When life is so full of influences from your culture, your family, and your society, is it even possible to really know your values alignment: to make decisions that are right for you and consistent with the person you want to be?

To “aim true” means to know your life’s targets and to aim towards them easily and naturally. How can you get there?

As children, we see without fear or doubt. We are raw and unabandoned in our self-expression. We have not yet been confused by life’s many events and imprints. Freedom abounds.

But we are also immature. We lack the wisdom gained through living. We have to grow up and function in the adult world.

Then, as adults, we spend our lives trying to unlearn what we’ve lived. In the end, we are only ourselves after peeling away a lifetime of imprints and influences.

There’s a “third path”: self-discovery, uninhibited and insightful.  

Claiming and living your core values is remarkably powerful. Values alignment reveals your true self. Your core values express what you live for—and what you would die for.

When we recognize our values, we grow in compassion towards others and ourselves. We choose what we stand for. We also see that like us, everyone has been shaped by their personal experiences and encounters. Instead of judgment, we are filled with curiosity.

Focus on what’s already there

When you’re deeply aware of your values, you are free to act instinctively. You naturally understand who you are and what you can accomplish. Then, you’re clear about what makes you happy—what goals to achieve and what to avoid.

There is nothing more discouraging than working toward a goal that leaves you feeling empty.

Unfortunately, knowing what a core value is isn’t so easy.

The main challenge is the daily bombardment of messages you face that impose other values and beliefs upon you: from your cultural values, to how you were raised, to the media. You are constantly being influenced.

Personally, I spent years feeling torn about who I really was. No matter how many personal development seminars I went to or coaches and yoga therapists I hired, I couldn’t find clarity about the truth of who I really was. I would get only so far before the old ways would catch up with me and I’d circle back to where I was. Each time feeling a bit more tired. After all this seeking, nothing seemed to break the chains that kept me feeling stuck. I decided to be my own therapist and take a hard look at my cultural and family influences – how I got the values that were driving me. Stepping outside of myself and seeing how I’d been influenced, I came to understand why I had felt so torn for so long. Now, I could recreate myself on a blank canvas by conscious design. I finally felt a true sense of self I had been searching for so long. I achieved my values alignment.

Can you really create who you want to be like an artist on a blank canvas?

It’s common to experience a values gap between what drives you forward in life (ie. Your influences) and the what the core values are that really define you and what you want to stand for.

Understanding and closing this gap is what living your values alignment is about. When you align with yourself, you are powerful. That’s when you can understand every action in a single concept and “shrink wrap” your life. You make a greater impact in everything.

How to discover your core values

We don’t know what we don’t know.  

You can grow to understand your values in two ways: deep introspection and external feedback. Both are necessary to see through the forest when you only see individual trees. 

1. Ask yourself: Why is this value important and what does it mean to me?

2. Explore values tests and be open to feedback so that you can clearly see what’s important to you.

Results of values alignment

When you know and live by your values:

1. You live with integrity. True self-confidence and following the right path comes when you are aligned with your core values. 

2. You have clarity. You understand what you authentically need in life.

3. You live purposefully. Fear fades into meaninglessness because a purpose larger than yourself drives you.

You aim true. 

What you aim for determines your outcome and your truth. You are focused and never thrown off.

Like an archer who’s ready to draw his bow and aim true at any instant, what values will help you consistently aim true?