The Values Compass
What you say you value is a claim. What your calendar says is evidence.
This room finds your actual north — not the values that sound good, but the ones you'd rebuild your week around. Then it does the uncomfortable part: it checks your claim against your evidence. Working from stated values toward lived behavior is a core move in established approaches like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy; here it's just four honest steps. About fifteen minutes.
Compassion · Freedom · Family · Curiosity · Truth · Adventure · Integrity · Creativity · Security · Justice · Service · Love · Courage · Wisdom · Humor · Beauty · Community · Rest · Learning · Faith · Independence · Loyalty · Health · Honesty · Growth · Peace · Generosity · Craft · Nature · Belonging · Ambition · Simplicity · Tradition · Playfulness · Depth · Reliability · Self-respect · Making things · Being of use · Leaving places better
Choose ten
From the list above or your own words — the ten that are genuinely yours, not the ten you were raised to say.
Need to come back down?Narrow: ten to five, five to three
Cutting is the exercise. For each cut, notice the flinch — the values that are hardest to cross out are telling you something. Write the five, then the three that survive.
Need to come back down?Now check the evidence
For your three: what does your calendar suggest you value? Your spending? Your relationships — who actually gets your time and patience? Your behavior on an ordinary Tuesday? Write what the evidence says without defending yourself. The gap isn't a verdict on your character; it's a map of where your life hasn't caught up to you yet.
Need to come back down?Where aligned, where not — and one move
Name where your life already matches your three; give yourself credit for it, because alignment you don't notice erodes. Then name the biggest gap — and one concrete move, this week, that shifts an hour or a dollar toward what you actually value. Not a life overhaul. One hour. One dollar.
Need to come back down?If the gap traces to a pattern — always deferring, always earning rest, always rescuing — the Pattern Map knows that terrain. And if the gap is about someone else's claims on your time, the Boundary Builder is down the hall.
Coming back down
Breathe in through your nose for four, out through your mouth for eight — longer out than in — for a few minutes. Then name five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch. Stirred-up feelings after writing like this are common and tend to pass; if they don't, that's information that this deserves more support than a page can give.
If you're in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please don't work through it alone here. In the US, call or text 988 (the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or chat at 988lifeline.org — available 24/7. Outside the US, findahelpline.com lists helplines around the world.
Free, always. A compass only matters if you turn the ship.