Just like a healthy root system is essential for a healthy tree, core values are essential for a healthy life. They define our character and the way we live. Without values, we lack clarity about who we are and what we want in life.
One of the foundational ideas in personal development is to create a value system for your life. To make this process easier for you, I went through more than 500 core values that I found on the internet.1This list of 500 on Threads Culture was useful, but had a lot of duplicates. So I also collected more than that, based on my own research. Values that leaders and inspirational people use.
On this page, you will find 115 core values that I filtered. I went through my initial list and removed all duplicates. For example, “adventure” and “adventurous” are the same thing. These types of duplicates cluttered the lists that I found.
I also removed anything that wasn’t practical. For example, I ran into values like “fashion” or “profits.” What does that even mean? That’s why I removed every word that wasn’t practical. The result is the following list of 115 core values.
I have 8 core values myself (read about them here). I plan to cut them down to 5 or 6. But you can have even fewer than if that works for you. I don’t recommend more than 8 values because we can’t remember more.
115 Core Values
- Accomplishment
- Accountability
- Adventurous
- Aggressiveness
- Altruism
- Ambition
- Appreciation
- Assertiveness
- Attentiveness
- Awareness
- Boldness
- Calmness
- Caring
- Cheerful
- Commitment
- Community
- Confidence
- Consistency
- Contribution
- Courage
- Craftsmanship
- Creativity
- Credibility
- Curiosity
- Decisiveness
- Determination
- Directness
- Discipline
- Discovery
- Diversity
- Dominance
- Empathy
- Empowering
- Enjoyment
- Excellence
- Fairness
- Faithfulness
- Family
- Fearlessness
- Flexibility
- Freedom
- Friendship
- Frugality
- Generosity
- Gratitude
- Greatness
- Growth
- Happiness
- Health
- Honesty
- Humility
- Improvement
- Independence
- Innovation
- Integrity
- Leadership
- Learning
- Listening
- Longevity
- Love
- Loyalty
- Mindfulness
- Openness
- Optimism
- Originality
- Passion
- Patience
- Perfection
- Persistence
- Playfulness
- Pleasantness
- Pragmatic
- Proactive
- Productivity
- Progress
- Prosperity
- Relaxation
- Reliability
- Resilience
- Resourcefulness
- Respectfulness
- Responsibility
- Restraint
- Risk-Taking
- Selfless
- Self-Reliance
- Sensitivity
- Sharing
- Silence
- Silliness
- Simplicity
- Smart
- Solitude
- Spirituality
- Spontaneous
- Stability
- Strength
- Sustainability
- Sympathy
- Thoughtful
- Tolerance
- Toughness
- Tranquility
- Transparency
- Trustworthy
- Truthfulness
- Understanding
- Uniqueness
- Usefulness
- Victorious
- Vitality
- Warmth
- Welcoming
- Willfulness
- Winning
Unfortunately, I couldn’t include everything. There will always be people who say, why is so and so not on this list? That’s not the point. This is by no means a complete list. But I hope it gave you some inspiration to get started.
That’s what matters the most. As you get started with this process, you can keep cutting down your list as you keep uncovering your core values. It’s a process. To me, that’s the most important thing about his exercise. When you start thinking about what your values are, you will get to know yourself better.
