values, 2. how my upbringing shaped my values, 3. values of today’s youth, 4. values of a good friend, 5. an experience that shaped your values, 6. remembering our values when innovating, 7. important values of school culture, 8. books that influenced your values, 9. religious faith and moral values, 10. schwartz’s theory of basic values.

“Connectedness is another core value among Maya families, and teachers seek to cultivate it… While many American teachers also value relationships with their students, that effort is undermined by the competitive environment seen in many Western classrooms.”

Ancient communities keep their traditions and values of a hands-off approach to raising their kids. They also preserve their hunter-gatherer mindsets and others that help their kids gain patience, initiative, a sense of connectedness, and other qualities that make a helpful child.

“How do you align with the company’s mission and add to its culture? Because it contains such vital information, your personal value statement should stand out on your resume or in your application package.”

Want to rise above other candidates in the jobs market? Then always highlight your value statement. A personal value statement should be short but still, capture the aspirations and values of the company. The essay provides an example of a captivating value statement and tips for crafting one.

“Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values—and sticking to them—requires real guts.”

Along with the mission and vision, clear values should dictate a company’s strategic goals. However, several CEOs still needed help to grasp organizational values fully. The essay offers a direction in setting these values and impresses on readers the necessity to preserve them at all costs. 

“‘He compared the values held by people in countries with more competitive forms of capitalism with the values of folks in countries that have a more cooperative style of capitalism… These countries rely more on strategic cooperation… rather than relying mostly on free-market competition as the United States does.”

The form of capitalism we have created today has shaped our high value for material happiness. In this process, psychologists said we have allowed our moral and ethical values to drift away from us for greed to take over. You can also check out these essays about utopia .

“From the adult child’s perspective, there might be much to gain from an estrangement: the liberation from those perceived as hurtful or oppressive, the claiming of authority in a relationship, and the sense of control over which people to keep in one’s life. For the mother or father, there is little benefit when their child cuts off contact.”

It is most challenging when the bonds between parent and child weaken in later years. Psychologists have been navigating this problem among modern families, which is not an easy conflict to resolve. It requires both parties to give their best in humbling themselves and understanding their loved ones, no matter how divergent their values are. 

10 Writing  Prompts On Essays About Values

For this topic prompt, contemplate your non-negotiable core values and why you strive to observe them at all costs. For example, you might value honesty and integrity above all else. Expound on why cultivating fundamental values leads to a happy and meaningful life. Finally, ponder other values you would like to gain for your future self. Write down how you have been practicing to adopt these aspired values. 

Many of our values may have been instilled in us during childhood. This essay discusses the essential values you gained from your parents or teachers while growing up. Expound on their importance in helping you flourish in your adult years. Then, offer recommendations on what households, schools, or communities can do to ensure that more young people adopt these values.

Is today’s youth lacking essential values, or is there simply a shift in what values generations uphold? Strive to answer this and write down the healthy values that are emerging and dying. Then think of ways society can preserve healthy values while doing away with bad ones. Of course, this change will always start at home, so also encourage parents , as role models, to be mindful of their words, actions and behavior.  

The greatest gift in life is friendship. In this essay, enumerate the top values a friend should have. You may use your best friend as an example. Then, cite the best traits your best friend has that have influenced you to be a better version of yourself. Finally, expound on how these values can effectively sustain a healthy friendship in the long term. 

We all have that one defining experience that has forever changed how we see life and the values we hold dear. Describe yours through storytelling with the help of our storytelling guide . This experience may involve a decision, a conversation you had with someone, or a speech you heard at an event.  

With today’s innovation, scientists can make positive changes happen. But can we truly exercise our values when we fiddle with new technologies whose full extent of positive and adverse effects we do not yet understand such as AI? Contemplate this question and look into existing regulations on how we curb the creation or use of technologies that go against our values. Finally, assess these rules’ effectiveness and other options society has. 

Highlight a school’s role in honing a person’s values. Then, look into the different aspects of your school’s culture. Identify which best practices distinct in your school are helping students develop their values. You could consider whether your teachers exhibit themselves as admirable role models or specific parts of the curriculum that help you build good character. 

In this essay, recommend your readers to pick up your favorite books, particularly those that served as pathways to enlightening insights and values. To start, provide a summary of the book’s story. It would be better if you could do so without revealing too much to avoid spoiling your readers’ experience . Then, elaborate on how you have applied the values you learned from the book.

For many, religious faith is the underlying reason for their values. For this prompt, explore further the inextricable links between religion and values. If you identify with a certain religion, share your thoughts on the values your sector subscribes to. You can also tread the more controversial path on the conflicts of religious values with socially accepted beliefs or practices, such as abortion. 

Dive deeper into the ten universal values that social psychologist Shalom Schwartz came up with: power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security. Look into their connections and conflicts against each other. Then, pick your favorite value and explain how you relate to it the most. Also, find if value conflicts within you, as theorized by Schwartz.

Make sure to check out our round-up of the best essay checkers . If you want to use the latest grammar software, read our guide on using an AI grammar checker .

02 Sep How Your Values Lead to Success

What values do you live by? If you know this you are one mighty step closer to being very successful. Why? Because knowing what you value means you understand the very essence of who you are. Not knowing this however, means living your life from one mediocre moment to another, so it begs the question: do you know who you are?

It may seem a rather over dramatic question but most people don’t actually know . They are never really consciously aware of what ideals they appreciate , respect or possess as principles to live by. And so not being of aware of this can create a very jagged journey towards success filled with frustration and self-doubt as you have no inner direction or guidance.

So knowing your values is key and your first step, then honouring comes next – in other words living by them because this means you are being true to yourself. Any successful person will tell you to be true to yourself , otherwise any achievements you make will not feel like success.

Don’t make the mistake that I see many people do which is to make big personal or professional decisions without knowing or going with their values.

Here is my quick guide to Value Success:

Values are qualities like honesty, integrity, creativity, love and commitment. If you can’t think immediately of one that relates to you, then think about what characteristics you admire in other people. What’s important is that you choose what appeals to you, not something you THINK should or be something you already have.

Step One : Give yourself five minutes, with a pen and paper and write down at least six values that ‘speak’ to you. Number them one to six.

Step Two : Take out any that you feel are not genuinely yours and may have been adopted from someone else. Then feel free to add and amend others until you have your definitive six.

Step Three : Next swap them around until you have them in order of importance…so your top, cannot live without value, should be number one and so on.

Step Four : Take a good hard look at your top three. These 3 rule your life. Think about a time you made a decision that went against them…did that end poorly? Now you know why! From now on ensure that every decision you make honours them and see what a difference that makes to your success.

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Success Advice

Why your values dictate your success.

Do you know what your core values are? There’s what you say and there’s what you do. You can be clear with your core values by watching your actions. Do they match what you say your values are? If no, why not? 

1. Values dictate behavior

Action is preceded by thought, whether those thoughts are conscious or subconscious. Your thoughts are filtered by your individual set of values and beliefs, which process through your neuropathways to help you arrive at the decisions you make for the actions you take. 

According to social science, values are personal but also have a cultural element to help you understand what’s right and wrong; good and bad; important and unimportant. Values often bond people together and create the social norming systems of a culture. 

It’s important to know which values you hold so that you can take intentional action. Studies state that values act as a guide for behavior and become central to your identity. When a value becomes central to your identity, that’s when it becomes a strong indicator of your behavior. 

What this means is that if you want to become successful (as you define it), you need to have the values that the successful version of you has and make them key parts of your identity. For example, if the successful version of you values organization but you live in a cluttered mess, then you need to take time to get yourself organized and make it a priority. Actions can shape your values, and as you upgrade your behavioral standards, they dictate how you see yourself. To start this process, write out all of the values you believe the successful version of yourself to have. Save that to the side and read on.

“Good values are like a magnet – they attract good people.” – John Wooden

2. Behavior dictates success

Your behavior will show you where your identity and core values stand as of today. If you’re not sure which ones are important to you, look at your behavior. If you value convenience over effort, you’ll see a lot of clutter or sloppiness in your life. If you value growth over comfort, you’ll constantly challenge yourself and engage in activities that make your mindset expand. Your behavior will show you what values have become part of your identity.

Once you recognize which actions you’re engaging in regularly, you can identify the values and beliefs that those behaviors are running on. Make a list of the current values and beliefs coming up for you. Looking at that second list, you can compare them to the list you created for the future version of yourself . 

What do the lists have in common? What differences exist between the two lists? Honing in on the commonalities and differences gives you a clear indication of where you need to put the effort in for cultivating new or stronger values that become part of your identity.

3. Focus and support

Your values are the consistent indicators of what your focus centers on, which allows you to make more conscious decisions that can lead to success. When you’re facing decisions or actions, a good way to draw your attention back to your own success is to ask yourself, “Is this choice aligned with the success I want and the values I hold or not?” That answer will help you make stronger decisions that help you achieve your goals .  

Likewise, they also help you bond with other people. You’ll often work with people who have similar values. If one of your core beliefs and values is elevating others, then you’re more likely to work with people who will elevate you. Having a support system that understands and honors your values will help you stay on track for success.

“When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” – Roy E. Disney

4. Building new values

Creating a new system requires a bit of discipline. You have to give space for the new behaviors and thought patterns to happen while catching the old ones before they sabotage you. 

In order to do that, you have to be conscious of what you want to change and actively choose new actions for habits that were likely automatic before. The more you implement these changes, the more natural they’ll become for you. That’s how the new values become part of your identity, which leads to success when those changes are in alignment with your goals.

What do you think are the most important values to embody on your journey to success? Share your thoughts with us below!

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Kellee Marlow is an Impact Entrepreneur, Business Strategist, Empowerment Accelerator, and Motivational Speaker. She built her career by embracing disruption and identifying innovative concepts and technologies that challenged companies and people to think differently. After 20+ years of business experience in different roles and industries, Kellee has created a catalyst mindset that is science-proven, focused on empowerment, innovation, and inspiration that guides people to successfully realize their entrepreneurial or personal goals. She is the founder and host of Spark, on KXSF.FM and 8+ online platforms that stream world-wide. Kellee created the Spark platform to inform, inspire, and ignite her audience by pinpointing the underlying value of the expertise from change-makers in psychology, wellness, business, and innovation. She tackles topics including the future impact of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency; career reinvention and self-empowerment tools like empathy, gratitude, and social fluency.

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Essay on My Values

Students are often asked to write an essay on My Values in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on My Values

What are values.

Values are like invisible guides that help us make choices. Imagine them as a compass that points us to what feels right and good. They are the beliefs that we hold dear and they shape how we behave with others and how we treat ourselves.

My Important Values

Kindness is one of my top values. This means I try to be friendly and caring to everyone. Honesty is another; I believe in telling the truth. Lastly, respect is crucial to me. I aim to honor others’ feelings and views.

Values in Daily Life

Every day, my values guide me. When I share my toys, that’s kindness. If I make a mistake and tell the truth, that’s honesty. When I listen to my friends, even if we disagree, that’s showing respect. These values help me live happily with others.

Why Values Matter

Values are important because they help us live together peacefully. When we all use values like kindness, honesty, and respect, our school and home become better places. Values make us better friends, students, and family members. They are the heart of a happy life.

250 Words Essay on My Values

One of my main values is kindness. This means I try to be friendly and caring to everyone. If someone falls down, I will help them get up. Sharing my toys with others is also part of being kind. Kindness makes the world a happier place for everyone.

Being honest is another value I hold dear. This means I always tell the truth, even when it’s hard. If I break something, I admit it. Honesty builds trust, and when people trust you, they believe in you more.

Respect is treating others the way you want to be treated. I listen when others are speaking and do not interrupt. I also take care of things around me, like books and toys, because showing respect makes everyone feel valued.

I also believe in hard work. This means I try my best at school and when I help at home. Even when a task is difficult, I do not give up. Working hard teaches me that I can overcome challenges.

These values of kindness, honesty, respect, and hard work are like the roots of a tree. They keep me strong and steady. Living by these values makes me a better friend, student, and family member.

500 Words Essay on My Values

Introduction to my values.

One of my most important values is honesty. It means telling the truth and being fair. When I am honest, my friends and family trust me, and it makes me feel good about myself. It is like a clear sky without clouds, where everyone can see everything clearly. Being honest can sometimes be hard, especially if I make a mistake, but admitting it and trying to fix it is the right thing to do.

Kindness is like a warm blanket on a cold day. It is about being friendly, generous, and considerate to others. When I am kind to people, it can make their day better and it makes me happy too. It doesn’t cost anything to smile or help someone, but it can mean a lot. Even animals and plants deserve kindness because they are part of our world.

Responsibility

Being responsible is like being the captain of a ship. I am in charge of my actions and the choices I make. It means doing my homework, cleaning up my mess, and taking care of my things. When I am responsible, my parents and teachers trust me with more important tasks, and I feel proud of myself.

Perseverance

Perseverance is like a tiny seed that grows into a big tree, no matter how tough it gets. It means not giving up, even when things are hard. When I keep trying, I learn new things and get better at what I do. It’s okay to fail sometimes because that’s how I learn to succeed.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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How to Focus on Your Values in Your Personal Statement

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by CEG Essay Specialist Kaila Barber in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered: 

Identifying your own values, demonstrate your values with examples.

• Reflecting on Your Experiences

It’s important to keep in mind what your reader is hoping to learn from your personal statement. The statement is an opportunity to reflect on your experiences and demonstrate how you think about and relate to the world around you. Specifically, what are some of your values? What’s meaningful to you? What do you find important? 

Personal values can be things like communication, patience, nature, health, personal development, courage, self-love, authenticity, healthy boundaries, or even humor. Before you start drafting your personal statement, take a moment to reflect on the things that you find important and why. 

We’re all very different people coming from different backgrounds, and we have different experiences that impact our individual values. While some of your values will overlap with those of other people, your personal reflection on the values that resonate most with you will separate your statement from someone else’s. 

The best way to include your values, skills, and traits in your essay is to pair them with specific examples and anecdotes. Each anecdote should align with at least one of the values that you find most important and should be accompanied by your personal reflection on the value and its related experience. 

Here’s an example. A student does not have a parent or guardian around to shoulder the expenses of caring for them and their younger sibling. In their outline, the student says that they value autonomy, financial stability, and family. Throughout the essay, they demonstrate these values by talking about getting a part-time job to help support the family and caring for their sibling at home. They also excel academically and even petition to have an AP Physics II course offered at their school. 

The student has shown autonomy by taking the initiative to petition for the new course and by getting a job. They have also demonstrated that both financial stability and family are important to them by pitching in to support their parent and sibling.

Your examples should show your reader your values by being specific and personal to your background and experiences.

Reflecting on Your Experiences 

Reflecting on your values is an equally important part of the personal statement. Your reflections or insight should focus on not only your experiences but also who you are and who you want to become. The insight you include in your essay shows that you’ve really found meaning from your personal experiences.

Insight can take a few forms. A common way to show insight is by writing about a growth experience. Show how you went from point A in your life to point B, and share the lessons you’ve learned along the way. For example, people often reflect on how navigating a strenuous activity or challenge changed the way that they thought about themselves and what they could handle. Reflecting on that change in confidence is one way to demonstrate insight.

One of the clearest ways to explore insight is to self-reflect and write about how something has either connected you to, influenced, or reframed how you think of your own values. Maybe you once pushed yourself too hard, and that experience showed you the value of rest and mindfulness. Or perhaps a change in circumstances shifted or redefined your values to an extent. 

For example, a person might say that while they craved stability as a child because of their home life, they now see the value of risk-taking and adventure in enriching their own knowledge and experiences. In this example, both security and risk are important to the speaker, but their experiences ultimately shifted weight from one value to another.

Regardless of how you approach your personal statement, insight is the overarching meaning that you take away from the relevant experiences and values you’ve shared.

Are you looking for more guidance as you draft your personal statement? Check out this post on how to come up with a strong topic that wows your admissions reader!

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Personal Growth: Your Values, Your Life

Are you living your life in accordance with your values.

Posted May 7, 2012 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Your values form the foundation of your life. They dictate the choices you make and determine the direction that your life takes. Your values will influence your decisions related to your relationships, career , and other activities you engage in.

Yet despite this importance, few people choose their values. Instead, they simply adopt the values of their parents and the dominant values of society. In all likelihood, the values that you internalized as a child remain with you through adulthood (yes, in some cases, people reject the values of their upbringings). Unfortunately, these values may also have created a life that is carrying you down a path that is not the direction you want to go.

What values were you raised with? What values are you presently living in accordance with? Are they the same or different? Do your values bring you happiness ? These are essential questions that you must ask if you are to find meaning, happiness, success, and connection in your life.

Yet, finding the answers to these questions is a challenge—and changing them in a way that will lead to fulfillment is an even greater challenge.

Deconstructing Your Values

To truly understand what values you possess and live by, you must deconstruct them until you are able to clearly see what exactly you value and why you hold those values. Looking openly and honestly at the way you were raised is the first step in identifying the values that you instilled growing up.

What did your parents value, and what values did they impress upon you—in regards to achievement, wealth, education , religion, status, independence, or appearance? Think back to your childhood and ask yourself several questions. What values were emphasized in the way your parents lived their lives? What values were stressed in your family? What values were reflected in the way you were rewarded or punished?

For example, were you rewarded for being highly ranked in your high school class and for winning in sports, or were you rewarded for giving your best effort and for helping others? You might even ask your parents to reflect back on your childhood to see what they perceived their values to be and what values they wanted to emphasize in your upbringing.

Your next step in the deconstruction process involves looking at your present life and the values your life reflects. In responding to these questions, you should ask yourself what values underlie your answers. What do you do for a living—are you a corporate employee, a business owner, a teacher, salesperson, caterer, or social worker?

A common question that people in social gathering ask is, what do you do for a living? Periodically, I have seen people get rather defensive in response to this question. They say, “Who cares what I do? What I do is not who I am.” I would suggest otherwise, at least to some degree. Assuming people have choices in the career paths they take, which one they choose reflects who they are and what they value.

For example, though it's a bit of a generalization, it is probably safe to say that someone who becomes an investment banker has different values than someone who becomes an elementary school teacher. What those underlying values might be may vary, but one might assume that the investment banker values money, while the teacher values education and helping children.

Where do you live—do you live in a high-rise apartment in a city, in the suburbs, or in the country—and what values led you there? What activities do you engage in most—cultural, physical, religious, political, social—and what values are reflected in those activities? What do you talk about mostly— politics , religion, the economy, other people—and what does that tell you about your values?

Finally, perhaps the most telling question reflecting what you value is: What do you spend your money on—a home, cars, travel, clothing, education, art, charity? Because money is a limited resource for most people, they will use their money in ways that they value most. Above anything else, where people spend their hard-earned money says the most about their values.

You can then ask yourself whether your current values are the same as those you grew up with. Have you gone through a period of examination and reconsideration? Have you consciously chosen to discard some values from your upbringing and adopt new ones?

My experience with people who live unsatisfying lives is that the values they grew up with mostly weren’t unhealthy and that their present values haven’t changed since childhood. They never questioned their values. Instead, they simply bought into them early in their lives and created their life around those values. In contrast, fulfilled people tended to grow up with life-affirming values or had a “crisis of conscience ” in early adulthood that caused them to re-evaluate and modify their values.

Now that you have deconstructed your life and have a clear idea of what you value, you can see the values upon which you have created your life. You can see whether those values contribute to your dissatisfaction or bring you happiness. Look at which aspects of your life contribute to your unhappiness—your career, marriage , lifestyle—and ask yourself what values underlie those parts of your life.

For example, if your career in the business world makes you unhappy—no judgment intended, but many of my clients happen to come from corporate life—you need to ask yourself what values you have held that led you to a career in business and how those values presently cause you to be an unhappy success.

Popular Culture and Values

A recurring theme that runs throughout my work is that inadvertently buying into the values that predominate popular culture, for example, winning, status, power, appearance, and conspicuous consumption, is a leading cause of life dissatisfaction. The popular culture in America today—as reflected in our various media—no longer has the time, attention span, or energy to devote to weighty and deep issues such as values. It is much easier to focus on the superficial “things” in our culture. Thus, the pursuit of wealth and material goods has become the dominant “value” in much of our society, in the mistaken belief that these values will bring people happiness.

One of the most powerful ways in which this “value” was impressed on you was in how you learned to define success. Popular culture typically defines success winning, wealth, status, physical appearance, and popularity—the more money and power you have and the more attractive and popular you are, the more successful you would be. Growing up with these definitions, success was largely unattainable for most people.

At the same time, our culture made losing even more intolerable to contemplate—being poor, powerless, unattractive, and unpopular is simply unacceptable. With these restrictive definitions, you may have believed, like so many others, that you were caught in the untenable situation of having little opportunity for success and great chance for failure .

Blindly having accepted society’s narrow definitions of success and failure takes away your power to decide how you wish to define them. By buying into popular culture’s limiting definitions of success and failure rather than choosing definitions based on your own values, you can’t become truly successful and happy because you are forced down a path that is, for most people, impossible to attain and that is not truly yours. You may become successful in the eyes of society, but you probably won’t feel like a success yourself. And this path certainly won’t bring you meaning, happiness, or real success in your life.

Jim Taylor, Ph.D. , teaches at the University of San Francisco.

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Integrating Values Into Your Career

By  Laura N. Schram

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While in graduate school, I participated in a learning community of graduate student teaching consultants at my campus’s teaching center. We consulted with graduate student peers across the campus on their teaching and engaged in dialogue about our consulting practices. Our group’s facilitator and mentor -- Mary Wright , now director of the Sheridan Center of Teaching and Learning at Brown University -- designed a range of professional development activities for us to grow as reflective teachers.

One of her activities, designed as a process to help us uncover our teaching philosophies, was transformational for my career development. We brought our draft teaching philosophy statements to one of our learning community meetings, but rather than exchanging them to share feedback, we began with a generative interviewing exercise Wright created. It involved partnering with a colleague and taking turns playing the role of interviewer.

My interviewer asked me several questions that solicited storytelling about my teaching -- for example, she asked me to share a memory of my favorite student -- and she then actively listened to my responses and took careful notes. After the interview concluded, she spent several minutes processing and responding to a series of prompts that required her to integrate my answers and analyze what she as an interviewer heard about me as a teacher. One of those prompts asked my interviewer to tell me what I enjoy most about teaching, and she informed me that I was most energized by the one-on-one interactions with my students. She asserted that I most appreciate coaching, advocating, mentoring and watching an individual student’s long-term growth.

I was shocked to hear that -- I had not at all articulated it in my teaching philosophy. But her insight resonated very deeply with me. As I imagined the contexts in which I most frequently was supporting and advocating for others, I realized that I engaged in coaching in my teaching center work, significantly more than my disciplinary teaching. That sparked the beginning of my serious pursuit of educational development as a career path.

Why was that such a pivotal moment for me? Because my interviewer had uncovered a core professional value of which I was not conscious.

In my work at the University of Michigan, I now coordinate our Rackham Program in Public Scholarship and help students explore diverse career options. As I was, the students with whom I work are strongly motivated by their core values. And I expect that if you are someone pursuing a doctoral degree, you selected your field of graduate study because your scholarship aligned not just with your academic interests but also with some fundamental personal values or intellectual commitments that you hold.

What Do I Mean by Values?

I studied political psychology as a graduate student, so when I refer to values, I do not mean the Merriam-Webster definition of “relative worth, utility or importance,” but rather the way that social psychologist Daphna Oyserman defines them in her chapter “Values, psychological perspectives” in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences , as “internalized cognitive structures that guide choices by evoking a sense of basic principles of right and wrong (e.g., moral values), a sense of priorities (e.g., personal achievement vs. group good) and that create a willingness to make meaning and see patterns (e.g., trust vs. distrust).”

Values are your priorities that guide your choices and help you to make meaning of your experiences; your core value is the thing or things you see as your mission in life. Sylvia Gale , director of University of Richmond’s Bonner Center for Civic Engagement and founding director of Imagining America’s Publicly Active Graduate Education Initiative , advises you to identify your core value by asking yourself what your “central commitment” is or “the thing that you are for .” As I will describe below, she has developed a deep reflection activity that starts with your identifying what you stand for and then mapping how that is central to your professional roles.

Much of the conversation -- and even my own advice -- about career exploration focuses on skills and the importance of identifying your own skills. However, as professionals, we often don’t take the time to step back and think about our values and how they connect to our skills and play a role in our professional lives. Integrating your values into the center of your career exploration process can help you to crystallize the roles that most align with not just your skills but also with what motivates you at a deeper level.

For example, in my most recent career shift, I was invited to take on a new role that involves advocating for doctoral students interested in a range of career options. I had not even been looking for a new opportunity, as I was deeply satisfied in my work as an educational developer supporting faculty members and graduate students. At that time, I articulated my core value as coaching others in their teaching. Yet I was drawn to this role supporting doctoral students exploring multiple careers particularly because, as a doctoral student myself, I had not found adequate resources to explore careers beyond the traditional faculty path. I began interrogating my core values and how they connected to my skills. Did I like consulting and coaching about teaching? Or would I enjoy consulting and coaching about career development just as much? Did I have other commitments to which this role was drawing me?

For example, after participating in our teaching center’s organizational change effort to place value on teaching on a research university campus , did I want to now apply my skills to rethinking how we prepare doctoral students for their career possibilities? The questions that ultimately guided my decision about which role I wanted to pursue weren’t simply focused on my skills -- they were focused on how my skills connected to deeper commitments.

Gaining Clarity on Values

In any career exploration or job search, I suggest reflection before, during and after new professional experiences. Reflection on experiences plays an integral role in helping you to gain clarity on your goals, values and next steps. If you are currently engaged in career exploration, spending some time reflecting on your values can transform your process and change what you decide to do.

First, you want to discover your core value(s), about which you may already have a strong sense or -- as in my case as a midcareer graduate student -- you may not have full clarity. While reflection on powerful questions can help with affirming your values, it is difficult to surface unconscious values on your own. Generative interviewing is a good activity for affirming or revealing your values in conversation with a colleague. Melissa Peet describes generative interviewing in her 2010 article “The Integrative Knowledge Portfolio Process: A Program Guide for Educating Reflective Practitioners and Lifelong Learners” as a process of discovery that happens through “a series of guided questions and prompts that support people in telling detailed stories about their experiences.”

Although you may not be trained in the formal method of generative interviewing, you can take insights from the generative interviewing framework and use its technique of asking powerful questions and telling stories to help you identify your core professional values. Take a colleague who is also interested in their own professional development to coffee, and conduct the following interview process with each other. Your colleague should play the role of interviewer and ask these questions:

• What was your proudest moment professionally?
• What led you to pursue your scholarly interest(s)?
• What was a pivotal moment for you as a professional?
• Who is a mentor to you, and what is one example of when this person transformed or shaped you professionally?

Your partner should actively listen and take notes. After you’ve shared your stories, give your partner time to process, synthesize and look for themes in your responses to these four powerful questions. Then, your colleague should share a value affirmation with you, mirroring back to you a response to this statement: your professional commitment is _____________. They should use examples from your stories as evidence to illustrate how they integrated your responses to identify your core value(s). Then swap roles and interview your partner so they can also benefit from the process.

Whether you engage in generative interviewing or not, if you have a clear sense of your core value(s), Gale has designed a second transformative reflection exercise that begins with focusing on your “central commitment.” This exercise is designed to map and connect your central commitment with the various roles, activities and projects in which you engage, and her chapter in Collaborative Futures: Critical Reflections on Publicly Active Graduate Education outlines each reflection step of this exercise carefully.

You begin with placing what you stand for/your central commitment at the center of a large, blank piece of paper. Around this central commitment, you place your current professional roles, then the roles you hope to take on and finally those that don’t connect to your central commitment. For each of these, you use some visual way to distinguish them from one another -- whether that is a different color or different types of lines or shapes. Then you engage in identifying priorities and connections, as well as pressures and disconnections.

The University of Michigan has employed Gale’s activity in several professional development programs. Students find it incredibly transformative in helping them to see the associations and gaps between their professional work and their core values. One student even said that, several years after he did the exercise, he keeps the drawing he created pinned on his wall as a reminder of his central commitments and the types of professional roles he would like to pursue. As I noted earlier, values help to guide your choices and make meaning of patterns, and this student found the drawing he created was a constant visual reminder of what he prioritizes and how he makes meaning across his varied projects.

If you are seeking an in-depth, holistic reflection exercise to assess how you integrate your values, skills and professional activities, I encourage you to set aside an hour to invest in Gale’s powerful activity. Her chapter is a wonderful narrative about her professional development as a publicly engaged scholar and the process by which she came to design this activity.

Career Exploration as a Value-Driven Process

Identifying and placing your core value(s) at the center of your career exploration process can help you to make more meaningful connections between your skills and career interests. The two reflection activities described above are designed to help you gain clarity on your distinct professional values. They are transformative because knowing what you stand for as a professional can help you to make meaning of how your many professional pursuits are integrated, to prioritize your work and to make decisions about what professional opportunities you want to pursue.

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Home / Essay Samples / Sociology / Personal Life / Uncovering My Values: A Journey to Self-Discovery

Uncovering My Values: A Journey to Self-Discovery

• Category: Life , Sociology
• Topic: Career Goals , Personal Growth and Development , Personal Life

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Personal Mission Statement

Personal values, expectations, responsibility, attitude, and approach.

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