How To Make Choices That Reflect Your Values

How to make choices that reflect your values.

- Luc Rinaldi

Astrid Baumgardner had grown accustomed to her morning routine. Her husband, a securities lawyer, woke up each day excited to head to the office; Baumgardner, meanwhile, felt more inclined to stay in bed. She should have loved her job: she was a partner at a law firm in New York and brought in a hefty salary. But she couldn’t muster the enthusiasm she saw in her husband—the position didn’t fulfill her need to help people or give her a sense of purpose.

So, in 2000, after 24 years in law, she left the profession, sacrificing prestige for passion. After a series of positions in different fields, she earned her certificate as a life coach in 2008 and started her own business.

Today, as a lecturer and coordinator of career strategies at the Yale University School of Music (a position she’s held since 2011—and loves), Baumgardner helps students make decisions as tough as her own. Through her story and theirs, she’s discovered that people feel most fulfilled when they choose options that align with their most deeply held values.

Here’s how to stay true to yours.

Know your values

If you hope to shape your life according to your ideals, you have to know what those ideals are. Baumgardner begins her sessions by having participants identify the concepts that are most important to them from a list: honesty, structure, family and so on. “Those qualities are influenced by your parents, your culture and society as a whole,” she says, “but you have to take ownership of your own decisions.”

Here’s the tricky part: almost all of these qualities are things most of us aspire to hold dear. “There are a lot of ‘shoulds’,” Baumgardner says. For instance, we feel like we