How to Find Your Way: Centering Values During Times of Unrest

Summer 2025 is decidedly not a chill time to be alive in the world. No matter who you are or what you believe in, it’s a time of unrest and unknowns. Amidst all of this, however, there are opportunities... 

Opportunities to find new ways to get involved and build community with others. Opportunities to let go of routines and beliefs that no longer serve you in these times. Opportunities to imagine a new way of living your life that is values-aligned and grounded in what’s important to you—even when everything else continues to churn.

To open yourself up to these and other opportunities, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers methods to help you clarify your values and prioritize committed action. 

What are values and what are my values?

Values are aspects of living that are deeply important to you and that you choose to prioritize in your life. Values offer a way to connect deeply with others who share your values. They can also help you show up more fully in your day-to-day life by providing insights into whether your choices and actions align with your values and help move you towards the person who you want to become. 

Values aren’t goals or rules. You’ll never achieve your values and you can’t break them either. Instead, they are qualities of being that shape the ways we want to exist in the world, in our relationships, and in our bodies.

We can move towards or away from our values through decisions we make but there are always other chances to live more fully aligned with our values. Living in alignment with your values can cultivate more meaning and vitality in your life and relationships. Some examples of values include connection, vulnerability, collaboration, creativity, responsibility, curiosity, and growth, but those are just a few!

Every person’s values are unique and other people don’t get to decide your values for you. It’s up to you to figure out what your values are… and these ACT-focused activities can support you in this work:

Plan a road trip towards your future: Just like how GPS helps you determine if you’re heading in the direction you want to go, values can help guide you as you live your life. Imagine you’re planning a road trip to your own future. What are the road signs and signals that will help you know if you’re creating the life you want? What are the values that your road trip map will be shaped by? 

Consider your role models: Often the people we look up to and consider role models hold this place of honor for us because they are examples of one or more of our values in action. Start by making a list of people you consider to be role models or heroes in your own life. Then, next to each person’s name, write a few words that describe the traits they have that you admire. More often than not, these will align with values that you hold up as important in your own life, even if you never thought about them through a values framework before.

Make a zine about what matters:

1. Think about how you hope your friends or family members would describe you to someone else. What are the qualities that you hope they honestly see in you and how you live your life? Are you honest? Reliable? Spiritual? Funny?

2. Choose 3-6 of these qualities and give them each a page or spread in your zine. For each quality, identify a corresponding value (for example, if you think you’re funny, humor might be a value that you find important) and write the quality and value at the top of a page.

3. Think about how you’d visually show this value and make a drawing, collage, or other artwork on the zine page. Repeat this for each value.

4. Make a front and back cover with a title and the year, so you can recall when you made this. Add artwork on the covers as well, whether that’s a self-portrait or abstract doodles.

What is committed action?

Now that you have a better sense of what your values are, committed action involves taking actions that are consistent with moving you closer to your personal values. It sounds simple but moving towards your values can also bring up a lot of feelings like fear and regret, which can easily distract you from your values. Committed action takes practice and it can be supportive to try to do this with an accountability partner who can cheer you on and remind you of your values when you get caught up in patterns of thinking that no longer serve you. 

Becoming the you you want to be 

Self-compassion is also important to prioritize throughout this work, because we all sometimes do things that move us away from our values. Still, orienting towards your values is a skill to practice and build through exercises like the ones above and by using the Choice Point Model as you consider actions you want to take: 

Using tools like this Choice Point Model can support you as you try to live in a more values-aligned way.

The important thing is to continue to try to take values-aligned actions when you can and to continue to move yourself closer to your values through small steps. Because the world isn’t likely to stop being chaotic any time soon, but you can still become the person you want to be and support your values in your day-to-day life and as part of your community, even amidst everything else that’s going. In fact, the present moment is the best time—the only time—to take the next step toward living your values.  

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Sarah Lawson

Clinical social work intern

Student therapist at Divergent Path Wellness

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