Knowing Our Values: Setting the Stage for the New Year

Valerie Weesner PhD, HSPP
Jan 2
3 min read

As the end of the year approaches, many of us feel the familiar pressure to reflect, reset, and set goals for the New Year. Goals everywhere. New Year’s resolutions everywhere. And honestly? Blah. Blah. Blah.

As a clinician, I’m often asked whether patients “should” be setting New Year’s goals. My answer is usually… it depends. My initial instinct—and the first draft of this blog—was to talk about intentions instead of goals. But after sitting with it longer, I realized something important:

Before intentions. Before goals. We need to talk about values.

Why Start With Values Instead of Goals?

While I specialize in working with individuals with eating disorders and frequently write about ARFID recovery, this reflection is for anyone who finds themselves about to sit down with a notebook (or Notes app) to write out goals for the New Year.

Before you ask “What should I change?” or “What should I work on?”, I invite you to ask a deeper question: How to decide what is worth the energy in the first place?

Common New Year’s Goals — and the Values Behind Them

Out of curiosity, I asked Google what the most common New Year’s goals are. The results were unsurprising:

Exercising more
Being happier
Eating healthier
Saving more money
Improving physical health
Improving mental health

On the surface, these sound reasonable. But what values do they represent?

Often, they reflect values like:

Health
Happiness
Security
Appearance
Productivity

None of these are “wrong.” But when goals aren’t clearly connected to our core values, they tend to fade quickly.

So let’s zoom out.

What Are Values — and How Do We Identify Them?

Values are the principles that matter most to us. They guide how we want to live, not just what we want to accomplish.

A clinically supported way to identify values is the Personal Values Card Sort, developed by: William R. Miller, PhD; Janet C’de Baca, PhD; Daniel B. Matthews, PhD; and Paula L. Wilbourne, PhD (University of New Mexico). This exercise involves sorting value cards by importance, helping you identify what truly matters to you. It can be done individually or as a family, often leading to meaningful conversations about shared and differing values.

There is also a free online Values Card Sort exercise that walks you through selecting your top 20 values, narrowing them to 10, and ultimately identifying your top 5.

Once you complete an exercise like this, you may notice:

Values you’ve been actively living
Values you’ve unintentionally neglected
Values you want to refocus on in the year ahead

From Values → Intentions → Goals → Action Steps

Let’s look at a concrete example.

Imagine one of your top values is FAMILY.

You might notice:

You don’t spend as much quality time together as you’d like
You’re distracted by work, phones, or stress when you are together
Your physical or emotional health limits how present you can be

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Instead of setting vague goals, you can ask:“How do I want to live out my value of FAMILY this year?”

That question naturally leads to intentions, such as:

Being more present during family time
Creating space for meaningful connection
Having the energy and health to engage fully

From there, goals begin to make sense:

Exercising regularly to support stamina and energy
Budgeting intentionally to afford family trips or experiences
Eating more meals at home to save money
Scheduling medical or mental health check-ins

And then come specific action steps:

Tracking expenses weekly
Moving your body three times per week
Setting reminders to plan family time
Prioritizing healthcare appointments

Why This Approach Actually Works

When goals are disconnected from values, they often drift away—especially by February.

But when goals are rooted in values:

They feel meaningful
They align with who you are
They’re easier to return to after setbacks

Instead of chasing goals that social media tells us we should want, we create goals that support the life we actually want to live.

A value like “making a difference” might lead to intentions around advocacy, which could translate into goals like joining a local or national organization aligned with your social, environmental, or political concerns.

A Different Way Forward This New Year

If you’re reflecting on the year behind you and thinking about the one ahead, I encourage you to pause before writing a list of resolutions.

Start with values. Let values guide intentions. Let intentions shape goals. Let goals turn into doable action steps.

Values come from our core, and when we think about ways to support those values, we have much more reason and ability to hang on to them and make them happen.