Coaching practices for Personal Values List

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Personal Values List, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I’ve got a short list of values but they’re all just sitting there as equals, and the second two of them collide in real life
  • If you ask me what I value I’ll say family, health, honesty, growth
  • If someone asked me what I actually care about, I’m not sure I could answer honestly
  • I want to pin down the few things I most want to have stood for when I look back at my whole life
  • I can’t tell which of my values are truly mine and which I just absorbed from my parents or my culture

Practices that may help

  1. Rank your top values
    Force a strict order among your finalists so conflicts resolve in advance.
    Values Clarification, Made Practical
  2. The forced-rank sort
    Write your top 20 candidate values on cards, then sort them ruthlessly until you have a ranked top five.
    Values Card Sort
  3. Values clarification: what matters most to you?
    Identify 3–5 core values — not what you should value, but what actually matters when life is stripped back.
    Values-Based Action (ACT), Made Practical
  4. Write a values declaration as the core of your legacy letter
    Name the two to four values you most want to have lived by — then write why they matter to you.
    The Legacy Letter: Writing What You Want to Leave Behind
  5. Use the eulogy / future-self lens
    Imagine how you’d want to be remembered to reveal the values you’d defend most.
    Values Clarification, Made Practical
  6. Values Clarification, Made Practical
    Values clarification is the work of naming what matters most to you, sorting the genuine priorities from the inherited ones, and using them to guide real choices. The methods — card sorts, ranking, value-consistent action — draw heavily on values work in acceptance-and-commitment therapy (ACT), which has clinical support; living in line with your values correlates with wellbeing in observational research.
  7. Map your value hierarchy
    Rank what you most value so you can draw on the strongest affirmation when you need it.
    Self-Affirmation Theory, Made Practical
  8. The values–behavior gap check
    Audit the last week: which of your top values did your actual decisions honor?
    Values Card Sort
  9. Values clarification through lived evidence
    Infer your actual values from your past behaviour, not from what you wish you valued.
    Svadhyaya: Self-Study as a Daily Practice
  10. Connect individual strengths to the broader virtues they serve
    Understand which of the six VIA virtues your signature strengths express, and what that reveals about your character.
    VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical

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