115 Core Values: Define Your Character & Live with Purpose

Just like a healthy root system is essential for a healthy tree, core values are essential for a healthy life. They define our character and the way we live. Without values, we lack clarity about who we are and what we want in life. 

One of the foundational ideas in personal development is to create a value system for your life. To make this process easier for you, I went through more than 500 core values that I found on the internet.¹This list of 500 on Threads Culture was useful, but had a lot of duplicates. So I also collected more than that, based on my own research. Values that leaders and inspirational people use. 

On this page, you will find 115 core values that I filtered. I went through my initial list and removed all duplicates. For example, “adventure” and “adventurous” are the same thing. These types of duplicates cluttered the lists that I found. 

I also removed anything that wasn’t practical. For example, I ran into values like “fashion” or “profits.” What does that even mean? That’s why I removed every word that wasn’t practical. The result is the following list of 115 core values. 

I have 8 core values myself (read about them here). I plan to cut them down to 5 or 6. But you can have even fewer than if that works for you. I don’t recommend more than 8 values because we can’t remember more. 

115 Core Values

1. Accomplishment
2. Accountability
3. Adventurous
4. Aggressiveness
5. Altruism
6. Ambition
7. Appreciation
8. Assertiveness
9. Attentiveness
10. Awareness
11. Boldness
12. Calmness
13. Caring
14. Cheerful
15. Commitment
16. Community
17. Confidence
18. Consistency
19. Contribution
20. Courage
21. Craftsmanship
22. Creativity
23. Credibility
24. Curiosity
25. Decisiveness
26. Determination
27. Directness
28. Discipline
29. Discovery
30. Diversity
31. Dominance
32. Empathy
33. Empowering
34. Enjoyment
35. Excellence
36. Fairness
37. Faithfulness
38. Family
39. Fearlessness
40. Flexibility
41. Freedom
42. Friendship
43. Frugality
44. Generosity
45. Gratitude
46. Greatness
47. Growth
48. Happiness
49. Health
50. Honesty
51. Humility
52. Improvement
53. Independence
54. Innovation
55. Integrity
56. Leadership
57. Learning
58. Listening
59. Longevity
60. Love
61. Loyalty
62. Mindfulness
63. Openness
64. Optimism
65. Originality
66. Passion
67. Patience
68. Perfection
69. Persistence
70. Playfulness
71. Pleasantness
72. Pragmatic
73. Proactive
74. Productivity
75. Progress
76. Prosperity
77. Relaxation
78. Reliability
79. Resilience
80. Resourcefulness
81. Respectfulness
82. Responsibility
83. Restraint
84. Risk-Taking
85. Selfless
86. Self-Reliance
87. Sensitivity
88. Sharing
89. Silence
90. Silliness
91. Simplicity
92. Smart
93. Solitude
94. Spirituality
95. Spontaneous
96. Stability
97. Strength
98. Sustainability
99. Sympathy
100. Thoughtful
101. Tolerance
102. Toughness
103. Tranquility
104. Transparency
105. Trustworthy
106. Truthfulness
107. Understanding
108. Uniqueness
109. Usefulness
110. Victorious
111. Vitality
112. Warmth
113. Welcoming
114. Willfulness
115. Winning

Unfortunately, I couldn’t include everything. There will always be people who say, why is so and so not on this list? That’s not the point. This is by no means a complete list. But I hope it gave you some inspiration to get started.

That’s what matters the most. As you get started with this process, you can keep cutting down your list as you keep uncovering your core values. It’s a process. To me, that’s the most important thing about his exercise. When you start thinking about what your values are, you will get to know yourself better.