What are my core values? A 4-minute reflection on what matters most right now

About 4 minutes · 15 statements · Your answers stay on this page

Underneath most days there are a few things that quietly matter more than the rest: room to grow and try something new, the people you love being okay, a steady base and doing well at what you do. They rarely pull in exactly the same direction, and which one pulls hardest can shift from one season of life to the next. This reflection asks you to rate fifteen everyday statements and takes about four minutes. From your ratings we show which of three groups of values seems to be pulling hardest for you right now: growth and freedom, care and connection, or security and achievement. You may land on a balanced picture instead, where several pull about equally. Alongside it you'll find what that can look like in an ordinary week, what we see as genuinely useful in it, where it can cost you, one small practice you could try today, and a few questions to sit with. No value here is better or worse than another; what we're looking at is what seems to matter most at this moment. Your answers never leave this page.

A reflection, not a diagnosis. No value is better than another, and what pulls hardest at one time of life often changes at the next. If a clash between what you value and how you're living is weighing on you, a counsellor or coach can help you sort it through in ways a reflection can't.

About the idea

The most widely tested map of what people value comes from the social psychologist Shalom Schwartz. He proposed ten basic values that people in many cultures recognise, among them self-direction, security, benevolence and achievement, and showed that they sit around a circle. Values that sit next to each other tend to go together (curiosity and a love of novelty, for instance), while values on opposite sides tend to pull against each other: the freedom to change against holding on to what is stable, and caring for others against pursuing your own success. Later work refined the circle into nineteen narrower values, and his overview reports findings from 82 countries.

The three groups you'll see here are our simplification of that circle, not Schwartz's own categories. Growth and freedom draws on self-direction and stimulation; care and connection draws on benevolence and universalism; security and achievement puts security together with achievement. In Schwartz's circle those last two are not neighbours (a value called power sits between them), so the pairing is ours: we grouped them because both describe a steady, successful footing. It does mean that if you want security but not recognition, or the reverse, you may land lower on that group than you'd expect. The fifteen statements were written for IX Coach and are not items from Schwartz's questionnaires.

Two limits we'd want you to know about. When researchers measure values they usually adjust for each person's own average rating, because some people say everything matters a great deal and others say little does; this reflection doesn't, so if you rated most things high you may land on balanced. And values describe what matters to you, not necessarily what you do, so your result is best held as a snapshot of right now.

What this reflection looks at

• Growth and freedom — Higher means room to learn, try new things and choose your own path matters a lot to you right now.
• Care and connection — Higher means the wellbeing of the people you love, and of people more widely, matters a lot to you right now.
• Security and achievement — Higher means a steady base, clear progress and doing well at what you do matter a lot to you right now.

Questions people ask

Sources

1. Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–65. doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60281-6
   Supports: Ten basic values arranged in a circle, where neighbours are compatible and opposites conflict.
2. Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An overview of the Schwartz theory of basic values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116
   Supports: A plain overview of the theory, its circular structure and the evidence across many countries.
3. Schwartz, S. H., Cieciuch, J., Vecchione, M., Davidov, E. et al. (2012). Refining the theory of basic individual values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(4), 663–688. doi.org/10.1037/a0029393
   Supports: The refinement from ten to nineteen narrower values.

The statements in this reflection were written for IX Coach; they are not taken from any published questionnaire. Last reviewed 2026-10-03.