How to Live in Accord with your Values

Some common strategies for exercising and developing virtues

A lot of my work as a coach involves helping people to find more purpose and meaning in their lives, usually by clarifying their core values and scheduling activities that are more in alignment with them. It’s a basic premise of this approach that people tend to flourish when they place more emphasis on character-based values, which ancient philosophers call the virtues. Most of the time, when people feel a lack of value in their lives, it’s because they’ve become too absorbed in outcome-oriented goals, which are not entirely under their control, and to the neglect of process-oriented goals, such as the virtues.

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The cardinal virtues of ancient Greek philosophy are: wisdom, righteousness, fortitude and temperance — or wisdom, justice, courage and moderation, in more contemporary English. (The Greek virtue of dikaiosune, usually translated as “righteousness” or “justice”, includes both fairness and kindness.) These are the sorts of values we’re talking about — qualities of action or character, in the present moment, rather than external goals or future outcomes. You can potentially identify many other virtues, but these broad categories are a good starting point. People normally pick one to work on at a time, or at most two — more than that can become confusing.

I describe this approach in more detail in my article on using values as a framework for self-improvement. In this article, I’m just going to give some examples of generic strategies for living in accord with your values. I’m doing this because I find that clients often struggle at first to imagine ways in which they could change their daily routine. However, equally, in my experience, most of the changes that people tend to eventually come up with fall into a handful of broad categories, which I’ll describe below. By knowing this in advance, you may find it much easier to plan ways in which you can change your behaviour to help fulfil your core values.

Seven General Strategies

1. Reading

The first strategy that people tend to employ is reading or study. Ask yourself what sort of reading is most likely to actually require the virtue you want to develop, or to help you exercise it. That may mean picking things to read you would normally avoid, or reading in a more selective or structured way. It could mean reading books, or perhaps listening to podcasts, but it could also be reading your own notes or reading articles or conversations online. Some people may now use AI to read and study. It’s not just about what you read but the way that you read it.

Most people who are interested in self-improvement read self-help books and articles but asking yourself whether or not your reading actually aligns with the core value you want to develop can highlight important changes in your reading habits. People often subtly avoid reading the things that might benefit them the most because they believe they’d be too difficult, time-consuming, or challenging. Aligning your reading with your values could even mean reading less, by stopping reading things that are unhelpful or distracting in that regard, e.g., less doom scrolling and more studying.

2. Writing

People who are interested in self-improvement often write journals. There are many different ways in which you can write in the service of your core values, though. Research has shown that “journalling” can be helpful sometimes, but sometimes it can actually be unhelpful or even counter-productive. So the way that you write is important, and asking yourself whether your writing serves your core values or not can help you to evaluate what you’re doing.

Some more specific examples:

• Writing about your problems in the grammatical third-person, called illeism, can help objectivity.

• Writing about your fears using objective language, without emotive terms or strong value judgments, can be a form of decatastrophizing.

• Writing about how you can deal with a problem, sometimes called a “coping script” or “coping plan” can help improve problem-solving and reduce stress.

• Completing cognitive therapy worksheets or self-monitoring records can help self-improvement.

• Writing assertiveness scripts, and rehearsing them, e.g., by using structured formulas such as the Four Step Assertiveness strategy.

• Simply venting in a diary, though, has been found sometimes to make emotional distress worse, especially in depressed individuals, and it can have a similar effect with worry and anger.

3. Interaction

Interacting with other human beings, including talking. Yes, talking. Either in person, on the phone, online, or even in letters or emails. This can be a great way to exercise strength of character and wisdom, especially if you choose people or topics you would normally avoid. Some clients go online and talk to people with opposing political views in order to practice emotional resilience and patience. Others share information with their partners that they’ve been withholding, e.g., by admitting their fears, vulnerabilities or mistakes they’ve made.

Communication might mean practising assertiveness by setting boundaries, refusing requests, making requests, or expressing disagreement. It can also mean practising empathy by actively listening, and sometimes even saying less than normal. Many different virtues can be exercised in communication, though, or when interacting with others, such as patience, temperance, fairness, kindness, etc. Another way of bringing values into your interaction with others is simply to ask certain people how they would define wisdom, etc. Socrates spent his life talking to people about the virtues.

4. Meditation

This is a very broad category and could include many different forms of contemplation, visualization, self-hypnosis, and so on. You can approach meditation as an opportunity to develop many different virtues or character strengths. You can also meditate upon specific virtues. Here are some examples:

• Repeatedly visualize yourself acting more consistently in accord with the virtue you want to develop.

• Choose a short word or phrase that symbolizes the virtue you want to develop and repeat it in your mind each time you exhale.

• Contemplate individuals you admire for the virtue you want to develop.

You can explicitly state to yourself that you are dedicating your meditation to the service of that core value before you begin, and remind yourself of it afterwards.

5. Reminders

People often create prompts, cues, or reminders so that they recall certain virtues throughout the day or in specific situations. That could be as simple as the age-old practice of tying a piece of string around your finger. You could write a word or saying on a sticky note and put it on your desk or fridge. Some people set up reminders on their mobile phone or place objects or photographs beside their computer to remind themselves of the values they want to remember to embody.

People often assume, incorrectly, that self-discipline and organization require brute force — or some vague quality they call “willpower”. In reality, self-disciplined individuals tend to use reminders and other strategies to control their own behaviour. They take action, and use specific tactics to break old habits and create new ones. Reminders can also be seen as a method for developing mindfulness or self-awareness, especially when it comes to our own character, and the development of the virtues.

6. Creativity

For want of a better word, this is what I call it when people actively look for new opportunities to exercise certain virtues, during tasks that previously seemed irrelevant. For example, you may think of writing a book as a task in which you can exercise integrity but are there less obvious opportunities? Could you potentially exercise the same virtue while stuck in a traffic jam or answering emails from your accountant? (Even if only by using the opportunity to think about its meaning or use your imagination in some other relevant way.)

Turning obstacles into opportunities becomes much easier with practice. That’s partly because as you really begin to live in accord with your values, you’re bound to become more aware that each virtue is composed of component skills and attitudes. Even if you cannot imagine how to exercise integrity while changing a baby’s diaper, you may be able to exercise another virtue such as patience, and you may come to realize that patience, in turn, is necessary for integrity.

7. Correction

This is everyone’s least favourite strategy at first. By correction, I mean reviewing your performance and repairing mistakes. It becomes much easier with practice. In order to cultivate virtue, look for vice, and correct yourself. You want to be courageous? Look for instances where you lacked courage or may even have acted in a cowardly way, and ask yourself how you could recover and get your actions back in alignment with your core values. Did you act unwisely or foolishly? How could you remedy that and prevent it from happening again? Did you behave unkindly? Could you apologize or make amends?

First of all, you will need to notice and admit to yourself when you have erred. That takes self-awareness and integrity. Don’t beat yourself up for your mistakes but rather try to learn from them and adapt your behaviour in the future. Give yourself constructive, not destructive, feedback.

Conclusion

Are there any other strategies you may have been neglecting or overlooking? I hope this simple list helps to fuel your imagination. There are many different ways in which you can change your behaviour each day to exemplify or work on the character traits that are important to your flourishing. These are strategies employed by other people in the past. If you think about it, many specific tactics or techniques fall under each heading. Start with small changes, though. People often sabotage themselves in values work because they set unachievable goals, fail to meet them, then give up. Even five minutes per day, initially, can make a big difference. With practice, you will naturally find that you’re building on this and connecting with your values more consistently throughout the day, across different situations.

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Here is the original article, which explains in detail the approach assumed above…