As promised in my last post, I’m back to share my 8 core values from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead list. The values I hold most deeply are:

• Accountability
• Equality
• Financial Stability
• Honesty
• Independence
• Loyalty
• Perseverance
• Reliability

To get to this list, I narrowed the full list of over 100 values down to 24 finalists. My final 8 came from those 24. In the original version of this activity, you should narrow down even further to just 2 or 3 values. However, my therapist recommended choosing 8 because our value system can be complex. And let’s be honest- choosing just 2 or 3 values wouldn’t make of a blog series. 🙂

I expected this exercise to be difficult, but holy dang! A lot of introspection and reflection went into just narrowing the list down. I also really thought about what each value meant, searching for definitions and critically assessing what that word meant to me.

I highly encourage everyone who is on a path of personal growth to identify their own top 8! You can view the full list of values here. By examining our thoughts and motivations, we can better understand ourselves and each other.