Journal Writing on Core Values

Who are you?  Deep down.  In the inner recesses of your being, who are you really?  If you had to give an elevator speech in 30 seconds describing who you are, what would you say?  What attributes would you include, what challenges would you leave out, and what characteristics would you highlight? 

When I was young, a high school teacher told me, “You can’t find yourself.  You have to create yourself.”  It took me a few years to understand what she meant by that, but eventually it came to me.  I could not expect to live the life of a complicated, interesting, engaging person without taking some kind of journey to create this person. 

I was never going to find myself, although I did find elements of myself while on my journey.  These elements of self arrived in bits and pieces that eventually became my defining core values.  And journaling about core values has helped me to define who I am, what I value, and where I am going as an individual.​

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What are Core Values? 

It seems that people who follow all their family’s expectations have an easy time defining their core values.  Those values are defined for them under the categories of religion, politics, and social opinions. 

But what happens when individual don’t agree 100% with their familial expectations, or they want to branch out and be unique, or they are at their cores (gasp) artistic? 

Now the search for defining core values becomes complicated, because now those values are individual and become more precious because they were defined by for that person rather than appropriated from an older generation. 

Core values can be anything that is important to you—spiritual beliefs, valued prayers, social movements, political opinions, appreciation for an area of study, art, writing, film, or virtues.  Whereas one person cares deeply about patience, the next drives with road rage.  Whereas one person dedicates life to a religious practice, the next is repelled by religion.  Whereas one person spends weekends at the art walk and in poetry readings, the next finds art to be confusing and complicated.

Your core values are the things that are important to you.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  
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Who are You?  

Are you the bohemian artist who loves whistling while walking to work each morning, wearing organic hemp clothing, and writing on your grandfather’s 1940s-era typewriter letters that you compose?  If so, you might have core values that include art, nature, walking to commuting, wearing organic textiles, and practicing mindfulness.  If that is you, then journaling about these values, what you love about them, and what makes them a defining element of who you are as a person can bring you satisfaction in your journaling practices. 

What about the posh trend setter?  Are you a tennis enthusiast, a stock broker, a driver of a brand new BMW, and a lover of European travel and designer clothes?  If so, you might have core values that include name brands, high-class lifestyle, eating in expensive restaurants, and living a life of luxury because you deserve it.  If this is you, then journaling about these values, how they define you, what they do for you, and how you connect with a vision of yourself that is how you have always seen yourself. 

You are the person you create, and that person is based on your values.  Journaling about those values can be a highly enjoyable journaling activity regardless of what your values area or how you see yourself.  
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Who do You Seek to Become?  

Not only can we look back at how our core values developed the people we are today, but we can look forward to the people we will become and connect our core values to how they might support us along our journeys to finding and living as our truer, more authentic selves. 
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For example, during the years when my children were small, I had to put many of my personal needs to the side so that I could focus on the kids’ needs.  During that time period, I was challenged by providing for their needs at the expense of my own, but as they aged, they took on some of my core values. 

Now as we grow together, we enjoy some of the same activities and values in common.  Appreciating art is one of my core values, and I live this value by collecting paintings and photography and displaying them in my home—gallery style.  My son has taken on this core value as one of his own as he has been heavily involved in photography since he was young. 
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As I look at my future, I know that I want to continue supporting my core value of art appreciation, and I want to involve my son in this value.  In my journal, I have been writing about my future vision for art appreciation and how my son and I might come to share this value on an ongoing basis.  Together, we volunteer in a local gallery, we attend art shows, and he is involved in gallery shows.  

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How will Your Values Support Your Journey? 

The values that we identify not only define us but they lead and support us.  By depending on our core values, we remain stable to the standards we believe in and can define ourselves with confidence and certainty. 


Consider journal writing about the following prompts in your journal.  Try to write enough depth, breadth, and detail to complete 500-2000 words for each journal entry. 

• List your top ten core values.  State each one exactly the way that it best defines you and what is important to you.  Write a brief explanation on each one about why it is a core value for you. 

• What is your most important core value?  What could you not live without?  What value drives you to succeed, to be yourself, and to achieve your goals?  Explain the importance of that value as though you were explaining it to someone who had never heard of it. 

• Choose a creative core value and tell a story about it.  This story can be something that really happened (i.e., the time that you realized how much you valued travel when walking the city streets in Paris).  Your story can be as complicated or as simple as you like. 

• What core value did you have earlier in life that supported you through challenges of the past but is no longer as useful?  What about that core value have you let go of and what have you replaced it with? 

• What core value do you envision as being most valuable in supporting you into the future?  Take a look at the goals that you are working on and align them with the value.  How do you foresee this core value will help you in becoming more the person you want to be and picture for yourself?  

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Your journal does not have to be as specific and guided as these prompts.  Your entries can be more open, fluid, and even follow a stream of consciousness pattern.  Spend some time writing about your core values, connecting your values to your goals, to your vision of self, and to the complex details of your life, especially those that matter most to you.  ​

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