Everybody has values, whether you’re aware of them or not.

Values are the beliefs and principles that guide your decision making and your behavior. They reflect what is valuable or important to you. Your life is a testament to your values. By looking at how you live your life, someone could tell you what you value and don’t value, that is, not what you say you value, but what you truly value.

Africa Brooke has an incredibly helpful framework for thinking about this. She distinguishes between embodied values and desired values. Often, we think we value something, but the way we live our lives does not reflect it. These are desired values. Embodied values are the ones we actually live out every single day, or as Africa Brooke would say, there is evidence of them in our life.

Does your life reflect what you say you value? Or want to value?

To start digging deeper on this topic, I highly recommend listening to Africa’s Brooke’s podcast episode 18, titled “Do you know what you stand for?”