A guided exercise · about 20 minutes
Clarify what matters
From your lived experience
The best place to look for what you want — or don’t want — is where you’ve already been.
Nothing you type here leaves your browser. There is no account, no saving, and nothing is sent anywhere — not to a server, not to me. That also means a refresh loses your work, so give it one uninterrupted sitting.
Our memorable moments are the ones where we feel the most. Those feelings are a map, leading us to insight about what we want. Whether it’s a high or a low, it’s a guide to the truth.
Look back over a year.
Scroll your photos, your texts, your calendar. Log the turning points of the last twelve months and sort them into the ones that left you resourced and the ones that left you less resourced.
You don’t need many. Four or five each is plenty. You’ll use one from each side.
Moments that left you resourced
Moments you might take back, if you could
Take one high, and tell it properly.
Pick the one you’re still drawn to. Write out what happened, who was there, what it was like — then narrow to the single moment you’d re-live if you could travel back.
Don’t summarise. The detail is the raw material.
How did you feel?
Standing in that moment: what was the feeling? The feeling is the way in. What you’re actually after is the need underneath it.
Read the feelings, and notice which ones land in your body.
What were you getting out of this?
What did you get? What did you have? Go past the obvious one — community might be what it looks like, but underneath, being seen or acceptance may be what was actually satisfying.
Define it — without using the word.
If the need is trust, you can’t use trust to define trust. Defining it in your own language is what makes it something you can work with.
Don’t worry about how the dictionary defines it. What does it mean to you?
Now a low.
Connect to the experience you had during these lows. Really look at them. Which one has the strongest feeling in you, now?
This is the half people skip. Don’t. A value shows up as presence in your best moments and as absence in your worst, and you need both to trust it.
How did that feel?
Read the feelings, and notice which ones land in your body.
What was missing?
What did you lose, or what was taken?
Define the need, in your own words.
Without using the word. What does it actually mean, or look like, to you?
This is the most important part. This is the thing you really want.
You have a defined value, and proof it drives you.
When you had it
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The evidence
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When you didn’t
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The evidence
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The same need surfaced on both sides. That isn’t a coincidence — it’s confirmation. Compare your two definitions. Where they differ is where this value actually lives for you.
Sit with these questions. Pick one to respond to now.
- What would yesterday have looked like if you had been a perfect example of this?
- What would you need to do to believe you embody it?
- Which of your current goals actually align with it?
- Where is the cheapest place to increase it this week?