Personal Life Themes and Values

When I teach a journaling workshop or work with clients that are considering starting their own business or seeking a new job or career, the Personal Life Themes and Values exercise is one of the first exercises we work through.

Personal life themes and values are one of the keys to greater personal awareness. They can also be used to help gain greater clarity and awareness around your dreams and goals, bring your life into alignment and can also be used to craft a personal mission statement.

While doing this exercise you may find that the life themes and values you have identified as the most important are not a priority in your life today. This is an opportunity to reflect on the question “why?” Is it because you have chosen a value or belief you think you should choose? Do you need to re-prioritize some things in your life so that they play a greater role in your day to day living?

Review the list of personal life themes and values below and add any that may not be listed.

Begin by circling all those that resonate with you.

From this list identify the ten most important ones, then from this list your top five, then your top three.

You may also identify your number one personal life theme/value, but this is often difficult. Usually your top three answers tend to fluctuate in ranking according to your current life situation although they will normally remain in the top three.

Asking yourself the following questions while reviewing the personal life themes and values list may be helpful in clarifying your answers:

• What is most important to me?
• What do I desire?
• Which themes or values, when expressed, create feelings of wholeness, freedom, peace, harmony and joy?
• When am I most ‘in the moment’?
• What is as important to me as being alive?
• What can’t I do without?
• What single most value needs to be manifested in my life at all times?
• Which life theme/value defines me, both as who I am today and who I want to be?

One additional step that I have found to be extremely beneficial is to define, in your own words your top ten personal life themes and values. Ask: What do they mean to you? How are they are manifested in your life today and how you would like to see them manifest.

Personal Life Themes and Values List: (add to the list any that are missing but are important to you)

Achievement
Advancement and promotion
Adventure
Affection-love and caring
Arts
Being around people who are open & honest
Challenge
Change and variety
Charity
Cleanliness
Close relationships
Community
Competence
Competition
Cooperation
Creativity
Dance-movement
Decisiveness
Democracy
Ecology & environment & nature
Economic security
Effectiveness
Excellence
Excitement
Exercise
Fame
Family
Financial gain
Forgiveness
Freedom
Friendships
Fun
Gratitude
Harmony
Having a family
Having children
Helping other people
Helping society
Honesty
Hope
Imagination
Independence
Influencing others
Inner harmony
Integrity
Intellectual challenge
Intellectual status
Job tranquility
Joy
Kindness and generosity
Knowledge
Leadership
Life-long learning
Love
Loyalty
Marriage
Meaningful work
Mentorship
Money
Order-tranquility, stability, conformity
Orderliness
Peace
Personal freedom
Personal growth and development
Physical challenge
Physical strength
Pleasure
Power and authority
Privacy
Public service
Quality relationships
Recognition
Religion
Reputation
Responsibility and accountability
Security
Self expression
Self-respect / Self-love
Serenity
Social interaction
Solitude
Solving problems/designing solutions
Sophistication
Spirituality
Stability
Status
Supervising others
Teamwork
Time freedom
Tranquility
Truth
Volunteering
Wealth
Wisdom
Work under pressure
Work with others
Working alone
Writing

If you liked this article and would like to read others like it consider signing up for The Dreaming Cafe’s weekly newsletter.