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When you work a 9-5 job, core values are often drilled into your brain. You need to live and breathe by your company’s beliefs – and if not at work, then often by society’s idea of what to value. But have you ever stopped to think what your personal core values are? Have you ever considered why the might be important, especially as a mother?

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What are Core Values

You probably already know this, but in case you don’t – core values are a set of beliefs that you personally live by. They make up who you are, your morals and ethics, even your parenting style. They give you a personal code, or your own rule-book if you will to live by. The cool thing is, you already live by them even if you don’t realize it. But, its important to understand that core values are exactly what you make of it. Meaning they might be a single word, a phrase, an action, or a general concept that you live by.

But the best part is, they are flexible. Once you discover the code you are already living by, you have the freedom to reevaluate if that’s really the direction you should be going. And if you aren’t comfortable with it, then you get to change it!

Reevaluating Your Personal Code of Conduct

Now let me clarify, while core values should absolutely be reevaluated once-in-a-while to ensure you are moving in the right direction, this shouldn’t be often enough to disrupt your life entirely. A good rule of thumb for reevaluation time is when you feel the weight of the world pressing on your shoulders, when you feel that sense of “when it rains, it pours”, or when you generally don’t feel comfortable or happy in your current situation.

Reevaluating doesn’t have to be complex or life disrupting either. During the process you may simply discover that you just aren’t living by your own beliefs, and by turning your focus back to these rules, you should find that your life will start turning around or going the direction you originally thought (or wanted) it would go. The reevaluating process is exactly the same as discovering your personal values, so read on to learn more!

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Why Should Everyone Establish a Personal List of Core Beliefs

Everyone needs a set of rules to live by. Without these you may spin your wheels, go in circles or find yourself constantly second guessing yourself. More dangerously, you may find yourself in bad situations or making choices with negative consequences even though you wouldn’t necessarily call yourself a ‘bad person’ or a ‘rebel’ etc..

See what happens is our brains crave routine and pattern, sometimes even making patterns out of connections where they might not be one intended. Then suddenly a repeated action with the same consequence (negative or positive) establishes itself as a routine or pattern in your brain, and the more often you do it, the more often you brain pushes you to continue doing this pattern. This behavior begins to establish itself as one of your core values.

Examples:

  • Positive: Helping out a friend could have a consequence of feeling good about yourself, increasing self confidence. The more you offer to help others, you reinforce values such as selflessness, compassion, empathy or simply volunteerism.
  • Negative: Failing a test could have a consequence of feeling bad about yourself, decreasing self worth and causing you to mentally beat yourself up. The more you reaffirm these negative thoughts, you reinforce values such as unworthiness, self-pity, self-destruction, or even narcissism.

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How Will Establishing Core Values Make you a Better Mom?

So what does any of this have to do with motherhood? Actually everything, and nothing. Your core values sink into every aspect of your life: home, career, hobbies, family, relationships, and yes parenting style. Taking the possible core value examples from above, lets get a better understanding of how they relate directly to parenting:

Positive Core Values:

  • Selflessness: Making your children’s needs a priority, to ensure your family’s happiness and health.
  • Compassion: By showing your children and others compassion, especially when they don’t deserve it, you teach your children to be kinder members of society.
  • Empathy: Showing empathy to others helps children build their moral compass.
  • Volunteerism: By making volunteering a priority in your life, you teach your children the same through modeling.

Negative Core Values:

  • Unworthiness: If you feel unworthy of things, your modeling teaches children to question whether they are worthy of things.
  • Self Pity: Teaching children to pity themselves instead of dealing with issues and learning coping skills leads to a tragic loop of self pity and lack of compassion for others.
  • Self-Destruction: A self-destructive parent will often put themselves down, a trait a child will pick up on and copy.
  • Narcissism: A narcissistic parent may feel jealousy of a child, often humiliating them, putting them down leading the child into their own self-destructive loop.

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Your actions go far beyond how you feel internally about any given situation. But as a parent, you have a responsibility to teach your children to do better, and ultimately be better than you. Creating appropriate modeling behavior is the first step. And while feel unworthy, or unhappy is normal occasionally, showing how and when to break out of negative behaviors and emotions is an incredible teaching moment to create emotionally strong children!

So now that we’ve discussed why establishing core values will make you a better person, and more specifically a better mom, now what? Now we discover what YOUR personal core values are today, reevaluate if they are fitting your needs, and how to change any that you feel necessary to change!

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How to Define Your Personal Core Values

Defining the core values you currently live by isn’t difficult, but I do encourage you to take some time for this process. When you’re ready to begin, grab a paper and pen and start jotting down answers to the following steps. There are two ways to do this:

  1. Discover your current belief system by completing steps 1 and 2, then skipping to 4 and 5.
  2. Reevaluate and start from scratch by completing steps 1 through 5 in order.

There should be no numbers to limit you – in the end you may have 5 core values, or 20! While less may be more, don’t be discouraged by your list in the first few steps! We will find opportunities to narrow down a bit as we go! In the end, this is YOUR list so do you!

1 | Examine your emotions

The first step is to look into your emotions, consider moments where emotions got the best of you (good and bad!), for example, what do you FEEL when an important moment described below happens:

  • …you accomplish a long or difficult task…or when you don’t
  • …someone trusted ‘betrays’ you…or supports you
  • …someone you look up to compliments …or insults you
  • …something you’ve worked hard on fails…or surpasses expectations

Don’t forget to stick to important memories and experiences from your life, the more important they are to your heart, the more influential the emotions are to defining your core values.

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2 | Consider your needs

We all have fundamental needs, things we have to do or have every single day (beyond eating and drinking water of course). Consider what needs YOU have. What helps you feel fulfilled in your life? For example, do you require:

  • Creative expression
  • Physical Strength
  • Sense of Adventure

Don’t let this list limit your thinking, its purposely short to encourage you to think outside of the status quo. Consider activities you gravitate to, things that make you happy, and feel fulfilled. Split your list into two areas: needs you do often enough to feel fulfilled, and needs you wish you did because they would make you feel fulfilled.

3 | Examine those around you (OPTIONAL: For Reevaluation only)

This is not a list of judgement, but instead a list of things that inspire you, and understanding what doesn’t! Think about people who have made a difference in your life (good and bad) and what they did (or didn’t do) to make that mark on you. Jot down a list of these people, brainstorming what you aspire to be.

4 | Combine your lists

Now put these lists together, take special note of which ones are repeated or similar enough to each other to be considered repeats. For similar groupings, consider finding another word that emphasizes all of them together. Time to grab the old thesaurus!

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5 | Narrow the list

Next you will need to narrow down the list. Use the following steps to narrow your list down ideally to 3-5 core values. You should do each step in order of appearance, don’t skip a test! When you hit your target number of core values, feel free to stop! However, be aware that this is YOUR list and no one else’s, if you feel strongly about your list at any point, please don’t hesitate to keep something.

  1. Remove duplicates/similar ones
  2. Do the gut test: follow your instinct, and immediately cross off any that feel wrong. Alternatively “star” each that feel right!
  3. Use the pride test: Say each line out loud with your eyes closed. Picture someone you look up to standing beside you. Do you feel a sense of pride when you use it to describe yourself? Cross off any that don’t!
  4. Prioritize: Of the remaining list, reorder them by the instinctual level of importance you feel they have. Now look at your last few, do they still feel important not that they rank in the bottom?
  5. Write your own obituary: Using the current list, write a quick paragraph or two obituary about yourself using only the values listed. Read it out loud, do you feel satisfaction? Cross off anything that makes you feel sad, uncomfortable, or embarrassed.

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That’s it! 5 quick exercises to make your list, followed by 5 even quicker exercises to narrow it down! Hopefully you now have a list of core values you are proud of and excited to move forward with! And if you’re wondering what’s next, that’s up to you! This new empowered you should have a much clearer view of who you want to be, not only as a mother, but an individual! And if you’d like an even deeper dive:


Defining Core Values Workbook + Course

I will soon be releasing a step-by-step workbook alongside a self-guided course to help you discover your core values, how to make them more effective in your lifestyle, and use them to raise up your life, career, and home! Sign up below if you’re interested in being the first to know when they come out along with early-bird pricing!

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28 Comments

  1. This is such a helpful post. I love how you set how the positive and negative each time, it makes it easy to see how each example worth and how it relates to our lives and circumstances!

  2. This was a very insightful post, and made me stop to think if I knew myself and what I stand for. But this definitely is an excellent exercise everyone should do to get to know themselves better, since it helps not only that individual, but others that come in contact with them, especially family and friends.

  3. Great list! Thank you for this wonderful post.

  4. I’m definitely going to journal about this later. I have no idea what my core beliefs are.

  5. Amazing tips here. Congrats in advance on your soon-to-be released book.

  6. What a true and insightful post!

  7. This is a great post. I found the exercises & examples really helpful!

  8. […] are where you put up parameters around each segment, think of these as putting your core values into action. Instead of chasing the idea of a balance, you chase the idea of enjoying your life […]

  9. These are great suggestions. I’m not a mother, but I think identifying your core values for life, in general, is always important. Thanks for sharing at the Weekend Blog Hop at My Flagstaff Home! –Jennifer

  10. Cheers to raising emotionally intelligent adults and to breaking generational cycles!

  11. […] [RELATED: Discovering Your Personal Core Values, When to Reevaluate and How to Change Them] […]

  12. This was a very eye-opening post for me and it was necessary! Sometimes, I feel like I lose myself in the midst of motherhood and I needed to be reminded to do this to have a strong foundation for my kids and family.

  13. I needed this! I was a bit down for a couple of days already and I believe it is a good idea to try to figure out my priorities and assess my core values.

    Thank you so much for sharing this. I totally agree with what you have here.

  14. This is a great exercise that everyone should work through, whether they are parents or not. Our core values impact our lives on a significant level. Therefore, it only makes sense to make it a priority better understand and identify them.

  15. This is such a great reminder to stop and take the time reevaluate your core beliefs and values. I often get sidetracked by life and forget to do this – until we hit a crossroads either with our kids or our own individual struggles. So important to do this as we raise our kids.

  16. I really like this post! I appreciate that you said they’re flexible – because of course they change as life happens. And I think this is so important as a mom, because it’ll help me teach my child to have a set of values as well!

  17. I’m definitely going to bookmark this so that I can go back and actively write down my core values. I’ve heard about having a mission statement for your life, I guess this is just about the same type of thing!

  18. Incredibly insightful post! This is something that I think we tend to not put enough focus on introspection.
    Understanding who we are….what fills our buckets….what drains us… those are things we need to know about ourselves. Especially as parents!

  19. These are awesome tips! I will definitely be using them when I become a mom! Thanks for sharing!

    – Jackie
    https://jofalltradesb.wordpress.com/2019/05/23/vacay-recap-cali-pt-1/

  20. […] [RELATED: Discover Your Personal Core Values, When to Reevaluate, and How to Change Them ] […]

  21. My husband and I sat down the other day to define our core values because like you said, it makes us better parents! It’s important we do so so that we can teach our children what we believe in.

  22. Great post! I have done some work around this in the past year or so and it certainly does help. There are things I no longer say “yes” to at work or in my life… things I previously did just for the sake of trying to please others. It has helped me to establish what is truly important and to set boundaries.

  23. This was a very informative post. I enjoyed reading it. I am pinning it for future reference.

  24. Awesome advice! Definitely will keep these tips in mind!

  25. What a great post! You have listed both positive and negative. I like the statement that you mentioned “Your actions go far beyond how you feel internally about any given situation. But as a parent, you have a responsibility to teach your children to do better, and ultimately be better than you. ”

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