Values are what you believe in, what you feel is most important in life. Your values are your gravitational center. If you are living by your values, then you will be grounded in your life in much the same way as the force of gravity makes your body feel grounded to the earth.

◈ Part of becoming an adult is identifying your values and deciding how you are going to shape your life around them. As a young adult you may feel that you do not know your values, what is important or meaningful to you, but this doesn’t mean you don’t have them, that they aren’t there at the center of who you are, and the life you have led: it just means you haven’t learned to articulate them yet.

What are My Values?

This is what storytelling can reveal to us: stories are a way to draw out from ourselves things we didn't know that we knew, things we haven’t thought about before, and things we’ve always known so well we’ve never said them out loud before. Our values are often revealed in the stories we tell about ourselves, our friends and family, people we admire, and the experiences that have affected and influenced us.

Step 1. Identify Your Values:

These are some techniques that you can use to do this:

◈ Story telling
◈ Reflecting on powerful childhood experiences
◈ Identifying your non-negotiables

◈ Identifying who you admire, and why
◈ Considering the Legacy you want to leave behind
◈ Thinking about decisions you have made previously and how you felt about the outcomes ◈ Considering areas in your life that you are unsatisfied with.

You can also use the resources linked below:

Your values are essential in building your life, deciding how you want to live, and what you want to make with your life. Your values can guide the kind of education and job training that you choose, the work you pursue, where you live, and much more.

By keeping your values in mind you can assemble the elements that you need in order to live a full life. One of the ways of thinking about the elements of a full life is in terms of the many kinds of capital. Capital is wealth of some kind, but it doesn’t just mean financial wealth, it also means emotional, physical, intellectual and social wealth, just to name a few.

Personal Mission Statement:

A personal mission statement is a written statement in which you articulate your values, goals, and identity in a purposeful way. This is where you say this is who I am, this is what I believe in, this is who I want to be, and this = what I intend to do. It consists of:

WHO I AM + WHAT MY VALUES ARE + WHAT MY GOALS ARE = WHAT I AM GOING TO DO

By writing a personal mission statement you are putting into words what you believe in and what you hope for, and you are committing to striving for those things. This is an excellent way to prepare for your job search. Now you can think about what kinds of work, what kinds of jobs, and what kinds of skills fit into your personal mission statement. You can use this statement as a sort of thesis.

A thesis is the claim at the heart of an essay, for example: pigs can fly. If this is my thesis then I will use this claim as the starting point for my research. So I would research things like: pigs, flying, pigs that can fly, flying mammals, and so on, using my thesis statement as a center point for my search for information.

A personal mission statement is a statement of purpose. It says this is who I am and this is who I intend to be. If you have written a strong, clear personal mission statement, then you can use this to for all manner of things, from writing a cover letter, to looking for jobs, to making important life decisions and envisioning your future.

If you use your personal mission statement as a thesis for your job search, you are building your job research around what you believe in and what you hope for. This will lead you to the most fulfilling and personally engaging jobs and education. For example, if part of your personal mission statement was: I believe in family and connection, then you could search for career paths, jobs, and education that involved working with people, care-taking, and connecting with others, such as; nursing, senior-care, teaching, social work, and much more.

New year’s resolutions are sort of like a personal mission statement, that you change on the same date every year. Your personal mission statement is something that can change as you get older, so it is something you can return to and adjust, perhaps every new year…!