I think I have good values but this is a slippery idea. How do I start to articulate my own values?

It can be difficult just to sit down and try to think of what you stand for in the world.  Psychologists have done a lot of research in the last two decades that you can use as a starting point.  One way of articulating your own values is to look at how you act in the world and there is a test called the VIA Survey that does just that.  If you read yesterday’s post you may remember that we said that action was important. VIA stands for Values in Action. The VIA is a validated measure (psychologist-speak for “It accurately measures what it says it does”) of individual character strengths.  It was developed by two researchers: Martin Seligman who is a former President of the American Psychological Association and is often referred to as the Father of Positive Psychology and Christopher Peterson, who was a distinguished scientist at the University of Michigan.  Signature strengths are your capacities for thinking, feeling, and behaving in ways that help you and help others. There are six groups of strengths: wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence.  Each group has a number of different strengths.  For example, in the justice group we find strengths that support community life including teamwork, fairness, and leadership.  The individual strengths can be translated into action across different areas of life such as work or school, friendships, and families or relationships. 

More than 2 million people have already used the VIA to figure out their values.  If you want to get a better sense not just of your ideal value but also how you currently live your values, take the VIA Survey (it is in 35 languages and has youth and adult versions).  It is free and you can get a report on your character strengths by clicking on the link below. 

https://www.viacharacter.org/www/The-Survey#nav  

The VIA has also been used in many, many research studies.  You can click on the Research tab on the VIA homepage and read about research on strengths at work and school, strengths and life satisfaction,health and achievement, how the strengths interact, and lots of other topics.