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This is Week 5 of our 12-week Workbook Wednesday series. Every post is here whenever you're ready — start anywhere.
Here's a question worth sitting with for a moment: Are you living in alignment with what actually matters to you?
Not what you think you should value. Not what your family expects. Not what society suggests you should be working toward. What you — the version of you that is most honest, most whole, most true — actually cares about.
For many of us, that question takes a moment. Maybe more than a moment.
What Are Values — Really?
Values are the principles that guide how we want to move through the world. They're not goals or achievements. They're qualities of living — things like honesty, creativity, connection, freedom, rest, justice, pleasure, community, or peace.
When we're living in alignment with our values, life tends to feel more sustainable, more meaningful, and more like ours. When we're out of alignment — when we're spending most of our energy on things that don't reflect what we actually care about — we often feel the friction of that. A low hum of dissatisfaction. A sense that something is off without being able to name it.
This week, the Keys to Felicity workbook creates space for you to identify what you actually value, and to begin noticing where your daily life reflects those values and where it doesn't.
A Note on Inherited Values
It's worth acknowledging that many of us were handed values we didn't choose. We absorbed messages from our families, communities, and cultures about what was worthy of our time and attention. Some of those messages were gifts. Others were constraints.
Especially for those of us whose ancestors survived conditions of oppression, displacement, or scarcity — we may have inherited survival-based values that no longer serve us in the same way. Values like productivity at all costs, shrinking to fit, keeping quiet, or putting others always first. Those values made sense in their original context. Part of healing is gently examining which ones still belong to us, and which ones we are free to set down.
A Practice to Try This Week
Read through the following list and notice which words resonate — which ones feel like yes, that's me or yes, that's what I want:
Authenticity. Rest. Adventure. Family. Justice. Creativity. Solitude. Community. Courage. Gentleness. Freedom. Loyalty. Pleasure. Growth. Peace. Belonging.
Choose three to five that feel most true to who you are right now — not who you were told to be, but who you sense yourself becoming.
Then ask yourself:
In my daily life right now, where do I see this value reflected?
Where do I feel the tension between this value and how I'm actually spending my time or energy?
The workbook has guided space for this exploration. Following along at keystofelicity.com can give you a structured place to return to this work week after week.
Why Values Matter for Healing
When we know what we value, we gain a compass. We have something to return to when decisions feel hard, when boundaries feel unclear, or when we're trying to figure out what "better" even means for us.
Your values are yours. They don't have to look like anyone else's.
📚 Resources That Compliment This Week's Work
Clarifying what you truly value is life-changing work — these resources can deepen and sustain it:
Untamed by Glennon Doyle — A fiercely honest memoir about unlearning inherited values and reclaiming the life that was always meant to be yours; it reads like permission slips for every value you've been afraid to claim.
A values clarification card deck — Card decks designed around values exploration make this week's practice tactile and intuitive — sorting, holding, and revisiting cards helps the right values surface in a way that a list on a page sometimes can't.
See you next Wednesday for Week 6, where we turn our attention inward in a different way — to the wisdom your body has been holding all along.
Felicity Counseling offers affirming, trauma-informed therapy for individuals, couples, and families. We believe your story deserves to be honored exactly as it is. Learn more at felicitycounseling.com.
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