Values are what guide our decisions and actions throughout life. They are how and why we experience the world as we do. Understanding yours is not a navel-gazing exercise. It is genuinely useful information for navigating recovery, relationships, and the question of who you are becoming.
Why values matter in recovery
In concussion recovery, and particularly in the identity disruption that often accompanies it, values become an anchor. When your capacity, your roles, and your sense of self are all uncertain, your values are still yours. They do not depend on what you can currently do. They are the part of you that remains even when everything else is in flux.
Values also help explain the friction in your life. When you feel persistently resentful, depleted, or out of alignment, it is often because something in your daily life is pulling against a deeply held value. Naming what that value is makes the problem clearer and the solution more obvious.
They also help explain relationships. Sometimes we hold onto people because of history, while the values that once connected you have quietly diverged. Understanding your own values gives you clearer language for why some relationships feel nourishing and others feel draining.
Holding values lightly, not tightly
One of the most useful things to understand about values is the difference between holding them lightly versus tightly.
Holding a value tightly means expecting yourself to live by it the same way in every situation. But that is rarely how life works. Take honesty as an example. You might deeply value honesty in your close relationships and feel it is important to share your real thoughts and feelings with your partner. But that same unfiltered honesty is probably not what is called for in a work context, or with a stranger, or with a child. The core value has not changed. It is just showing up differently depending on the situation.
Holding a value lightly means giving yourself permission to express it differently at different times, without judgment. You are not betraying what matters to you. You are just being human. This distinction is particularly useful in recovery, when your capacity to live out your values the way you used to is reduced. The value is still there. The expression of it may just need to be adapted for now.
Values also shift over time as your experiences and circumstances change. A value that was central in your twenties may become less central as you age, and something that barely registered before may become fundamental after a major life event. Reviewing your values periodically is worth doing.
Three ways to find your values
There is no single right method. The three tools below offer different entry points: one starting from what you love doing, one by rating a full list, and one that shows you visually how your values sit across the areas of your life. Use whichever feels most useful, or work through all three.
Tool 1: Start from what you love
The most effective way to find what you actually value, as opposed to what you think you should value, is to work backwards from what you love doing. Enter five activities you enjoy and write five words for each describing why. The recurring themes are pointing at your values.
Tool 2: Rate a full values list
Sometimes it is easier to recognise what matters to you than to generate it from scratch. Work through the full list, score each value from 1 to 5, and let your top values emerge. You can add your own if something is missing.
Tool 3: Plot them on the wheel
Once you have identified your top values, this tool lets you drag them onto a wheel divided into four life areas: work, health, leisure, and relationships. Place each value closer to the centre if you are already living it strongly, further out if it needs attention. You can download the result as an image.
A values wheel that is mostly scattered toward the outer edges is not a failure. It is a map. It shows you clearly where the gaps are between your values and how you are currently living, which is exactly the information you need to start making intentional choices.
I am genuinely excited to share what I have learned about values, because it has done so much work for me. Not only has it helped me understand, accept, and love myself better, it has helped me connect with people more meaningfully and, sometimes, make peace with needing to change the role certain people play in my life.
As we learn, grow, and experience life, our values can change. And that can mean that sometimes we need to change the status of certain people in our lives. That is not a reflection of who they are or who you are. It is just the honest outcome of two people growing in different directions.
For me, working out my values also helped me understand the identity grief of my concussion recovery. The things I was mourning were the specific expressions of my values, not the values themselves. I still valued contribution, growth, and connection. I just could not express them the way I used to. That reframe gave me something to work with rather than just something to grieve.
The activity table is the one I return to most. Try it properly, with enough time and without editing yourself. The patterns that emerge often surprise you.