How to Define Your Principles and Core Values

Personal effectiveness is often defined as one’s ability to set and achieve goals. This sounds simple, it’s only two things. However, the step that people struggle with is setting effective goals in the first place. This is often because they haven’t yet defined and fully understood their principles and core values. Trying to set goals that aren’t derived from your principles and core values is like building a house on sand – they’re doomed to come apart, because they have no foundation.

Too often, people set impersonal goals derived from social pressures, such as ‘lose weight’, ‘get a promotion’, or ‘buy a house’. These might be great goals, but if they don’t sync with your principles and values, you’ll struggle to stay motivated long enough to achieve them, and if you do achieve them, you’ll be surprisingly unfulfilled.

The following article will walk you through the process of defining your Values and Principles, and help you set goals that truly inspire you.

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1. Shift Your Paradigm

Your paradigm is the ‘lens’ through which you see the world. The meaning we assign to everything turns into a filter through which we view the world. This filter impacts our beliefs, actions, behaviors, and habits.

You can’t set effective principles, values, or goals if they’re based on an inaccurate reality. Before you settle on the principles and values that will guide you in your life, look at the lens through which you see the world, and question your strongly held beliefs. This isn’t easy to do.

However, the ability to be honest with yourself and challenge your beliefs will help you to develop a more informed, objective, and accurate perception of reality. This will help you to shift your paradigm away from a lens that was developed unto you, and towards a lens that was developed by you.

By looking at the world through your own lens, you’ll be able to define principles and values that help you to reach your goals and become the person you want to be.

“If our paradigm is not close to reality, our attitudes, behaviors and responses will not be effective or appropriate. We will be as lost as a person trying to function in Chicago with a map of New York. We can only accomplish quantum improvement in our lives if we accomplish a paradigm shift resulting in a more accurate and effective view of the world. Some paradigm shifts may be fast (a blinding flash of the obvious), some are more slow (a change in character).”

Steven Covey

2. Write Down Your Principles

Simply put, a principle is a law that cannot be bent or broken. The law of gravity is an example.

Many of our principles are derived from the fabric of our society. We adopt most of our principles from our environment and those close to us — we don’t even really notice most of them; this becomes obvious when you interact with someone who was raised very differently from yourself.

To create a timeless sense of purpose, and to shape the overall mission of your life, you’ll need to become mindfully aware of your principles. By writing down your principles, it’ll become easier to embody the ones you like and reject the ones you don’t.

Your principles will:

• Be your compass to which you refer to when you’re in doubt, evaluating opportunities or conflicting priorities, or need to take a stand.
• Help you to define your goals and values, and to choose between them when confronted with conflicting issues or opportunities.
• Serve as a convenient reference point, so you never feel uncertain or find yourself searching for an answer.
• Help you to understand the differences between right and wrong

For example, here are three of my principles:

1. Communicate Effectively
2. Produce Quality Work
3. Prioritize Goals

Whether I’m planning my day, choosing between conflicting priorities, or setting a new goal, I always revert to my principles. By having well thought out principles, you can always be comfortable knowing that you’ve made the right decision.

Setting your principles is not a small task; you’re truly laying the foundation of who you are as a person, by creating the laws that govern all of your meaningful decisions.

In ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, Stephen Covey explains that, when he came up with his principles, he rode his bike to a secluded place and spent all day defining them. Some people take days, weeks, or longer before they can truly settle on their principles. Don’t be afraid to make this an iterative process.

3. Discover Your Core Values

In ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, Stephen Covey defines principles as being permanent, unchanging, and universal; in contrast, core values are internal, subjective, and can change over time.

Core values help you define and accomplish specific objectives and ultimately reflect the current and potentially alterable goals of our professional, family, and personal life.

For example, here is a list of my core values, as they relate to my principles ‘Prioritize Goals’:

Principle: Prioritize Goals

1. Value: Always be learning
   • Always be enrolled in a course or program
   • Learn skills that help me in my career
   • Learn skills that build my character
2. Value: Be goal-oriented
   • Make progress towards my long-term goals each day; forgive myself and move on if I do not
   • Finish what I have started before I start something new
   • Evaluate my goals often, and make adjustments
   • Include my partner; have goals that include and benefit both of us
3. Value: Prioritize that which is real, current, and high impact
   • De-prioritize that which is conceived, aspirational, and low impact
   • Focus on my circle of influence; let go of that which outside of it
   • Do the quick and easy things first – get them off of my list and out of my mind

4. Use Your Principles and Values to Set Goals

Take a minute and try this simple exercise:

1. On a sheet of paper, write down your goals in one column, and your Core Values in another.
2. Draw lines from your goals to the Core Values that they support.

How did that go? Could you easily link all your goals to one or more of your Core Values?

If you were able to link them all together without forcing or over-rationalizing, great. However, if you’re like me the first time that I tried to do a similar exercise, you may find that they don’t all match.

I’ll share with you an example from my life where I thought I wanted something but discovered I actually didn’t:

I have a close friend who always has very nice, expensive cars. Whenever I’m a passenger in his car, I think “wow, this is great. One day, I’ve should get something like this.”

However, when I consult my principles and values, I am reminded that even if I become a millionaire, I will never own a $100k car. This is because, if I was ever faced with a decision of how to spend $100k, it would not be on a car.

I know this, because I know my core values, and that allows me to be completely satisfied with my aging CR-V (though I do enjoy the occasional ride in his car).

I shared this example because owning a nice car is a classic example of a goal that many people have, but may not properly reflect what they actually value.

The purpose of this article is not to tell you that it’s unilaterally wrong to accumulate wealth and exude opulence. These may actually be the right goals for you. I just want you to consider that many of the goals we often have are being nudged into our minds by external sources such as advertisements, entertainers, influencers, friends, and parents.

Our opinions, ideas of success and morality come from our principles – and we adopt most of them from our environment and those close to us.

Consider that next time you interact with someone who was raised differently from yourself, and you’ll communicate better.#leadership

— Chris (@ChrisjBergen) July 9, 2020

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Final Thoughts

If you followed the advice in the article, you will have:

1. Challenged your beliefs and gave yourself a more accurate and objective view of reality. With this clearer vision of the world, you can set goals that are more likely to succeed.
2. Defined your Principles and gave yourself a strong foundation from which you will derive your Core Values.
3. Defined your Core Values, from which you can set inspirational goals that are meaningful, satisfying and more likely to be achieved.
4. Reflected on your existing goals, observed whether they are linked to your core values, and ensured that future goals will be truly inspirational.

As you grow as a person and identify the things you value most and the goals you want to pursue in your personal, professional, and family life, you can use your principles as a reference point. You can build and adjust your core values and goals according to your principles, or you can use them to help you realize where your current goals and behaviors may be inconsistent.

Even if you find that you’ve not always been living up to the principles and values that you want to embrace, you can make meaningful changes and ultimately incorporate those changes into your goals. If you fall off the wagon, there’s nothing wrong with you — even Gandhi made mistakes; just remind yourself of your principles and values, and carry on.

“If I tell you the truth consistently and try to live it, and apologize when I don’t, and try to get back on track, then I’m living a natural-law repentance, making improvements, showing change.”

Steven Covey