How to Live a Meaningful Life AND Achieve Your Goals 

Make sure you have one person who is aware of the genealogy information (one person) as you work on it. My mother did a ton of research but didn't show anyone where it was. When mother died, We had to go through paper after paper after paper to compile this information. It was a headache.

The book doesn't have to be 50k words. Write down what's important and see how far you'll get.

Wow I like your idea here it’s insightful because I’m similar

I noticed similar. I found some of my values were also within my value. One of mine is wisdom which wins out over curiosity but also is possible because of curiosity. It was interesting to look at it in this way. I took it twice, the first time with most of the values clicked, the second without some that were obviously not strong values. I got 4 of the same words. The one that changed was inner harmony vs spirituality. I realized that for me, having that inner harmony requires spirituality and I actually decided to call it spiritual harmony.

Can I ask what your core value is?

​@@averyintelligence yeah, I don't mind sharing. It's "authenticity," which I came to in sort of a roundabout way. (Sorry if this is too long, but I feel like context matters here. Also, I think this helps explain why it's hard to pinpoint values.) I was brainstorming words such as openness, honesty, etc. I was thinking about the environment I was in at the time (a doctoral program) and how there was a sense of hiding things and pretending in the environment (hiding family or personal background, pretending you understand some opaque, poorly written article because you don't want to look dumb, etc) and how I found that very "fake." I had come to the doctoral program after working for over a decade, and when I started the program, I told myself I wasn't going to pretend I understood things I didn't, etc. And I was doing a good job at that! I was living out my goal! But as I was working through various values lists and that sort of thing, I realized that what I really valued was being AUTHENTIC ("true to one's own personality, spirit, or character"). And I found I most connected with other students who felt authentic to me. Also, "authenticity" relates to what I enjoy doing too. I spin yarn and knit, sew, etc. I value wool, cotton, silk, linen--natural materials (authentic, as in "not false or imitation" the way that polyester is). And I enjoy tactile, film photography over digital photography. Although film photography can be manipulated (pictorialism vs. straight photography has been a debate since its beginning), there is something "real" about handling the film, mixing the chemistry. (It's probably not a surprise that I'm not a fan of AI "writing" or "art." Artificial is in the name!) While I'm on a babbling roll, one other thing came up. I kept bumping up against the value of "creativity." It's such a common value, and it's part of my life as an artist. It seemed like it should be on the list! But I realized that while "creativity" as a noun is great, but what I actually value is CREATING. Making, doing, physical acts and practices... A verb. So now I'm stuck with this list of mostly nouns and this one random verb. It makes the whole list feel off, but it doesn't annoy me enough to make me fix it. At least not right now.

@@7SP7 I detailed some of what I did above. It was just really thinking about things, questioning whether I was putting something down because I "thought" it should be a value, making sure to get the exact wording I wanted, etc. And it meant bumping up against ideas that are very ingrained in my culture (American) and doing the emotional work to realize it's OK to not want something most people would say I "should" want.

Even with bad health and very few teeth, I still haven't been able to value health. I'm grateful for this video so I can find ways to get the health my body needs because 30 years of health issues didn't change my values. Maybe using what I do value will allow me to get another 51 years in good health.

Thank you for pointing this out. I struggle with it as well. It's hard to work on things we value when we don't feel like our values matter much (to others or ourselves).

You may want to checkout the book Psycho Cybernatics by Dr Maxwell Maltz. It's a book with practical techniques on how to improve self image/esteem. It's available as free audiobook on RU-vid.