
Core values are essential for a healthy life, just like a healthy root system is essential for a healthy tree. 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. Values that leaders and inspirational people use.
On this page, you will find a list of 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 core values.
I have 8 core values myself. 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.
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
Too bad, 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. That’s what matters the most and I hope it gave you some inspiration to get started.
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.