As guiding directions, values are always immediately available and inexhaustible. If you have chosen to head east, the great thing is, no matter where you are, east is always there. You don’t need to get anywhere else or have anything be different in order for you to turn toward east. At the same time, no matter how far east you go, you will never

In this way, a life that is guided by values is more flexible and helps us pivot as needed when the inevitable curveballs of life come our way.

Values are behaviors. They are ways of living, not words. Values are freely chosen. They are not the result of reasoning, outside pressure, or moral rules. Values are life directions, not goals to achieve. They are always immediately accessible, but you’ll never complete them. Values are about things you want to move toward, not what you want to ge

Values aren’t about words. They are found in watching what people actually do with their lives, where they invest their time, energy, and focus.

When doing values work with clients, especially in the initial phases, it can often be helpful to focus your exploration within one or two high-priority valued domains. Because values tend to be relatively consistent across domains, exploration of values in one domain will likely provide useful information about what that individual would choose to

Values are the ways of living and being in this world that are important and meaningful to you. They are ongoing patterns of action. There is no “value” in the absence of action.

One way to talk about values is to say that they are a combination of verbs and adverbs, rather than nouns. They describe what you are doing (verb) and how you are doing it (adverb). Caring (verb) for sweet old Dalai committedly and compassionately (adverbs) was what was meaningful to me, and thus my “value” was shown through the quality of my cari

It often takes a crisis or significant loss to make us stop the autopilot of our lives, focus on what really matters, and live life with vigor. But what if it were possible to live with that kind of clarity of purpose and values without something terrible needing to happen?

Living a values-based life is about living with intention, consciously choosing to live out a well-lived life, whatever that means for you personally.