36 words → 5 values → 1 diagnosis
Find your values.
Everyone has values until they cost something. Then a real choice arrives, a job to leave or a client to turn down, and there you see what truly weighs. This exercise goes all the way. You have 36 words in front of you and you keep 5. Each one you anchor to a recent fact, then you score how much your life is honoring it. At the end you do not walk out with a list, but with the name of the value you are betraying and one action for tomorrow. A quarter of an hour, all here on the page.
How it works
Five steps, one diagnosis.
The format comes from Miller's values card sort and from the ACT tools that measure the distance between values and lived life, the sources are at the bottom. And one thing I tell you right away: this is not a clinical test, and it does not measure personality. Here you choose, you cut, then you score your own life. You bring the material. I bring the ruler.
You have 36 values in front of you, concrete words of life and work. You pick up to 10, from the gut, without overthinking.
Of the 10 you keep 5. This is the heart of the exercise, and the step that stings a little.
For each of the 5 you look for a recent fact that proves it. A value without facts is a slogan.
For each one, a score from 1 to 10: how much your life of the last weeks has honored it, in facts. Below 7 a warning light comes on.
The value with the worst score becomes the diagnosis. You name what is stopping you and choose one small action to do by tomorrow, with a check date.
The exercise
Find the words that are yours.
Read calmly, but answer from the gut: the hand already knows where to go before the head does.
Which of these words feel yours? Pick up to 10.
Pick at least 6, better if you get to 10. The cut in the next step only works if it costs something. To remove a word, click it again.
What now?
Five values in hand. Now use them.
A list of values, on its own, stays in a drawer. It becomes useful when it enters your decisions.
The sources
Where the exercise comes from.
Worth repeating: this exercise has no psychometric validation and does not replace work with a professional. The format and the diagnosis, though, rest on serious tools, born in research and used for years in practice.
Shalom Schwartz (1992), theory of basic human values. The study "Universals in the Content and Structure of Values" mapped the values that recur across human cultures. The grid of 36 words you find here starts from that map, translated into concrete words.
William R. Miller and colleagues (University of New Mexico, 2001), Personal Values Card Sort. The choose-and-cut format comes from here: a deck of value cards to sort into a few piles, born in motivational interviewing and released into the public domain. The original is on motivationalinterviewing.org.
Kelly Wilson and colleagues, Valued Living Questionnaire (2002). The double score comes from here: how much a value matters, and how faithful your recent life has been to it. The useful number is the distance between the two, the same one this exercise puts in front of you at the scoring step.
Tobias Lundgren and JoAnne Dahl (Uppsala University), Bull's Eye Values Survey. An ACT tool that, besides measuring how close to your values you live, asks you to name the obstacle and score how much it blocks you. The steps on the obstacle and the action come from here. You find it on contextualscience.org.
Geoffrey Cohen and colleagues, studies on values affirmation. Writing for about ten minutes on your own values has shown, in controlled studies, measurable and in some cases persistent effects on performance; other studies on the same exercise found effects on the stress response. It is not a magic wand and it does not work the same for everyone. That is why here I ask you to write true facts, not to tick boxes.
Done the exercise?
Five words, one coffee.
30 minutes, free, over a virtual coffee. You bring me your ranking, tell me which value ended up below 7, and we look at the first move together. In English, Italian or German.
Email has nothing to do with this: the exercise is yours, your 5 values too. If it helped, have a look at the English home, take the Stay-or-Leave Test, or visit the full site in Italian, and we can talk over a coffee.