Values Clarification
Naming what actually matters to you, not what your protectors think will keep you safe.
Description
Values are the compass for Inner Alignment: they point parts at something worth doing rather than only at threats worth avoiding. Clarifying them mostly means sorting which of the voices is actual desire and which is fear that has been promoted to policy.
Our bias is that you cannot do this by introspection alone, and that most attempts produce a list of things you have been told are admirable. Values show up more reliably in the residue of experiments — what you kept doing when nobody was checking, what you were unexpectedly angry about, what made an otherwise good week feel wrong. Then you name what you found. That order round is important: discover first, articulate second. The reverse gives you a nice list you don’t obey.
A useful test for whether you have hit a real one: it should cost you something. A value that never conflicts with another value isn’t doing any work.
What Values Clarification is NOT:
Not a vision board, and not moral self-improvement. Also not the answer your mentor, tradition, or therapist would like — those are worth taking seriously and they are still somebody else’s.
Examples:
Finding that “helping people” actually means honest mirroring, and that rescuing was a protector.
Picking the craft over the applause, and noticing which parts object.
Updating “family first” until it includes the person doing the prioritising.