Discover Your Values

As a brand director who creates campaigns for massive social impact, I know that it’s incredibly important to ponder, articulate and write down the key core values that drive you and give you passion.

What exactly ARE these values? And how do they impact your life and future? Your core driving values are the things that wake you up and make you get out of bed in the morning. They’re the aspects of life that make you feel alive. They are the things that drive you to go above and beyond yourself. The stuff you’d take a bullet to protect.

Everybody’s core value list looks a little different. Some people can’t live without humor, others need honesty to survive. As I’ve assessed my own personal identity, I’ve realised there are FIVE elements that are as important to me as breathing.

These are:

Loyalty

Excellence

Justice

Integrity

Trust

They’re so important I can’t function without them. These values directly inform not only my family and personal social life, but also my business. They’re what I demand from myself, and what I hope for from those around me.

This combination is also why I tend to find myself passionately drawn toward clients and projects who are fixated on a greater purpose – opportunities to make a positive impact on communities of people, and use resources to build others up through social justice. It also explains why I could never get excited about jobs that focused purely on profit to the exclusion of loyalty to the team and the audience.

And they also happen to make this cool little acronym, which helps me to always remember all five.

LEJIT.

So when I’m faced with a decision, I’m learning to ask myself “Is this opportunity LEJIT? Is it going to be a LEJIT fit with my business goals? Does it square with my personal ethics?”

Your core values won’t be exactly the same as mine, but if you’d like to explore and articulate your own internal compass, feel free to use my Values Discovery Worksheet here!

Now go — be LEJIT!