When you hear the word values, what comes up for you? Sit with that for a moment. And more to the point, how do you know your values, really know them?
My journey with values started 7 years ago when I was studying to become a Life Coach. It really stopped me in my tracks. I had no idea. I knew what I liked, but when it came down to what was driving my decisions and how I wanted to show up, it became clear to me I wasn’t following my inner compass 100%.
Values are what’s important to you, and they help guide you to feeling fulfilled and living the life you want to create.
It is a question I ask my clients to reflect on before our first 1-1 coaching session.
Maybe we know them, maybe we don’t. Are we living into them?
Because most of us have never really been asked. And even fewer of us have taken the time to sit down and genuinely reflect on the answer.
Why knowing your values matters
We live in a culture obsessed with goals. Where do you want to be in five years? What do you want to achieve? What is on your bucket list?
Goals are important to give direction. But goals without values are like a map without a compass. You might know where you want to go, but you have no idea which direction to face.
Your values are your compass. They are the things that matter most to you at your core. The principles that guide your decisions, shape your behaviour and determine whether your life feels meaningful or empty.
When you are living in alignment with your values, even hard days feel purposeful. Even setbacks feel navigable. Because you know what you stand for and why you are doing what you are doing.
When you are living out of alignment with your values, something always feels off. You might have everything on paper and still feel deeply unsatisfied. You might be achieving goal after goal and still feel like something is missing.
That feeling is not a character flaw. It is information. It is your values asking to be heard.
How we lose touch with our values
Most of us did not consciously choose our values. They were shaped by our upbringing, our experiences, our culture and the people around us.
And somewhere along the way, in the busyness of life, in the accumulation of responsibilities, in the habit of putting everyone else first, we lost touch with them.
We started making decisions based on what was expected rather than what felt true. We started measuring our worth by external standards rather than internal ones. We started living someone else’s version of a good life rather than our own.
The result is that quiet but persistent feeling that something is not quite right. That you are somehow not quite yourself. That there is a version of you, more grounded, more purposeful, more alive, that you have not quite managed to reach.
That version of you is not lost. It is waiting for you to remember what matters.
How to start reconnecting with your values
The values work I do with my clients is not complicated. It is profound. I’ve had clients shift within days of knowing their values!
It starts with simply asking, what matters most to me? What do I want my life to stand for? When I look back at the end of my life, what do I want to have prioritised?
Then we look at whether your current choices, habits and behaviours reflect those values. And where the gaps are, we get curious rather than critical.
Because the gap between your values and your behaviour is not a sign of failure. It is a starting point. It is the most useful piece of information you can have about where to focus your energy.
How do you know your values?
If you have never done values work before, here are a few questions to begin:
What activities make you feel most alive and energised? When do you feel most like yourself? What would you do differently if you were not afraid of what others thought? What do you want the people closest to you to say about you? What are you doing when time seems to disappear?
There are no right or wrong answers. Just honest ones.
Values work inside Oasis
Values are one of the core pillars of Roots Season inside Oasis, my online women’s wellness community.
Oasis offers a guided process to identify your top values and begin to understand how they are showing up, or not showing up, in your daily life. It is great knowing your values, but what do you do with them? I help you categorise them to best ensure you are clearly and intentionally living into them.
This is not a one-time exercise. It is a living document. Something you return to again and again as your life evolves and your understanding of yourself deepens.
Because values are not fixed. They grow with you. And the more clearly you understand yours, the more intentionally you can live.
If this resonates, if you have been feeling that quiet sense that something is off or that you have lost touch with what truly matters to you, I would love to welcome you inside Oasis.
You can try it free for 7 days. Your values are waiting to be uncovered.
👉 annabaylis.com.au/online-coaching-for-women
Listen here about my journey with values
