A core value is a principle you live by, not just a word you like
A core value is something you care about so much that you organize your life around it. Not something you think you should care about. Not something that sounds good in an interview. Something that actually shapes what you do, how you spend time, and who you spend it with. If you say family is a core value but you work 70 hours a week to impress colleagues, family isn't your core value—status or achievement is. Your core values are visible in your choices, not in your intentions.
Core values differ from regular preferences the way a conviction differs from an opinion. You might prefer coffee to tea. That's not a value. You might believe people deserve honesty even when it costs you something. That's a value. You'll notice it in real moments: when someone asks you to lie about a mistake, when you have to choose between comfort and integrity, when someone you love disagrees with what you stand for. That friction is where your actual core values show up.
Why you have more core values than you realize—and fewer than you think
Most people have between four and seven genuine core values. Not twenty. Not two. The reason people often come up with huge lists is that they're naming things they value without distinguishing the core from the peripheral. You might value friendship, honesty, health, career success, creativity, adventure, stability, contribution, and independence. Some of those might compete. When they do, your core values win. If you choose a stable job over adventure, stability outranks adventure at your core. If you choose adventure over stability, the opposite is true.
The distinction matters because values that don't actually drive your behavior are just nice words. You don't live them. They don't organize your life. They're background noise. Real core values create friction when they're ignored. You feel it. You might not label it as a values conflict, but you feel something wrong in your chest when you're living against what matters to you. That feeling is the signal that you're close to something core.
Where core values come from and why they shift
Your core values began forming in childhood. Bowlby's attachment research showed that the safety and consistency you experienced early on shaped what you came to value in relationships. If your parents modeled integrity, you likely grew up valuing honesty. If they valued loyalty above all, you might have inherited that. If they showed you that hard work pays off, or that people matter more than money, those seeds grew. But childhood isn't destiny. You revise your values through real experience, through people who matter to you, through moments when you had to choose.
Core values also shift at inflection points. A health scare makes health core when it wasn't before. A relationship breaks down and suddenly you realize honesty or commitment matters more than you admitted. You become a parent and protection or education rises from background to center. You leave a career and discover you valued autonomy more than you knew. These aren't moral failures or character flaws. They're how you learn what actually matters to you versus what you inherited or absorbed without thinking.
How to know if something is actually a core value
Ask yourself: would I sacrifice something I want for this? Would I stand alone for it? Would I feel genuinely wrong if I betrayed it? If the answer is no, it's not core. It's nice to have. It's a preference. It matters, but it doesn't define you.
Try this: think of a time you felt deeply frustrated, empty, or wrong about a situation. Not angry at someone else, but wrong about yourself. What were you compromising on? That's often a core value being ignored. When you live against your core values—when you say yes to things you don't believe in, when you stay quiet about something that matters, when you choose security over integrity—you don't feel energized. You feel hollowed out. That hollowness is useful information. It tells you what you're sacrificing and at what cost.
The My Values assessment surfaces what your core values actually are by looking at your choices and what you prioritize, not what you think you should want. It ranks them and shows you where you're living them and where you're not. That gap—between what matters to you and how you're spending your time and energy—is where most of the dissatisfaction comes from.
Can your core values change?
Yes, core values shift over time, especially at major life transitions like becoming a parent, changing careers, or surviving a crisis. What's true is that your values don't usually flip overnight. They evolve as you gain experience and clarity about what actually matters to you versus what you inherited or absorbed.
What if your core values conflict with each other?
Nearly everyone has values that pull in different directions. You might value both autonomy and belonging, or both honesty and loyalty. The conflict itself isn't the problem. What matters is knowing which value comes first when they collide, and making deliberate choices rather than oscillating without noticing.
Is it possible to have too many core values?
If you have more than seven or eight things you say are core values, you probably don't have real clarity about what actually matters most. The word core means something ranks above the others. If everything is core, nothing guides you when you have to choose.
How do I know if I'm living my core values?
You'll feel it. Not constantly happy or comfortable, but aligned. You'll make choices that might be hard or inconvenient, but they feel right. When you're not living your values, you feel the absence—a sense that something is off, that you're compromising on something that matters, that you're not being yourself.