You've heard meaning matters. You might even believe it does. But when you look at how you actually spend your time and energy, you're not sure if meaning is something you genuinely need or something you think you should need. That gap between the idea of meaning and your real experience is worth clarifying.
Who This Is For and Who It Is Not
This is for you if you suspect meaning might be one of your core values but you're uncertain. Maybe you're making a decision—about a job, a project, a relationship—and you want to know whether pursuing something more meaningful would actually matter to you, or whether you're chasing an ideal. Maybe you feel guilty that meaning doesn't drive you the way it seems to drive other people, and you want to understand if that's a real difference or a story you're telling yourself. Maybe you've built a life that works on paper but feels hollow, and you're trying to figure out whether meaning is what's missing or whether something else is.
This is not for you if you already know with certainty that meaning is one of your top priorities. You don't need to confirm what you've already felt consistently in your choices. You also don't need this if you're looking for a general lecture about why meaning matters or how to find your purpose. That's different work.
This page uses Shalom Schwartz's research on basic human values—tested across over 80 countries and decades of replicated studies—to help you see where meaning sits within your actual value structure. Schwartz identified 10 universal value types that appear across all cultures, and the research shows how some values naturally support each other while others pull against each other. Understanding that framework changes how you interpret your own hesitation.
What You Will Discover
Once you work through this clearly, you'll stop wondering whether you "should" care about meaning and start seeing what you actually prioritize instead. You might discover that achievement or independence matters more to you right now—and that's not a failure of character, it's data about yourself. Or you might find that meaning does matter to you, but in a different form than you expected: not changing the world, but being good at something specific, or building something with people you trust. The fog clears when you can name what you're optimizing for.
You'll also understand the tensions in your own value system. According to Schwartz's circumplex model, values sit in a circle: some are adjacent and reinforce each other, some are opposite and create real conflict. If you care deeply about both meaning and security, for instance, you're not broken—you're managing a genuine tension that appears in your actual choices. Recognizing that tension lets you make deliberate trade-offs instead of feeling guilty about not having it all. That's the shift: from self-doubt to strategy.
Common Reasons People Wait
The first hesitation is usually that you worry meaning won't rank as high as you think it should. You've internalized the cultural narrative that meaning should be at the top for everyone, and you're afraid that when you honestly assess yourself, you'll discover you care more about stability, achievement, or pleasure. That's a real fear, and it's usually misplaced. The purpose values assessment doesn't judge your actual values—it reveals them. What ranks highest tells you something useful about yourself, not something wrong with you. Many people find that meaning does matter, but it's secondary to autonomy or fairness or something else entirely. That's the truth you came for.
The second hesitation is that you think you need to fix something first. You tell yourself you'll do this assessment once your career is stable, or once you've dealt with personal issues, or once you have the bandwidth to think clearly. In practice, these conditions rarely arrive. The assessment is actually more useful when you're in the middle of real constraints, because that's when you need to know what you're really willing to sacrifice and what's non-negotiable. The assessment doesn't require clarity—it creates clarity.
The third is that you're not sure the framework will apply to you. You might worry that Schwartz's value types, despite being tested across 80+ countries, don't quite capture what you mean by meaning or what makes your life feel substantial. That's fair. But the framework isn't meant to be a perfect taxonomy of your inner life—it's a tool to surface what matters enough that you're willing to organize your choices around it. If nothing in the framework resonates, that's data too. You'll know you're operating on different priorities than you assumed.
The My Values assessment surfaces your actual values, ranks them against each other, and shows you where you're living them and where you're not.
Is meaning the same as purpose?
Not exactly. Purpose usually means having a direction or goal you're moving toward. Meaning is broader—it's the sense that your life or work matters, that there's coherence to it. You can have purpose without feeling meaning (working toward a goal that doesn't personally matter), or meaning without a clear purpose (being present in what you do without needing it to lead somewhere). Schwartz's framework includes both, but they're separate dimensions.
What if I discover meaning isn't actually my core value?
That's the point. Most people who ask this question are either relieved or surprised by what the assessment shows them. Relief usually means you've been holding yourself to someone else's standard. Surprise usually means you learn what you're actually optimizing for—achievement, connection, autonomy, security—and you can stop feeling guilty about it. The assessment doesn't tell you what to care about. It tells you what you do care about.
Can my core values change?
Yes, but not usually by force of will. They shift with genuine life changes: becoming a parent, recovering from loss, changing your economic situation, aging. They can also shift if you step back and realize you've been living by someone else's values. The assessment captures where you are now. If your life circumstances change significantly, it's worth reassessing.
How does Schwartz's research apply to me specifically?
The 10 value types Schwartz identified appear across cultures because they reflect universal human concerns: survival, belonging, autonomy, fairness, achievement. What changes is how much weight you give each one and how you express it. The assessment builds on his framework but focuses on ranking your own values, not fitting you into a type. The research validates the framework; your choices validate what's true for you.