Are Your Goals Competing With Your Values?
When you confuse your goals with your values, you lose the power of both.
I was recently working with a CEO on a values exercise. Scrolling through the long list, he immediately chose “order.” That’s what matters to me, he said. That’s what I want. He was tired of the chaos. He wanted structure and calm.
But when he went on to try and align the business with “order,” he found he couldn’t sustain it. He’d create systems, make plans, set rules—and then abandon them. The structure always felt heavy and forced.
He wasn’t lacking discipline. The reality was that “order” wasn’t one of his values.
Values aren’t something you choose. They’re the places your energy naturally flows.
It wasn’t that this CEO didn’t need order, or even that he didn’t want it, but it wasn’t one of his organizing forces.
He could create order, but he couldn’t make it the heart of the company because it didn’t speak to his core.
Order was a goal, not a value.
Goals are chosen. They’re the things that we want or need, but that don’t come naturally.
Goals are just as essential as values, but the two require different work. Aligning with our values gives us natural energy. Our goals depend on that energy to take shape.
When you confuse the two, both get squashed. You dam up your natural energy by ignoring or shaming it, then lack the energy to support what you want to build. You end up confused and burnt out, often steeped in shame.
The start of a new year invites resolutions and fresh starts.
But the surest way to grow is by understanding where your energy already lives and using that as the foundation for what you want to build next.
The Value of Values
The strongest foundation for growth isn’t who you want to be, it’s who you already are.
During the same conversation with that CEO, I noticed that although he stressed the importance of order, he absolutely lit up when he talked about the adventure of creating his startup. He loved the ways it was uncertain, demanding, and alive.
Adventure was one of his values.
Values light you up.
They aren’t just where your energy wants to go, they’re where it comes from.
When these values are clear, they become organizing forces. By aligning with them, you start building systems that work with your natural strengths and preferences.
For example, if freedom is a core value, you’ll prioritize building processes and hiring people that reduce your involvement in day-to-day operations.
If continuous learning is a value, you’ll create space for experimentation and view “failures” as valuable data points rather than catastrophes.
This alignment creates energy, and that energy is what allows you to stretch into harder problems and new capabilities.
Finding Your Values
If we let ourselves, it is not hard to organize around our values. They bring us joy and energy.
But we block them in a number of ways:
If something comes naturally, we minimize it.
If it doesn’t look like what we think a “good value” should be, we judge it.
If it conflicts with who we’re trying to become, we suppress it.
Luckily, our values don’t disappear just because we ignore them.
This doesn’t always feel like a good thing. When we are unaligned, our values continue to tug at us, making us feel resentful and unsure, uncomfortable and frustrated.
This dissatisfaction is not the stretch of growth, it's the chafe of misalignment. It’s also a great tool to return to your real values.
Think back to a recent moment when you felt this kind of frustration and ask:
What exactly was I doing at that moment?
What did I wish I were doing instead?
What felt constrained, muted, or blocked?
What part of me felt unseen or underused?
Try to answer honestly, even if you were doing something that had to get done or that you “should” have been working on.
Even through our frustration, the things that energize us surface. They show up in our calendar, decisions, and attention.
Try looking back at a recent week. You can use your calendar or notes to help. Focusing on what actually happened, not what you planned, ask yourself:
Where did my time actually go?
What did I return to under pressure?
What held my attention even when I was tired?
What felt alive, even when it was demanding?
What kinds of work were easy to stay engaged with?
When did my energy noticeably increase?
Then notice where you have been judging, minimizing, or shaming those patterns instead of learning from them.
That judgment can be as much of a cue as the energy itself. It may point to a value that is trying, and struggling, to surface.
The Power of Goals
Goals are what push us beyond our comfort zone and into new growth.
Sometimes our goals sound like “shoulds”—especially when we are trying to make them do the work of our values—but real “shoulds” come from old stories and judgments.
Goals arise out of real experience and wisdom.
They’re the areas we know we need to push in order to continue the growth of the company and our own growth as leaders.
Here are some questions to get a clearer look at your goals:
“What do I keep wanting, but can’t sustain?”
Those places of repeated effort and repeated collapse are often aspirations being treated as values and not receiving enough support.
“What would this need in order to be possible?”
Instead of taking setbacks personally, try shifting your focus to design. Our goals need structural and sustained support.
“What’s blocking me from sustaining this?”
Some goals can’t be reached because they conflict with our values.
For the CEO from earlier, adventure (his value) and order (his goal) had a natural conflict. When he tried to will order without dealing with his love of adventure, his repressed value blocked him.
Only when he acknowledged and embraced how important adventure was to him could he actually begin to bring in more order.
Unlike our values, our goals don’t always come easily. They’re the things we aspire to and they often require structural change and lots of patience.
If aligning with your values generates energy, then goals are where this energy gets directed.
Putting It All Together
Growth happens when you understand what already has your energy and what actually needs support.
Goals matter deeply, but they only work when they’re built on top of your values.
Values come naturally. But too often we waste our energy redirecting it away from the things we actually care about. As the year opens, I invite you to return to the forces that already move you:
List Your Values
Start by identifying what matters most to you personally.
Consider both professional and personal aspects of life.
Don’t limit yourself initially—capture everything.
Prioritize
Narrow down to your top 10 values.
Further refine to your top 5.
Finally, identify your core 3 values.
Define Anti-Values
List what you explicitly don’t want.
Identify behaviors and situations you want to avoid.
Use these as guardrails for decision-making.
When you align with what genuinely energizes you, you stop fighting yourself and build something that supports your work and growth.
This is how values and goals stop competing and start cooperating, how energy is freed up instead of dammed.
See you next week! 👑
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