Understanding your core values is one of the most powerful ways to bring clarity, direction, and confidence into your life. Your values shape your choices, guide your goals, and influence how you handle challenges. When you know what matters most at your core, it becomes easier to make decisions that feel right and support your wellbeing.
To make this process simple and accessible, we created a free Core Values Worksheet that helps you explore your values with clarity and ease.
This worksheet works well for anyone who wants to learn more about themselves. It is also a great tool for therapists, counselors, coaches, and other mental health professionals who want to support clients in self discovery.
What Is a Core Values Worksheet?
A core values worksheet is a simple tool that helps you identify the beliefs and guiding principles that shape your life.
Most worksheets include a list of values with additional space to write your own, a space to list your top values, and many include questions or exercises that will help direct the exercise. The goal is to give you a clear starting point for understanding who you are, what motivates you, and how you want to move forward.
Our worksheet includes a clear values list and an easy step-by-step activity that will help you learn more about which values are important to you and which values need adjusting. To do this we also separate values into three helpful groups:
1. Desired Values: These are the values you want your life to be built around.
2. Current Values: These are reflected in your day-to-day actions and choices.
3. Learned Values: These include values you picked up from family, school, culture, or past experiences.
We designed the worksheet this way because many people struggle to understand which values feel authentic and which ones feel borrowed or expected. Separating values into these groups helps you understand where you are right now, which values are driving your choices, and what changes might support the life you want to create.
How to Use the Core Values Worksheet
Below is a simple guide to walk you through the worksheet. You'll need a printed list of values (you can download this one with instructions here) and three different colored highlighters.
Step 1: Choose Your Desired Values
Pick one color to highlight values that feel essential. Ask yourself questions like:
- What do I want my life to be shaped by?
- What matters most to me at my core?
- What brings me the most joy, fulfillment, and/or excitement?
Give yourself permission to imagine the life of your dreams here. These are the values you want to live by. If you are not currently experiencing them, that's okay. This activity is to help you realign with your true values, so some of them might feel out of reach right now, but remember these are things you are building towards.
Choose three to five desired values that feel true and meaningful to you.
Step 2: Identify Your Current Values
Use a second color to mark the values that show up in your daily actions and choices.
Look at how you spend your time, energy, and focus. Ask yourself questions like:
- What values are driving my day to day choices right now?
- What do I worry most about?
Here, it is helpful to think over the past week and identify what consumed your time, what tasks did you focus on, who did you spend time with, etc. These are all clues as to what is driving your current choices.
Often times, we are unaware of what values we are actually following. For example, you might value "fun", but never take time to pause and play. This would be a great place to ask, "What am I doing instead?". Perhaps you feel you can't have fun because you need to work and make money. In this case, your current value might then be "financial stability" or "career" depending on what is driving that choice.
Choose three to five current values that match how you are living right now.
Step 3: Notice Your Learned Values
Use a third color to highlight the values you learned or felt expected to follow. Think of family rules, school expectations, work standards, or past relationships. Some questions you might ask here are:
- What do I feel like I "should" be focusing on?
- What values did I learn growing up?
- What cultural or societal norms do I believe relate to me or feel I am supposed to follow?
Learned values come from our experiences and what we were told to focus on by others. This does not inherently make them wrong, and in fact, you may resonate with a lot of them. However, these values are important to pay attention to because they may not ring true to your authentic self.
They can sometimes turn into values that we feel pressured to keep or live by even if they do not align with our true goals because they are connected to people, events, or groups that surround us. There may even be fear that if you stop following this value, you may lose those connections, which is why learned values are important to explore. If you have learned values that you continue to follow, but do not align with your true self, then there is a different underlying need that is not being met. We will explore this later in the activity.
Choose three to five learned values that still influence your choices.
Step 4: Reflect on What You See
Now it's time to take a moment to review your page and explore how values are influencing your life. Some questions to start with are:
- Where do my desired and current values match?
- Where do my current values come from?
- If my current values differ from my desired values, what needs are they meeting?
- How can I meet those needs through my desired values?
- Which learned values still serve me?
- Which learned values do not resonate with me?
- How can I begin to honor my desired values more?
When exploring the patterns beneath your values, it's important to stay curious and compassionate towards yourself. Oftentimes, when we complete exercises like this, we find that we are not living in alignment with our authentic values. Instead, we might be driven by fears that form into current values or we continue to follow learned values that have been ingrained into us, even if we don't agree, because it is what we know. And this can feel disappointing, crummy, and overwhelming.
So, I invite you to be gentle with yourself, and recognize that by starting to explore your values you are honoring yourself and your needs. You are taking those first steps towards realignment and making choices that will lead to your ideal life and those desired values.
This exercise is also not about blame or shame. It is about understanding what has influenced you, your choices, fears, beliefs, and behaviors so that you can begin changing what no longer serves you into that which leads to your best life.
Exploring Further
Let's loop back to if you find yourself in the situation where you are not living your desired values.
As I mentioned earlier, you will want to explore what unmet needs might be present and driving your current values. Here we want to focus on any values that do not resonate with your authentic self that continue to influence you.
To help discover potential unmet needs or fears, be curious about what would happen if you stopped being guided by this value. A great question to ask yourself here is:
"What am I afraid would happen if I stopped believing in this value or prioritized another value instead?"
Let's look at an example:
If you have current values of "being the best" or "achievement/success" and have a desired value of "peace" or "balance", yet have a difficult time setting down behaviors that lead to overachieving at the expense of yourself, doing rather than being, and perpetually checking off endless task lists, then there might be some fear or unmet need getting in the way.
You might answer the above question with things like:
"If I do not achieve or succeed, I'm afraid I'll be unworthy and people might leave me."
OR
"If I'm not focusing on success and "doing", then I feel uncomfortable because I start thinking too much. I learned to avoid my feelings by doing, and if I stop, I'll become overwhelmed by my emotions."
Both these show a fear and unmet need. One is a fear of unworthiness and to reach the value of peace, might need to reignite their self-worth whereas the other has a fear of slowing down and emotional discomfort, and might need to learn emotional regulation or present moment awareness.
This is an oversimplification of what changes can emerge from this activity. I just hope to show you that this exercise can lead to great information regarding not only your values, but your needs as well, helping you connect the dots between values, behavior patterns, and unmet needs.
Lastly, remember there are no right or wrong values. You are the expert of your own life and are allowed to define and go after what is meaningful to you.
How This Worksheet Connects With Hero's Ascent
Our Core Values Worksheet can help expand on the lessons, activities, and takeaways with several cards inside our Hero's Ascent Self Discovery Deck.
If you own the deck, these cards will work especially well with this values worksheet:
1) The Prophecy Scroll: Defining your values
The activity on this card invites you to write down your values and check whether your current actions support or conflict with them. The Core Values Worksheet makes this process easier by helping you identify your desired, current, and learned values before you begin. It acts as a clear extension of the card's exercise.
2) The Magical Map: Trust Your Inner Journey
The activity on this card has you reflect on your values and goals with the intent of helping you identify things that move you towards your goals, as well as things that could delay you. The worksheet helps you clarify your values first, which makes it easier to identify true goals, helpful paths, and potential obstacles once you begin the activity.
3) The Warrior's Path: Courage In Decision-Making
This card's activity invites you to bring attention to a decision you have been avoiding and explore which choice aligns most closely with your values. The worksheet supports this by helping you understand which values matter most to you, which ones are guiding your current behavior, and where internal conflicts may be happening.
Using the worksheet alongside Hero's Ascent can help you explore your values from new angles, deepen your insight, and move through your personal journey with more clarity and intention.
Download the Core Values Worksheet
You can grab the free printable worksheet from our Resources page here: Resources & Free Downloads
This worksheet gives you a simple way to explore your desired, current, and learned values so you can understand what is guiding your choices and what might help you move forward with intention. Whether you are discovering your values for the first time or revisiting them as life changes, this worksheet offers a clear and supportive starting point.
Looking For More? This core values work worksheet pairs perfectly with our Hero's Ascent Self Discovery Deck. The deck features 54 unique cards all with fun, fantasy-themed lessons, therapy-inspired activities, and positive affirmations to help you explore your inner world.
