Look into your core

A way to stay tethered to your goals is to get a better understanding of who you really are - at your core.

Whether you realise it or not, your values are constantly impacting your behaviours - how you prioritise your time, how you relax, whether you prefer a sour gummy worm or a sweet one ... and when your behaviours don't align with your core values, you might feel pretty conflicted.

The thing is, we're not always aware of these subconscious forces - those core values - that drive our decisions. So we're going to walk through a little exercise to help you identify them.

Step 1: Make a list of all the things you care deeply about - what truly matters to you. This list should be long, with maybe 20 or more values.

for instance: Achievement, adventure, ambition, assertiveness, authenticity, awareness, balance, commitment, communication, compassion, curiosity, dependability, determination, equality, fairness, family, freedom, friendship, fun, growth, health, humor, intelligence, intuition, justice, kindness, love, openness, optimism, order, pleasure, religion, respect, strength, success, trust, wealth, wisdom, wonder …

Step 2: Now take the list you're created and group similar values into about five different groups

My grouped values are:

Group 1	Group 2	Group 3	Group 4	Group 5
Fairness	intelligence	servant leadership	novelty	health
justice	achievement	helping	adventure	down time
equity	learning		thriving in chaos
	technical aptitude		optimism

Step 3: Choose the one value in each group that resonates with you the most. 

1. Fairness
2. technical aptitude
3. Servant leadership
4. Adventure
5. Health

There you have it. These are your five core values.