Written by Jamie
I am currently starting to consider a change in my life. 
While talking to a friend about how I am struggling with the decision, she gave me a piece of advice that really stuck with me. She advised that I review my core values, picture myself 3-5 years in the future based on each choice I could make, and consider which future self is living more in alignment with these values.
After a tiny amount of online research, I found a Core Values Exercise worksheet that would work for me here. Because I wanted to reduce the 150 core values listed on the worksheet to about half a dozen, my first pass included marking out all of the values that didn’t resonate with me. And I had to be pretty honest with myself. Yes, I love a good ‘Adventure’, but I’m definitely more comfortable with ‘Safety’ and ‘Order’.
The first pass cut the list by about half, so I went about slimming down the list by highlighting the remaining words that really stood out. This left me with about 20 values. More than my goal, but I started noticing a theme in some of the words I selected. After grouping similar words and selecting the one that most described my value, I ended up with my six core values.
Now that I have a good understanding of what is important to me, I can consider how each decision I make (big and small) might support my core values or bring me out of alignment with them. This will give me such a good framework for making decisions that I will feel good about in the long term. Additionally, it’ll be very interesting to revisit this worksheet and see how my core values change over the years.
When it comes time to make my choice, I know this will be a valuable part of the decision-making process. Having thought out my core values ahead of time will help keep me grounded as I dream about the future!
(Image credit: http://gapingvoid.com/blog/2011/04/07/core-values-2/)
Among Friends 