Find Your Highest Values
How do we stay motivated toward long-term goals, toward the selves we want to become? Link them to our highest values.
John Demartini ties motivation to how strongly something links to our highest values. His way of finding them is thirteen questions. Mine came out as Creativity, Knowledge, and Energy.
How
- Answer each of the 13 questions below with three examples. That’s 39 answers.
- Look for repeats. The same value often shows up in different words: spending time with people you like, drinks with coworkers, dinner with friends.
- Count how often each one repeats, and rank them. The top few are your highest values.
Answer from what your life shows, not what you think it should. For the thoughts, visions, self-talk and goals, Demartini means the ones slowly coming true, not fantasies, “shoulds” or “oughts”.
The 13 questions
- How do you fill your personal space?
- How do you spend your time?
- How do you spend your energy? Where do you feel energized?
- How do you spend your money?
- Where do you have the most order and organization?
- Where are you most reliable, disciplined, and focused?
- What do you think about, and what is your most dominant thought?
- What do you visualize and realize?
- What is your internal dialogue?
- What do you talk about in social settings?
- What inspires you?
- What are the most consistent long-term goals that you set?
- What do you love to learn and read about most?
Wording from The Demartini Value Determination Process. There’s also a free online version that ranks them for you.
Using them for motivation
Demartini’s chapter “Activating Your Genius” is about getting inspired by things you hadn’t been inspired by before.
- Start where motivation already is. We never lack it for what we highly value.
- Link the rest to that. To build intrinsic motivation for something you don’t care much about, find the ways it helps fulfill your highest values.
- Make lots of links. A kid loves computer games but hates math. If he draws dozens of connections for how math would help him master a game, each one makes the link stronger, and he gets inspired to learn math.
“I believe less in motivation from without and more in inspiration from within.” — John Demartini, The Values Factor
Try it
- What are your highest values?
- Pick a goal, or specific actions, you’d like more intrinsic motivation for.
- Write twenty ways those actions help fulfill your highest values.
Sources
- John Demartini, The Values Factor (2013), ch. 6, “Activating Your Genius”
- The Demartini Value Determination Process (PDF, Demartini Institute)
- My post: On Activating Our Genius (Dec 2023)