Exploring Your Values

The first exercise is called “exploring your values”. The purpose here to see how your current behavior is impacting your life -- either your personal relationships or your work.  One definition of values is that they are a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.

Step 1: Make a list of all the things that are important to you.

What do you feel are the most significant things needed for you to have a successful life? What do you care about most?

Here are a bunch of options that you can pick from. You can also write your own.

• Family - to have a happy, loving family
• Wealth - to have plenty of money
• Purpose in life - to have meaning and direction in my life
• Responsibility - to make and carry out responsible decisions
• Love - to be loved by those close to me
• Yiddishkeit - to be a good Jew
• Knowledge - to learn and contribute valuable knowledge
• Humility - to be modest and unassuming
• Honesty - to be honest and truthful
• Inner Peace - to experience personal peace
• Spirituality - to grow and mature spiritually
• Integrity - to live my daily life in a way that is consistent with my values
• Health - to be physically well and healthy
• Independence - to be free from depending on others

Step 2: After you make your list, choose 5 you feel are the most important.

Step 3: Then ask yourself, does your current behavior enhance or help these values or does it go against them, or is it irrelevant? If it goes against them, how does it interfere?

Example (For a married guy)

What I value the most?	How does my current behavior interfere?
Hashem / My Yiddishkeit	I know it's wrong It makes me feel guilty & distant from Hashem Causes pain to my neshama
Good Marriage	My wife might find out and leave c"v. Makes me less attracted to her - I keep comparing her to others. It's not fair to her. My marriage will be 10x better if I stop
My Kids	I feel less of a role model for them They might find out and that would be tragic
Parnasah	Takes away time I could spend on developing my career Stopping will be a segula for abundance
Learning Torah	It makes it harder to focus. My mind wanders and is less clear.

Full list of values

Acceptance, Achievement, Accomplishment*, Admiration,* Adventure*, Athletic*, Art[istic], Authority, Accuracy, Adventure, Ambition*, Attractiveness, Autonomy, Beauty, Belonging, Caring, Chinuch, Comfort, Compassion, Compromise, Conscientious*, Cooperation, Challenge, Change*, Creativity*, Commitment, Complexity, Contribution, Courage, Courtesy, Curiosity, Creativity, Diligence, Ecology, Faithfulness , Dependability, Dignity*, Duty, Excitement, Faith, Fame, Family, Fitness, Flexibility, Forgiveness, Freedom , Friendship, Fun, Generosity, Genuineness, Good Parent*, Genuineness*, Gratitude, Growth, Halacha / Hashem’s[1] Will, Health, Helper*, Home*, Honesty, Hope, Humility, Humor, Imagination, Independence, Industry, Inner Peace, Intelligence, Justice, Knowledge* Leader[ship], Loved, Intimacy, Knowledge, Learning*, Leisure, Loving, Loyalty*, Mastery, Mindfulness, Moderation, Music, Novelty, Money, Monogamy, Non-conformity, Nurturance, Order, Openness, Passion, Perfection*, Pleasure, Power, Proud*, Protect, Purpose, Patriotism, Popularity, Practicality, Provide, Rationality, Realism, Reputation, Respect*, Responsibility, Risk, Role Model, Romance, Safety, Security*, Self-Acceptance, Self-Control, Self-Esteem, Service, Sexuality, Success*, Solitude, Stability, Strong*, Tradition, Wealth, Simplicity, Spirituality, Tolerance, Virtue, Wisdom,* World Peace, Yiddishkeit.

In SMART Recovery

SMART Recovery has a simplified version of this tool:

1. Take a few minutes or so and write down a list of things that are important to you. (There is no list of suggestions.)
2. From the list above, look through and choose those that you consider to be your “Top Five”… the five things you consider to be the MOST IMPORTANT to you (in no particular order).
3. Notice that your drug of choice isn't on your list!

See HOV (Hierarchy of Values Worksheet) Worksheet on SMART Recovery

The SMART Recovery Handbook also has a follow up exercise with a few questions:

1. What do I want for my future?
2. What am I currently doing to achieve that?
3. How do I feel about what I’m currently doing?
4. What could I do differently to achieve the future I want?
5. How would changing what I do or getting what I want make me feel?

References

• A key in appreciating another’s internal frame of reference is to understand their core goals and values. ... Understanding a person’s values also can play a key role in MI. An individual’s broader life goals represent an important potential source of motivation for change. It is a common human experience for day-to-day behavior to fall short of or even contradict longer-term life values. Such value–value– behavior discrepancies become apparent precisely through reflection on life values, and perceiving such discrepancy can exert a powerful effect on behavior (Rokeach, 1973). Miller, William R.; Rollnick, Stephen. Motivational Interviewing, Third Edition: Helping People Change (Applications of Motivational Interviewing) (Kindle Locations 1562-1574). Guilford Publications. Kindle Edition.
• DISCREPANCY WITHIN LIMITS / Unless a current “problem” behavior is in conflict with something that the person values more highly, there is no basis for MI to work. The focus is on intrinsic motivation for change...MI will not induce behavior change unless the person perceives that such change serves an intrinsic value and is thereby in his or her own best interest. Miller, William R.; Rollnick, Stephen. Motivational Interviewing, Third Edition: Helping People Change (Applications of Motivational Interviewing) (Kindle Locations 4839-4843). Guilford Publications. Kindle Edition.
• Self-reevaluation. The client studies and evaluates how the status quo and/or the new behavior relate to his or her personal values. As such, the client performs a thoughtful and emotional reappraisal of the behavior and begins to visualize the kind of person he or she might be after making a positive change. Connors, Gerard J.. Substance Abuse Treatment and the Stages of Change, Second Edition: Selecting and Planning Interventions (p. 12). Guilford Publications. Kindle Edition.
• Values: Building on Your Values Foundation Values play a critical role in addiction—and your values are likely to be the key to your escaping addiction. This is a matter of both considering what your values are and sometimes refocusing on dormant values or even developing new ones. When you can truly experience how a habit is damaging what is most important to you, the steps out of your destructive habit often fall readily into place. Peele Phd Jd, Stanton. 7 Tools to Beat Addiction: A New Path to Recovery from Addictions of Any Kind: Smoking, Alcohol, Food, Drugs, Gambling, Sex, Love (p. 23). Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.
• In order to help someone figure out which of that person’s own values will help him or her fight addiction, you can conduct a values intervention. Start out by asking what factors in the person’s life are important to him or her. Family? Health? Religious beliefs? Or being a good person? Be as open as possible in conducting such questioning—you are an explorer trying to learn about the map of another person’s mind. After eliciting an addict’s primary values, you may not have to do much more in order to get that person to see how his or her habit is in conflict with basic values he or she holds. The very process of interviewing that person can serve this purpose. However, sometimes you may need to push a little further, perhaps by gently saying, “I don’t quite see how your behavior fits in with those values.” The important thing about any such statement that you make is that it be nonconfrontational. Peele Phd Jd, Stanton. 7 Tools to Beat Addiction: A New Path to Recovery from Addictions of Any Kind: Smoking, Alcohol, Food, Drugs, Gambling, Sex, Love (p. 41). Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.
• Personal values. Self-reevaluation involves rethinking the problem behavior and recognizing when and how this behavior conflicts with personal values and goals. By identifying their values and then examining how their substance use is inconsistent with those values, clients will be using the change process of self-reevaluation. In considering and exploring whether or not their values fit with their substance use, some members may experience some strong feelings that characterize the change process of emotional arousal. Velasquez, Mary M. Group Treatment for Substance Abuse, Second Edition (Page 103). The Guilford Press. Kindle Edition.
• When you can truly experience how a habit is damaging what is most important to you, the steps out of your destructive habit often fall readily into place. Peele Phd Jd, Stanton. 7 Tools to Beat Addiction: A New Path to Recovery from Addictions of Any Kind: Smoking, Alcohol, Food, Drugs, Gambling, Sex, Love (p. 23). Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.
• Periodically revisit a list of your top five values in life; think about how your change is linked to those values. Changeology p. 191
• Values clarification Birchard, Thaddeus. CBT for Compulsive Sexual Behaviour (p. 62). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. (See there for description).
• Establishing your values Values can be defined as the principles in our life from which we derive meaning and fulfilment and it’s something we tend to hold on to very early. They form our belief system that tells us what is right and wrong so when we live a life that is in line with our personal values, we are able to feel good about ourselves. Those values can also be used to determine our priorities and our decision-making. In every case that I have worked with, sex addiction contradicts the personal value system of the individual, leaving them feeling ashamed and out of control. Over time, personal values slowly erode and many people may have forgotten what’s really important to them. Hall, Paula. Understanding and Treating Sex and Pornography Addiction (p. 118). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
• In my practice I recommend that clients tick the 10 or more values that are most important to them and then put them in order of importance and priority. Hall, Paula. Understanding and Treating Sex and Pornography Addiction (p. 120). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
• https://taylorpearson.me/core-values-list/ (Research on Values and Happiness)

Other Worksheets

• Values discussion cards. Has great questions to help you figure out what your values are.
• Values Clarification. A tool where you can choose and rate which values are important to you.
• Exploring Values. A nice worksheet that helps you identify your values by asking you to list your mother's values, father's values, values of person your respect etc.
• Personal Values Card Sort. Has nice list of values and descriptions. William R. Miller Janet C’de Baca Daniel B. Matthews & Paula Wilbourne. Not copyright. Instruction sheet.