Values in Action: How to Live Authentically Every Day
Emma is a project manager with three young children, also studying for a Master's degree. She is committed to self-improvement and makes time for online courses, podcasts during her commute, and reading. However, her busy schedule makes it difficult to reflect on her life, which feels unproductive. About a year ago, she started focusing on her health with a self-care routine, but faced persistent obstacles. Work demands kept her up late, and sick kids disrupted meal planning, leading her to often rely on fast food. Although she occasionally made progress, setbacks would leave her starting over. One day, she heard about "Values-Based Reflection" on a podcast and began to reflect on her responses to challenges.
Authenticity is about aligning your actions with your values. When we live in congruence with our values, we experience greater satisfaction, resilience, and overall well-being. But many people struggle with identifying their values, let alone applying them in daily life.
Whole health coaching provides a framework to help people uncover their core values, strengths, and aspirations—and translate them into real-world choices. This isn’t just about knowing your values; it’s about putting them into action.
What Are Values, Strengths, and Habits—And Why Do They Matter?
To truly live authentically, we need to distinguish between values, strengths, and habits.
Values: The guiding principles that define what is most important to you (e.g., compassion, integrity, spirituality).
Strengths: Your natural abilities that help you express your values (e.g., creativity, leadership, perseverance).
Habits: The daily actions we take that either reinforce or contradict our values (e.g., practicing gratitude, setting boundaries, exercising self-discipline).
If you value connection, your strengths might be kindness and social intelligence. A virtue that aligns with this is humanity. A habit that reinforces this value might be regularly reaching out to loved ones or practicing active listening in conversations.
When we understand this framework, we can intentionally shape our daily behaviors to reflect who we truly are rather than who we think we should be.
The VIA Classification of Strengths: Find out more about yourself
The Values in Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths was developed by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman as part of the positive psychology movement at the University of Pennsylvania, designed to identify and cultivate core character strengths. While VIA is a widely accepted and research-backed approach, it is not the only framework out there. Many other models exist, but VIA is the one I utilize the most in my coaching because of its practical application, holistic perspective, and emphasis on personal growth.
Why Living in Alignment with Your Values Leads to Resilience
When we act in ways that contradict our values, we experience internal conflict, stress, and burnout. Studies have shown that individuals who regularly practice value congruence—where their actions align with their values—experience:
✅ Greater resilience in times of stress
✅ Higher levels of job and life satisfaction
✅ Improved emotional well-being
✅ Lower levels of burnout and emotional exhaustion
How to Identify and Apply Your Values
So how do you move from knowing your values to living them every day? Whole health coaching provides a four-step method for reflective practice:
1 Identify a Meaningful Situation
Think of a moment in your life—recent or past—where you felt completely fulfilled and aligned.
🔹 What were you doing?
🔹 Who were you with?
🔹 What emotions were present?
This moment likely reflects your core values in action.
If you felt most fulfilled not during a big promotion, but while mentoring a younger colleague. perhaps growth and contribution were more important than financial success alone.
2 Recognize the Relevant Virtues and Strengths
Once you identify your meaningful moments, look at the character strengths and virtues at play. The VIA classification system groups strengths into six core virtues that together comprise our Values in Action:
Wisdom (curiosity, creativity, love of learning, judgement, perspective)
Courage (bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest)
Humanity (love, kindness, social intelligence)
Justice (fairness, leadership, teamwork)
Temperance (forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation)
Transcendence (appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, spirituality, humor)
If you felt your best leading a community project, your strengths may be leadership, teamwork, and fairness—all tied to the virtue of justice. A quick and easy way to see what character strengths might resonate with you is simply to look at a list of all 24 together and see what words jump out. A more systematic way is to take the Values in Action assessment, a research-backed, validated questionnaire that identifies your signature strengths.
Check out this video to hear more.
3 Evaluate Whether Your Values Align with Daily Choices
Once you know your values, it’s time to apply them.
🔹 Ask yourself: What part of my daily life reflect my values?
🔹 Identify misalignment: Are there areas where I’m compromising what matters most to me?
🔹 Make small adjustments: What habits can I change to better honor my values?
You value highly health and adventure, but your daily life consists of long work hours and little movement. Instead of trying to “get fit” in the traditional sense, perhaps you could reframe your health journey around adventure—taking weekend hiking trips, trying new sports, and focusing on movement that excites you.
4 Navigate Conflicting Values
Sometimes, values come into conflict.
For example, if you value financial security but also value work-life balance, how do you make decisions that honor both?
Whole health coaching helps individuals prioritize values based on current life circumstances, rather than seeing them as fixed. Often times, simply being aware of why something feels like such a struggle offers an easier way to overcome it.
Whole Health Coaching: Bringing It All Together
When you align your values with your strengths, virtues, and habits, you create a life that feels authentic, energized, and fulfilling. When we work together, we’ll take time to examine your values in action. By identifying your strengths and understanding the virtues that drive you, we can build a framework that supports your whole health journey in a way that actually fits you.
This isn’t about forcing a routine or adopting someone else’s version of success. It’s about uncovering the strengths you already have and using them to create sustainable habits that align with what truly matters to you.
The benefit of working with a whole health coach is having someone who can help you navigate the process, uncover potential conflicts, and guide you toward real, practical solutions that align with your mission, aspiration, and purpose.
If you’re ready to stop struggling with wellness plans that don’t resonate and start creating a health journey that feels authentic, fulfilling, and truly sustainable, reach out to me. Together, we’ll map out a plan that isn’t just about achieving goals—but about building a life that reflects who you really are.
Let’s take the first step.
REFERENCESGhielen, S. T. S., van Woerkom, M., & Christina Meyers, M. (2017). Promoting positive outcomes through strengths interventions: A literature review. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(6), 573–585. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2017.1365164
Ruch, W., Niemiec, R. M., McGrath, R. E., Gander, F., & Proyer, R. T. (2020). Character strengths-based interventions: Open questions and ideas for future research. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(5), 680–684. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1789700
Littman-Ovadia H, Dubreuil P, Meyers MC, Freidlin P. Editorial: VIA Character Strengths: Theory, Research and Practice. Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 8;12:653941. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.653941. PMID: 33897563; PMCID: PMC8060440.