How do I find out what my values are?

By No Rush · Updated October 25, 2026

The short answer

Start with an ordinary week. What made a day feel right, and what made it feel off? Write down five things that matter to you, like rest, freedom or the people around you. Ask how much each one is in your life now, from 0 to 10. Where the gap is biggest, plan one small step for this week.

How can I identify my own personal values?

Make yourself choose. Put two good things side by side, like rest and adventure, and keep only the one you would miss more. When people are allowed to rate every value, they often mark almost all of them as important. Researchers who measure values found that the differences show up much more clearly when people have to pick.

Your own days help too. Think of a week that felt right and one that felt off, and look at what was different.

What are the most important values in life?

There is no list that is right for everyone. Shalom Schwartz and Jan Cieciuch measured 19 values in 49 cultural groups, such as deciding things yourself, security, caring for the people around you, tradition and achievement. The same values came back everywhere. How much each one weighs differs from person to person.

A list or a test gives you words. Which ones are yours shows in what you choose.

Why do values help when you feel stuck?

When you don't know what you want, a job title is a hard place to start. What matters to you on an ordinary day is an easier one. Susan Whiston and colleagues compared 57 studies on help with choosing a career. Working out what someone finds important was one of the parts that helped most.

Kennon Sheldon and Andrew Elliot followed students over a term. Goals they chose because the goal mattered to them were kept up longer than goals they felt they had to chase.

What if what matters to me is missing from my life?

Then you have found a direction. Give each of your five values a number from 0 to 10 for how much it is in your life now. The value with the biggest gap is a good place to start.

Make the first step small and close by. In experiments by Tal Eyal and colleagues, people's values showed more in plans for the distant future than in plans for the coming days. So a plan for next week needs your value written into it, like one evening for the friend you keep missing.

When nothing feels important anymore

If for weeks nothing seems to matter, and you feel empty most days, that is heavier than a question about values. Talk to your doctor or someone you trust. The helplines are at the bottom of this page.

In the No Rush app

The app has a short exercise called What matters to you. You get a series of words and keep the ones that belong to you. Then it shows two at a time, and you keep the one you would miss most. For your top five, you say how much each is in your life now, from 0 to 10. The app shows the biggest gap and asks for one small thing you do this week that points that way.

No Rush app

An iPhone app for people who feel stuck. It sets out one small next step at a time and tells you why that one. It is not therapy.

Sign up free Take the test For iPhone. Coming soon to the App Store. The first seven days are free in the app. After that, you choose whether to subscribe. Sign up now and the app stays free for you, for life.

Sources

Whiston, Li, Goodrich Mitts & Wright (2017). Effectiveness of career choice interventions: A meta-analytic replication and extension. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 100, 175-184. doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2017.03.010
Sheldon & Elliot (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482-497. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.482
Lee, Soutar & Louviere (2007). Measuring values using best-worst scaling: The LOV example. Psychology & Marketing, 24(12), 1043-1058. doi.org/10.1002/mar.20197
Eyal, Sagristano, Trope, Liberman & Chaiken (2009). When values matter: Expressing values in behavioral intentions for the near vs. distant future. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(1), 35-43. doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.023
Schwartz & Cieciuch (2022). Measuring the refined theory of individual values in 49 cultural groups: Psychometrics of the Revised Portrait Value Questionnaire. Assessment, 29(5), 1005-1019. doi.org/10.1177/1073191121998760