Clarifying Your Values (COD Lesson)

Co-Occurring Lesson

Clarifying Your Values

The lesson “Clarifying Your Values” guides individuals through a reflective process to discover personal character traits and values. By identifying the values most significant to them, clients can better understand their motivations, strengths, and the changes they need to make for a fulfilling recovery journey. This exercise helps people in treatment align their lifestyle with their core values, encouraging integrity and personal growth. Through self-reflection and the exploration of values such as honesty, compassion, and self-esteem, clients can strengthen their commitment to long-term recovery.

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Written by Hal Baumchen, PsyD, LP, LADC, this lesson uses Miller and Rollnick’s well-established list of 84 values as a foundation for deep personal reflection. It begins by inviting readers to slow down amid the demands of recovery and ask themselves what truly matters – what they value, what they want to become, and what kind of life they want to build. Readers select 10 to 20 values from the comprehensive alphabetized list, which spans categories from family, faith, and friendship to creativity, justice, and self-knowledge, then narrow their selections down to their top five. Reflection prompts then guide readers to consider how they can strengthen and actively practice each of those values in daily life, and whether any of their choices surprised them. A final section addresses the relationship between values and self-esteem, explaining that integrity – living in consistent alignment with one’s values – builds confidence and supports recovery, while ongoing conflict between stated values and actual behavior erodes it. Readers are asked to honestly examine where that conflict has existed in their past and identify the specific lifestyle changes needed to bring their actions into harmony with who they truly want to be.

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