How to Create a Values Compass
If you slice open a cocoon halfway through metamorphosis, you won’t find the caterpillar or the butterfly. Instead, you’ll find lots of … goop. The caterpillar digests itself, dissolving its organs into a soup, as a necessary part of the process of transformation. It’s messy, unformed, chaotic and creative.
The reality is that transition is often about flailing around in the goop before there’s anything to show for our efforts. When we’re in the middle of transition, we’re no longer our old selves — and we have no idea what or who we’re becoming. More than anything else, it’s often about just holding on and finding things that help in the meantime.
As a new mum, I’m smack bang in the middle of my own colossal transition. Four months ago — shortly before lockdown 2020 — my husband and I became parents. The last weeks have been a tumult of wonder, overwhelm, head-over-heels love, exhaustion and joy. Together, we’re navigating a ‘new normal’…that’s made even more abnormal by the backdrop of the pandemic and lockdown restrictions. Our lives were transformed at the same time that the wider world became unrecognisable.
And so in the midst of this, I’m figuring out what the ‘new me’ looks like. My work, my marriage, my sleep, my body and level of fitness, my emotional landscape, my free time, my relationships: everything has changed.
This means that I’ve been flailing around in a lot of goop. And as I’ve been doing so, I’ve been experimenting with certain practices that are helping me to find my feet. These practices are guiding me through the flux and the disorientation.
This particular practice is a Values Compass. Our values can be fantastic tools to help us navigate change (and life more broadly), so I love using them with clients. (I write about three specific ways they can help anchor us in this blog post.) The Values Compass is a tool you can create at home right now.
Creating a Values Compass in 4 Steps
1. Ask yourself: “Twenty years from now, what do I want to look back on about this period? What values do I want to have characterized how I lived?”
Jot these down as they come to you, and don’t worry about finding the ‘right’ answer (there isn’t one). If you end up brainstorming lots of values, just get them all down on paper. Then take time to winnow them down to just a handful — your key values for this season.
Alternatively, you may find that just one value emerges as your ‘north star’ right now. If that’s the case, don’t force yourself to find others. It’s likely that your intuition is telling you something important.
2. Now for each uncovered value, ask yourself: “What’s important about this to me?”
This step matters, because if the values don’t resonate with you – if there’s no energy in the value for you personally – you won’t be inspired by what you end up with, or motivated to pursue it. For example: the word ‘courage’ might mean very little to you – but ‘boldness’ or ‘daring’ or ‘bravery’ might.
In fact, you may not end up with a single word that describes your value. It might be a few words (‘seize the day’) or even a metaphor (‘gladiator’). What’s important is that it has a charge to it, deep down in your gut. You want it to feel like it’s you.
3. Create a simple visual of your values
Once you’ve solidified the values that most speak to you, write them on a post-it note and stick it to your mirror. Find a picture online that captures their essence, and save it as your desktop background. On a blank piece of paper, depict them in symbols, shapes or colours (a wheel? a diagram? a coat of arms?) and put it somewhere you’ll see it.
Why? It helps cement and deepen the values in your mind, and of course makes it more likely you'll see them regularly. In turn, this increases their potential to influence you, inspire you, and help guide your choices during the day.
4. Experiment with intentional practice
Now comes the part that actually brings this home. For a period of time – perhaps a day or a week – choose one of the values from your compass. During that time, experiment with different ways of honouring that value.
Notice the forks in the road where you can tap into this value to help govern decisions. Notice activities that help this value come alive. Observe what happens as you try out different things, and how you feel as you do so. What do you learn? What works well? How does practising this value impact your experience of this transition?
The next day or week, choose a different value and do the same thing. The aim here is to find small ways of incorporating what’s most important to you, so that – over time – you can start forming patterns that are in line with your priorities. (You might want to try immediately honouring all the values all the time, and of course you can try — but it might be counterproductive. Transitions can already feel exhausting without trying to initiate something huge all at once, and these kinds of changes are less likely to last.)
This is all about making small, curious steps towards change, so that you can experiment with different ways of journeying through this transition in ways that feel like you. Your values compass is a tool to help you navigate a season that can feel confusing, out of control, and disorienting.
Take it at the pace that’s right for you, and keep on experimenting and exploring, following your own compass to guide you through this transition and out the other side: more self-aware, resilient, and purposeful.
Something to chew on: Which value do you feel most drawn to exploring at the moment? What small step can you take to bring more of that into your life this week?