List of core values: 75 personal values to live by

Life is always unpredictable. You are always met with unexpected challenges and problems in life.

But if you believe in intentional living in which you know where to go and what to do, you would not be clueless.

Because if anything happens, you have your set of values listed and you know what actions to take following them to live a good life.

When you have your list of core values made, you know what decisions to take and how to act in various daily life situations.

This article will help you understand how core values can be your guiding light and a list of core values to have in life to live the best life possible.

WHAT ARE CORE VALUES?

Core values are a set of values or beliefs that you hold in life that help define the way you want to live life.

These core beliefs act as your northern star that helps in making decisions that help to improve life and stay focused on your vision no matter how many temptations you face.

Your personal core values act as your guiding principles in difficult situations and when you face tough times.

WHY ARE CORE VALUES IMPORTANT?

Core values help in improving your life year after year. Having a list of values defined helps in personal development and makes you a better person.

Having your own core values helps in

Staying aligned with your vision
Gives clarity when you need to make tough decisions
Having a sense of fulfillment, direction, and purpose in your personal and professional life
Living an authentic life
Staying focused on your goals and values and not be swayed by distractions
Improving productivity

HOW TO DEFINE CORE VALUES?

To define your core values, you need to understand what you want to gain from life.

Here are some questions to ask:

What kind of personality do you aspire to have?

Have you been inspired by anyone’s character or work?

What do you want to feel about yourself and the way you have lived when you get older?

What do you want to give to this world before you die? What do you want to be remembered for?

How do you feel like you do the things your heart tells you to do?

What makes you feel like “This is who I am”, or “This is how I want to live”? What actions or decisions make you blissfully happy?

Answer these questions in your journal and the answers will give you the core principles you want to have in life.

If words like “integrity”, “discipline” or “abundance” come into your mind, those are your core values.

LIST OF CORE VALUES AND BELIEFS

In addition to the ones you got, here are more ideas to choose from as your core beliefs.

1. ABUNDANCE

Choosing to see abundance in everything. Adopting an abundance mentality will help you to celebrate the best in life – and it will also help you to give more and help others.

2. ACCEPTANCE

Acceptance as a core value will help us to accept ourselves, our emotions, and our life situations as they are. It also includes understanding what we can control and what we can’t.

Choosing acceptance as one of the good values will help you to love yourself more and accept the people around you as they are.

It helps to improve your personal relationships. And also develop a positive outlook towards life, as you are not in denial about your reality and go with the flow no matter what happens.

3. ADAPTABILITY

Life keeps changing all the time. Our ability to adapt to life changes determines how much we cope with change, positive or negative.

Adaptability plays a crucial role in your growth, as people who are always stuck in their comfort zones never get to enjoy the vivid experiences that life can offer them.

4. AWARENESS

Develop awareness as one of your core values and you can understand your weaknesses and strengths.

It also helps to closely evaluate other people and your relationships with them. Awareness is key to understanding any problem, its triggers, and how you can improve and thus make better decisions.

5. AMBITION

Ambition is what keeps us motivated to do better. Ambition helps us to do great things in life. And it ignites in you a strong desire to win no matter what your life experience is.

ambition is one of the core values we all must have in life

6. APPRECIATION

Appreciation is a must-have in your list of personal values. We should be able to appreciate ourselves and others to enjoy living.

All humans want to be appreciated and appreciation helps in accepting others’ love and hard work and this leads to better relationships.

7. ADVENTURE

Adopting adventure as one of your core values will help in keep looking for new and rich experiences and make life fun and exciting.

8. ADVOCACY

Advocacy as a core value helps you to support a cause important to you.

9. ASSERTION

Assertion helps you to understand your value and express it confidently. It helps you to say NO when you need to, without hurting others’ feelings.

10. BALANCE

Balance is a core value we all need to internalize. There should be a balance in everything in life so that all the areas of your life run smoothly. This helps to devote time and energy to all the important areas of life.

11. BOLDNESS

When you hold boldness as your core value, you learn to take risks and set personal boundaries when people invade your personal freedom and space.

12. COMMUNICATION

Valuing communication helps you to express your thoughts properly, remove misunderstandings, and create better relationships.

13. COURAGE

Courage is a core value that helps you push yourself out of your comfort zone to achieve your goals and face life challenges.

14. CALMNESS

Calmness is a core value that will remind you to access your inner calm during chaos.

Being anxious and being in a fight or flight state doesn’t always help you. Asking yourself what you can and what you can’t control is a great question to ask to attain calmness.

Calmness will help you to face challenges with a solution-oriented mindset.

15. CANDOR

Being honest and straightforward will help you to take a lot of burdens away from your chest. You learn to not give into people-pleasing tendencies and speak your mind when required.

16. COMMUNITY

Being community-centered helps you to do your part to give back to the community that has served you over the years – be it as a service, time, or energy.

being community minded is one of the core values we can aspire to have in life

17. CONSIDERATION

This goes hand-in-hand with the “Community” core value. Being considerate of others is essential to express kindness and to give back.

18. CONFIDENCE

Developing confidence is about loving yourself as who you are and having faith in your abilities. Confidence helps you to go where you want to go.

19. CHALLENGE

Be able to challenge yourself constantly. Challenges are what help us to grow. We get stronger when we face problems. Making challenges your core value helps you to face challenges head-on and make difficult decisions, without hiding away from them.

20. COMMITMENT

Commitments are what help us to stay on track with our goals. When we are truly committed – be it to personal goals, work, or relationships, we stay motivated to work on them.

Commitment is one of the most important core values everyone should have, to gain trust and respect – from self and from people who matter to us.

21. CONSISTENCY

Consistency is what brings results in life.

When you form a vision, you have to find ways to stay consistent with your goals to stick to the end. No matter how passionate you feel you are, if you do not show up every day you won’t get the desired results.

22. DEDICATION

Dedication is doing everything you can for a cause you believe in. When you are dedicated, you have stronger ethics, and you go the extra mile if needed to make sure something is done.

23. DETERMINATION

Determination helps to keep going when things get rough.

24. DEPENDABILITY

To gain the trust of our community, we need to develop dependability. When you are a dependable person, you gain the trust of other people by showing up on time, doing what you promise to do, and being a person whom others can count on.

25. DISCIPLINE

Discipline is an important core value you need to be successful. Discipline helps you to be stable and give a routine that is in alignment with your goals. Discipline helps us to avoid distractions and be focused.

discipline is one of the core values we should aspire to have in life

26. EFFICIENCY

Efficiency means getting things done most profitably. When we are efficient, we work smarter, not harder. Thus we can save time, energy, and resources to get work done smarter and achieve professional growth.

27. EDUCATION

Education never stops. Even after formal education ends, we can still keep learning especially in today’s world where information is easily available to us. It also helps to get a competitive advantage in your field.

28. ENJOYMENT

What’s life if we do not get to enjoy what we do right? We need enjoyment in life to make things fun and feel happy. Life is hard, so we need to consciously add in things that help us to be in balance.

29. FAMILY

Family is a core value for most of us, as it is where we get love, support, and companionship. However, it is important to analyze how much time we spend with our family without external distractions.

30. FRUGALITY

Frugality helps us to consciously choose the things we want in life and filter out the rest. It helps us to live with what is essential and avoid spending too much money and energy on things that don’t matter and helps in achieving financial security.

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31. FAITH

Faith doesn’t need to be necessarily religious faith. But having firm faith (in God, the Universe, or energy) will help you to keep moving forward with your decisions even when you don’t see the light.

32. FAIRNESS

Fairness is not guaranteed in life. But we can show fairness to others by showing respect, and equality, and not playing favorites. Taking turns and sharing with others all come with treating people fairly.

33. FREEDOM

Freedom is the ability to do what we want without external restrictions. When freedom is a core value, we can try to build a life in which we are not tied to anything that restricts our desires and personal growth.

34. FITNESS

Physical and mental fitness helps us to improve our quality of life by maintaining our optimal health conditions.

Fitness is what gives us the energy to work and do whatever we want in life. Making fitness goals a part of life not only helps our physical health but also our emotional health.

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35. FOCUS

Focus is a core value that helps you to achieve your goals. In life, we are often distracted by many temptations – internal and external.

When we know what to focus on, we are more likely to achieve our goals sooner as we can stay focused on our vision statement.

36. FUN

Having fun as a core value reminds us to take regular breaks and maintain balance in life. It reminds us to take a pause and laugh.

37. FORTITUDE

Pain is inevitable in life. Fortitude helps us to overcome fear and be resilient and courageous in times of adversity.

38. GENEROSITY

Generosity is giving our time or resources to the people around us without expecting anything in return.

Generosity leads to more fulfillment and happiness too. Generosity also helps to reduce stress, lowers the risk of dementia, decreases anxiety, helps with chronic pain management, and more.

39. GROWTH

Growth helps us to move forward. Investing in personal growth helps us to identify our weaknesses and work on them to become better people. Growth helps us to become stronger and helps us to become more resilient and stronger.

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40. GRACE

Having grace means expressing unconditional love to others. It’s the kindness and forgiveness we show to others even when it is hard to do it. It not only helps to improve relationships but also helps in healing yourself.

41. GRATITUDE

This is one core value everyone must have no matter what. Gratitude helps us to be grateful for what we have rather than looking for what we don’t have. It makes us happier and healthier since we can feel more positive emotions daily.

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42. HAPPINESS

Happiness is an important core value we must have in life. Happiness is not something we achieve by reaching a final goal. It is a state of mind that we can emulate by focusing constantly on the good things in life.

Happiness should always be felt in the journey as it tends to evaporate faster when we reach the destination.

43. HARD WORK

Hard work is one of the most important ones on our list of personal core values. Hard work is what helps us to materialize the life we envision. Without working hard, it is impossible to change our circumstances no matter what.

Ever heard, “There is no free lunch”? Yes, if you want to achieve greatness in life, you have to be willing to put in the effort too.

44. HARMONY

We all are different. To live peacefully, we need to make sure harmony is an important value in our lives.

It involves accepting differences without judgments and trying to maintain peace and stability in our lives by accepting people with all the differences.

Harmony is essential to maintain peace of mind in our lives.

45. HEALTH

Health is one of the top core values we must have. Without health, no amount of riches can help us.

46. HONESTY

Honesty makes it to the top 10 of my core values list. Honesty is about telling the truth and about purposefully creating a life where you don’t have to tell lies. It’s living as your authentic true self without fearing judgment.

Honesty also makes us a trustworthy and dependable person. This leads to more love and depth in relationships too.

47. HOPE

Hope makes us optimistic and live life looking forward. Hope helps us to not give up on life when things are hard and we can’t see the end of the tunnel yet.

Related:

How to stay patient when going through tough times

48. HUMILITY

Humility is important to stay grounded and a value we need the most when we achieve big goals. It helps us from turning into arrogant humans.

Humility helps us to be accepted and be in a leadership position with strong values, acknowledging and helping others.

49. HUMOR

The ability to find humor in everyday life challenges will help you to reduce stress and improve your mental and physical health.

50. IMAGINATION

Imagination helps us to come up with new ideas and do new things that can lead us to live a better life. Imagination helps you think out of the box and change your life.

51. IMPROVEMENT

Kaizen is a Japanese term that means “constant improvement”. Constant improvement is necessary in our lives in order not to be stuck and stagnant.

It brings growth and amazing new experiences in life that make life rich and fun.

52. INDEPENDENCE

The sense of becoming independent promotes self-confidence and self-reliance. When we feel independent we are happier since we have a sense of accomplishment.

Independence also gives you control over your life which helps us to live life on our terms.

53. INTUITION

We don’t have to make all the decisions through logical reasoning. Sometimes things are felt and come from our gut feeling which can also be based on past experiences.

It requires more tuning in with your subconscious, but most of the time your instincts give you the truth your conscious mind cannot see.

54. KINDNESS

Kindness brings us closer to other people. Acts of kindness not only helps others but also is a rewarding experience for ourselves.

55. LEADERSHIP

Every human can be a leader, not only the ones leading the organizations and companies. We can show leadership by influencing and inspiring others and making good judgments in decision-making processes.

Leaders help others by inspiring them and pushing them to achieve their goals.

56. LOVE

To live a fulfilled life, we need love. Having people to love is important because they act as a source of strength, hope, and inspiration to live. Human beings are wired to love. So it gives us a lot of pleasure and happiness to give love.

57. LOYALTY

Loyalty helps us to give our support and love by having the best interests at heart. It ensures the success of our relationships and careers.

58. MASTERY

Mastery is one important skill to be developed to have control over ourselves and stay focused on our goals. Mastery includes everything – mastery of our willpower, focus, and fears.

59. MODERATION

Moderation is a core value that goes hand-in-hand with balance. We must do everything in moderation to avoid doing anything excessively- be it the good things or bad things.

It helps us to have some control over life and is key to healthy living.

60. MOTIVATION

Motivation is something that we require to get up and do things in life. However, it is bad to rely on motivation every day as it is almost impossible to be motivated every single day.

But we should make an effort to not fall apart with our goals and rekindle our motivation by always reading, listening, or watching motivational things.

motivation is one of the core values to have in life to keep moving forward and achieve our goals

61. OPTIMISM

Optimistic people are more likely to be happier and more successful in life as they are always hopeful that things will get better. Optimism helps us to fight depression during distress.

62. ORGANIZATION

An organized life has many benefits. You will have more productivity as you are spending less time looking for things and more time to do what matters in life.

63. ORIGINALITY

Originality helps in following your own path and staying true to your own values.

64. PASSION

Passion is what keeps the fire inside us alive. Passion helps us to love what we do and keeps us persistent till we achieve our goals.

65. PATIENCE

Patience helps us to go through frustration and disappointment with grace. Patience is one of the most important virtues we need in life to survive difficult times.

66. PERFORMANCE

To access your peak potential levels, we need to learn to be peak performers. Peak performers give importance to their productivity levels and take care of them by optimizing every area of their lives.

67. PLAYFULNESS

Playfulness is not only for kids but for adults too. We spend too much time worrying and being uptight. Playfulness helps us to have fun and relax in between periods of work and chores.

68. PRESENT

We are so consumed by the problems in life that we are always thinking and analyzing or ruminating. Taking time to be mindful helps us to be present in the current moment where life is happening and appreciate each moment without worries.

69. PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity is important and it is important to work on productivity because it directly affects our output. We must constantly work on our productivity to complete our daily tasks on time, reducing stress and anxiety.

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70. PROFESSIONALISM

Our professionalism shows our dedication and discipline towards our work. It also expresses how dependable we are.

True professionals are committed, and proactive and can separate work from personal matters. Professionalism is one you should add to your personal core values list if you want to grow professionally.

71. PURPOSE

Having a purpose in life helps to have a direction in life. It helps us to steer toward the right direction when we take the wrong path.

72. RESPECT

Respect builds strong relationships. Respect means accepting people as they are and coexisting peacefully even with different perspectives.

73. REFLECTION

Reflection is important in life to stop and evaluate the journey we are going through. It helps us to analyze what is working, what’s not, and what should change.

It is good to conduct periodic reflections every quarter or every few months and correct things if needed.

74. STILLNESS

We live in a world of constant hustle and a “go, go, go” mentality. Even when we take a break, we fill it with social media scrolling which again brings up different kinds of emotions for us.

So it is essential to find time to sit still once in a while. Or maybe take 10 minutes every day to meditate and sit still.

It helps to bring more connection to your inner self and develop your intuition. So get away from the constant noise and chatter and sit with yourself.

75. WISDOM

Wisdom is the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise.

We can gain knowledge through books and other media. But wisdom comes through personal experiences. We have to get out of our comfort zone, do things, and make judgments, and by reflecting on our mistakes, we gain wisdom.

The wisdom we gain can be used for our future experiences and be passed through to the next generation as well.

wisdom is an important core value to have

FINAL WORDS

In conclusion, identifying and embracing a set of core values is essential for guiding individuals and organizations towards meaningful decision-making and actions.

By clearly defining what matters most, we can cultivate a sense of purpose, integrity, and cohesion within our personal and professional lives.

Embracing these core values empowers us to navigate challenges with clarity and confidence, ultimately leading to greater fulfillment and success.

As we continue to uphold and embody our core values, we contribute to a more harmonious and purpose-driven world for ourselves and those around us.