Triage Personal Values & Life Priorities Assessment

 Let me walk you through how this assessment is structured. It’s designed to force you to be honest with yourself through a five-phase process that reveals truth through triangulation: what you say you value, how you rank them when ties aren’t allowed, what you actually choose when forced to decide, and where you recognise gaps between stated values and lived behaviour. Each phase serves a specific purpose, and you need all five to get the full picture.

Phase 1: Rate Life Domain Importance establishes your stated values. You rate twelve core life domains (health, relationships, career, finances, personal growth, contribution, spirituality, among others) on a 7-point scale from “not important” to “extremely important.” This creates a baseline for comparison with your actual behaviour and forces you to think about each domain explicitly. When I have clients do this, they usually give 6s and 7s to almost everything. “It’s all important!” they insist. Sure. But that’s not useful yet. We’re just establishing what you think matters. Most people rate too many things highly here, and that’s okay, and it’s actually expected. Phase 2 will reveal the truth.

Phase 2: Rank Your Values is where the first layer of self-deception gets stripped away. No ties allowed. You must drag and reorder all twelve domains from most to least important. If you could only focus on ONE thing, what would be #1? Then #2, and so on. This forces a hierarchy that rating scales can’t capture. You might have rated both “career” and “family” as 7/7 in Phase 1, but now you have to decide: which one actually comes first? This ranking reveals your true priorities by making you explicitly trade off between values you claimed were equally important. The discomfort you feel doing this? That’s the point. Real life doesn’t let you have everything equally.

Phase 3: Static Trade-Offs is where behavioural economics meets reality. You face ten forced-choice scenarios between competing values based on real-life situations you’ve likely encountered. It’s Saturday morning: you could go to the gym, or spend the time with your partner. Which do you choose? You get a job offer with 30% more money, but significantly more hours and higher stress. Do you take it? Your friend invites you to an event, but you’re exhausted and could use alone time. What do you do?

There’s a “neither” option, but using it reduces the insight you get. So, I have also added a Hard Mode that removes the neither option. By disabling “neither” entirely, you force yourself to make definite choices. This reveals what behavioural economists call revealed preferences (what you actually do versus what you say you’ll do). Trade-offs force honesty that rating scales simply don’t. When you can say everything is important, you will. But when you have to choose between going to the gym and attending your kid’s play, that choice reveals what you actually value.

I use this approach in coaching constantly. People’s choices reveal their true preferences far better than their statements, which is why forced-choice methodology is more predictive than any rating scale. Real-world constraints force authentic decision-making. It’s easy to say health matters when you’re sitting in the office, feeling motivated. It’s much harder to choose the gym over drinks with friends on Friday night after a long week when you’re tired and just want to relax. That moment, and the actual choice, reveal your priority more than any survey question ever could.

Phase 4: Dynamic Trade-Offs (Personalised) takes it further by tailoring scenarios specifically to your top-ranked values. Based on what you rated highly AND ranked highly, the assessment generates custom dilemmas that pit your actual top priorities against each other. These aren’t generic scenarios; they’re designed to create genuine internal conflict between the things you claimed matter most.

For example, if you ranked both “career” and “mental wellbeing” in your top 5, you’ll face: “Your boss is pressuring you to work this weekend on a high-visibility project. You’re already feeling overwhelmed, and your therapist recommended you take time to rest. What do you prioritise?” This phase reveals whether your choices under pressure actually align with your stated rankings. Most people discover they don’t, and that gap is incredibly valuable information. Under pressure, different values emerge. This phase makes that explicit.

Phase 5: Behavioural Alignment creates explicit awareness of incongruence through thirteen statements about gaps between stated values and actual behaviour. “I exercise and eat well consistently.” “I make time for friends and family regularly.” “I actively manage stress and prioritise mental health.” You rate how often each statement reflects your actual behaviour using a 5-point scale from “Never” to “Always.”

This phase includes stability checks: a few questions are intentionally duplicated with slightly different wording to see if your answers remain consistent. If you rate “I exercise regularly” as “Often” but rate “My physical fitness is a top priority in my daily routine” as “Rarely,” that inconsistency reveals something important; either about your self-awareness or about how context-dependent your behaviour actually is.

This helps you distinguish between values you genuinely hold but struggle to act on versus “should” values you don’t actually prioritise. The therapeutic value here is significant. Self-awareness is the first step to change, or to acceptance. Sometimes the “gap” reveals a false value; something you thought you should care about but don’t. Other times, it reveals genuine misalignment where your life isn’t structured to support what truly matters to you. Either way, clarity replaces confusion. This section is like a forcing function for real breakthroughs.

What Your Results Actually Mean

When you complete the assessment, you’ll get a multi-layered view of your value landscape that goes far beyond simple rankings.

The Visual Overview

The radar chart provides a visual representation of all twelve domains. This is your full landscape at a glance. There is no “good” or “bad” shape here. There’s just your shape. An unbalanced profile isn’t a problem, in fact, it’s usually a sign you’re being honest. If your chart looks like a perfect circle, you’re probably lying to yourself, or you haven’t made any real decisions about what matters most.

Your priority ranking shows domains ordered from most to least important, combining both your initial ratings and your forced-choice rankings. This dual view is critical: you’ll see both how you rated each domain (what you think matters) and where you ranked it when you couldn’t have ties (what actually matters when you’re forced to choose). Your top three are where you should focus your time and energy. 

You have permission to let your bottom three slide. If these are taking up headspace, and are crowding out your true values, then you really should consider how you allocate your time. If spirituality is #12 on your list, stop feeling guilty about not meditating (unless it helps with stress management, which is different). If contribution is at the bottom, stop forcing yourself to volunteer. These aren’t your priorities right now, and that’s okay. The freedom that comes from accepting your lower priorities is huge.

The Psychometric Metrics

This is where the assessment gets a little bit more sophisticated. You’ll see four key numbers that reveal the quality and consistency of your self-knowledge:

Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): This measures whether your ratings across domains show a coherent pattern. A score above 0.70 suggests your responses are reliable and you’re not just clicking randomly. Below 0.60? You might be uncertain about your values or giving socially desirable answers rather than honest ones. This isn’t about being “right”, it’s about whether you’re being consistent with yourself.

Rating vs. Ranking Gap: This is the big one. This number shows the average difference between how you rated domains in Phase 1A (on a 1-7 scale) versus how you ranked them in Phase 1B (when forced to order them with no ties allowed).

• Gap under 1.5: Excellent alignment. What you say matters matches how you prioritise when forced to choose.
• Gap of 1.5-3.0: Moderate discrepancy. Some values you rated highly weren’t ranked as high when you had to make hard choices.
• Gap over 3.0: Significant discrepancy. You’re likely inflating importance in ratings (“everything matters!”) but revealing true priorities in rankings.

This gap is incredibly revealing. I’ve seen people rate 8 out of 12 domains as 6 or 7 out of 7, then rank them and discover massive differences. You rated health, career, family, and financial security all as “7”, which means they are extremely important. But when you had to rank them? Career was #2, family was #7. That’s the gap between what you want to believe about yourself and what’s actually true when push comes to shove.

Cognitive Dissonance Score: This measures the variance between three different signals: what you say matters (Phase 1A ratings), what you choose in trade-offs (Phase 2 choices), and what you actually do (Phase 3 behavioural alignment). A low score (under 1.5) means these three things align, and you walk your talk. A high score (over 2.0) means there’s significant internal conflict between stated values, revealed preferences, and actual behaviour. This is the “I value health but never exercise while choosing work over gym and saying family is #1 but working weekends” score. High cognitive dissonance creates stress, guilt, and poor decisions.

Dynamic Trade-off Alignment: This percentage shows how often your choices in personalised, high-pressure scenarios (Phase 2B) matched your stated rankings from Phase 1B. If you ranked health above career but then chose career over health in 7 out of 10 dynamic scenarios, your alignment is 30%.

• 80%+: Excellent. You walk your talk even under pressure.
• 60-79%: Moderate. Some gap between stated priorities and pressure decisions.
• Under 60%: Low. When things get real, different values emerge than what you consciously believe.

This is often the most eye-opening metric. You may have ranked “family” as #1 and “career” as #4, then proceeded to choose career over family in 9 out of 11 dynamic scenarios when the situations felt realistic and urgent. That 18% alignment should be a wake-up call.

Rating vs. Ranking Analysis

This section digs into the specifics of your ipsative-normative gap. You’ll see:

• Overall assessment: Whether your ratings and rankings align or conflict
• Specific discrepancies: Which domains you rated highly but ranked low (or vice versa)
• What it means: Interpretation of the patterns

For example, you might see: “You rated Career as 7/7 but ranked it #8 overall. This suggests it may not be as critical as you initially thought.” Or the reverse: “You rated Leisure as 4/7 but ranked it #2. This high ranking despite moderate rating suggests it’s more important to your actual wellbeing than you consciously recognise.”

This analysis reveals self-deception patterns. The most common is rating everything high because you want it all to matter, but the ranking reveals what actually wins when you can’t have everything.

Static Trade-off Patterns

Here you’ll see which domains you consistently chose across the ten fixed trade-off scenarios. This shows your revealed preferences, not what you say matters, but what wins when you have to choose.

The assessment tallies how many times you selected each domain and shows you the top 5. If “Career” won in 8 out of 10 relevant trade-offs while “Health” won in 2 out of 10, that’s powerful information; regardless of how you rated them initially.

I see certain patterns constantly: The career climber who says family is #1 but career wins in actual trade-offs. The aspiring entrepreneur who always chooses safety; financial security wins every time. The self-identified health nut who skips gym for work; career actually wins. That misalignment between what you say and what you do creates guilt, confusion, and poor decisions.

Dynamic Trade-off Analysis

This section analyses your responses to the personalised scenarios generated specifically from your top-rated and top-ranked values. These weren’t generic questions, they were tailored to pit your actual highest priorities against each other.

You’ll see:

• Consistency score: How often you chose according to your rankings
• Key conflicts: Specific instances where you chose against your stated rankings
• What it reveals: Your true priorities under pressure

For example: “You ranked Health higher than Career, but chose Career in the scenario about skipping your workout for a work deadline. This reveals your true priorities under pressure.”

This is where self-knowledge gets uncomfortable and valuable. These scenarios were designed to feel real, to activate the same decision-making you use in actual life. When someone says “I value health” but then chooses to skip the gym for a work deadline in a realistic scenario, that’s not a failure, it’s just data. It’s information about what you genuinely prioritise when you can’t have everything. Now, of course, some of these are quite unrealistic, and often can’t be avoided (i.e. you can’t skip work to go to the gym, because you will get fired). But, it is still important to actually assess how you make decisions when you can’t have it all, and there is direct conflict between the things you value.

Behavioural Gaps

This section shows where your actions diverge from your values. You’ll see:

• Action gaps: Domains you rated/ranked highly but don’t act on consistently
• Stability check results: Whether you answered similar questions differently, indicating inconsistency or uncertainty
• Specific examples: Which statements revealed the biggest gaps

If you rated Health as important and ranked it #3, but answered “Rarely” or “Never” to “I exercise and eat well consistently,” that’s a behavioural gap. You know what matters, but you’re not living it.

The stability checks are particularly revealing. The assessment asks you similar questions twice in different ways. If you say “I exercise regularly” = “Often” but later say “My physical fitness and nutrition are top priorities in my daily routine” = “Rarely,” that inconsistency suggests either uncertainty about the domain or significant situational variability in your behaviour.

Actionable Insights

Finally, the Triage Personal Values & Life Priorities Assessment synthesises all this data into specific, personalised insights:

Your True Top 3: Based on the integration of all phases, not just your initial ratings. These are your real priorities when everything is considered.

Rating Inflation (if detected): If your ipsative-normative gap is high, you’ll get called out for wanting everything to matter while your rankings tell a different story.

Under Pressure Changes (if detected): If your dynamic trade-off alignment is low, you’ll learn that different values emerge when the heat is on.

Biggest Behavioral Gap: The #1 domain where you’re not walking your talk, with a specific prompt to take action.

Cognitive Dissonance Warning (if detected): If there’s significant internal conflict between what you say, choose, and do, you’ll see the stress this creates and get guidance on resolution.

Response Inconsistency (if detected): If stability checks revealed inconsistent answers, you’ll learn which values show uncertainty.

Positive Reinforcement (if earned): If you show exceptional alignment across all measures, you’ll get recognition for this extremely rare self-awareness.

Your Next Action: A specific, concrete step to protect your #1 value in the next 7 days.

What to Do With This Information

Once you see your patterns clearly, you have two paths forward: change your behaviour to match stated values, or accept that your revealed preferences are your actual values. Both are valid. Both are honest. The key is choosing one consciously instead of living in the gap.

The conflict analysis isn’t judgement; it’s diagnostic information. These conflicts show you where to focus if you want to make changes, or where to let go of “should” values if you don’t.

For example, if you have high conflict around health (rated it highly, ranked it top 5, but show low behavioral alignment and consistently chose against it in trade-offs) you have options:

Option A: Make real changes to prioritise health, such as scheduling workouts like appointments, hiring a coach, removing barriers, and/or building systems that work with your actual priorities.

Option B: Accept that health isn’t actually your priority right now, lower your rating to match reality, and stop feeling guilty about it. Focus your energy on what actually matters to you right now. 

Both are legitimate choices. But staying in the middle (saying health matters while doing nothing about it and feeling guilty) that’s where suffering lives. You must accept the trade offs of your choices. This is the only way to be truly free.

The Problem With How We Think About Values

Now, I know that you’ve probably done one of these exercises before. Someone asks you, “What’s important to you?” You check boxes: health, family, career, friends, personal growth, financial security, contribution, spirituality. And what usually happens is that everyone rates everything as “very important.” Health? 10/10. Family? 10/10. Career? Also 10/10. The result is a useless list where everything is a top priority, which means nothing is actually a priority. This creates zero clarity and gives you no decision-making power whatsoever.

If everything is important, nothing is important. If you have ten “top priorities,” you have zero top priorities. Priority literally means “the thing that comes first”.

Successful people don’t balance everything, they intentionally prioritise some domains over others, and they make peace with what falls to the bottom. Strategic imbalance is the goal, not the problem. Your life should not look like a perfect circle on the radar chart. It should look like what actually matters to you. Accept the imbalance. That’s not failure, that’s just you being honest.

Often, we don’t rate things highly because we actually value them. We rate them highly because we should value them. There’s extensive research on this; self-deception, self-presentation bias, and social desirability bias. We lie to ourselves constantly. Everyone says family is their #1 priority, but behaviour tells a very different story. I’ve had clients tell me family comes first while they’re answering work emails at their kid’s football game. I’m not judging that, by the way. I’m just saying: the stated value and the actual value don’t match. That mismatch is ultimately costing you your peace of mind.

The problem goes deeper than dishonest surveys. Goals assume you have unlimited time, energy, and resources. “I want to get fit, advance my career, spend more time with family, learn a language, start a side business…” This just doesn’t work in reality, and leads to a lot of friction and dissatisfaction in life. Choosing one means sacrificing another. Going to the gym at 6 AM means less sleep. Working late means missing dinner with your partner. Building a business means less time for hobbies. This isn’t about being negative, it’s about being honest about how reality works. 

Without understanding your value hierarchy, you’ll do one of three things: try to do everything and burn out, feel guilty about what you neglect and experience chronic dissatisfaction, or make inconsistent decisions that leave you confused and full of regret. I see this play out constantly. Someone commits to training with me three days a week. Then a work project comes up, and suddenly they’re skipping sessions. They feel terrible about it. They apologise profusely. But the reality is that they’re not failing. They just haven’t decided whether health or career matters more to them right now. And until they make that decision consciously, they’ll keep making it unconsciously, and feeling guilty about it. 

Why Your Brain Wasn’t Built For This

I know that working on all of this stuff feels incredibly hard, almost impossible to do. Your brain wasn’t designed for these decisions. For 300,000 years, your ancestors faced clear survival priorities: food, safety, reproduction, and tribe. The hierarchy was obvious. You didn’t need a values assessment to know hunger matters more than self-actualisation. You didn’t agonise over whether to gather berries or work on your personal growth. The choice was obvious because the consequences were immediate and survival-level.

Today, you’re among the first people in human history expected to figure out your own value hierarchy from scratch, with infinite options and zero guidebook. Your brain is running Stone Age software on an Information Age problem. From an evolutionary perspective, this creates what biologists often call a “mismatch disease” (when an organism’s environment changes faster than it can adapt). Your ancestors who spent too long choosing the perfect berry bush got eaten by predators. The ones who said “good enough” and moved on survived. Your instinct to satisfice isn’t laziness, it’s evolutionary wisdom your culture is telling you to ignore.

This mismatch creates three specific forms of neurological suffering. First, prediction error overload: your brain constantly predicts you’ll act according to stated values. When you don’t, it generates an error signal we experience as guilt. Neuroscientist Karl Friston’s research on predictive processing shows that your brain is fundamentally a prediction machine. Every time you say “I should go to the gym” and don’t go, your dopamine system logs a failure. Do this multiple times a week for months, and you’re training your brain that you’re constantly failing. That’s not a motivation problem, that’s chronic negative prediction error, which is literally a risk factor for depression.

Second, decision fatigue: your prefrontal cortex (the brain’s decision-making centre) is generally considered to be the most metabolically expensive part of your brain. Every time you re-decide “Should I go to the gym or focus on work?”, you’re burning glucose that could be used for actual challenges. Make that decision 300 times a year, and you’re exhausted before you even start. Roy Baumeister’s research on willpower depletion shows that decision-making feels like a limited resource. People who agonise over priorities are depleting their cognitive resources on meta-decisions, leaving nothing for actual execution.

Third, cognitive dissonance: Leon Festinger’s classic research showed that holding contradictory beliefs (like “I value health” plus “I don’t exercise”) creates genuine psychological pain. Your brain desperately wants consistency between beliefs and behaviour. The guilt and anxiety you’re feeling isn’t moral weakness. It’s your brain screaming for alignment, generating distress until you either change your behaviour or change your belief. Most people do neither. They just live in the distress, thinking that’s normal. It’s not normal; it’s unresolved cognitive dissonance, and it’s corroding your mental health daily.

The solution isn’t more willpower or better time management. It’s clarity. Make the decision once, at the level of values, and every daily choice becomes automatic. Clear values function as “decision-making heuristics”; shortcuts that reduce cognitive load. When career is clearly your #1 priority, the choice between working late and going to dinner isn’t agonising anymore. It’s obvious.

The Stoic-Existentialist Paradox: Freedom Through Constraint

Life is not about balance. It’s about intentional imbalance. When I work with clients who are thriving (not just surviving, but actually immensely satisfied with their lives) they’re not balanced. They’re intentionally imbalanced. They’ve decided what matters most, and they’re okay with what falls to the bottom.

The Stoics understood this 2,000 years ago. Epictetus taught the dichotomy of control: you control your values, your choices, your responses. You don’t control outcomes, others’ opinions, or the number of hours in a day. The Stoics knew that fighting reality (i.e. wishing you could prioritise everything) is the source of suffering. As Marcus Aurelius wrote while literally running the Roman Empire and managing multiple military campaigns, you must accept constraints and choose within them. He wasn’t balanced. He prioritised duty and Stoic virtue over personal comfort, family time, and health. He made that choice consciously and lived it fully.

The existentialists arrived at the same place from the opposite direction. Sartre’s famous claim of “existence precedes essence”, means you have no predefined nature or purpose. You create yourself through choices. This radical freedom is often terrifying. Most people escape it through what Sartre called “bad faith” (pretending they’re not really choosing). When you say “I have to prioritise work,” you’re in bad faith. You’re choosing to. Own it.

Kierkegaard identified different life stages with different priority hierarchies: the aesthetic life focused on pleasure and experiences, the ethical life focused on duty and relationships, and the religious life focused on meaning and transcendence. Your 25-year-old aesthetic-stage self shouldn’t have the same priorities as your 45-year-old ethical-stage self. The problem is when you try to simultaneously live all three stages, or when you’re in one stage while pretending to be in another.

You’re radically free to choose your priorities, but you can’t prioritise everything. This is scary, but it is liberating. As Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Your priority hierarchy is your “why.” Once you know it clearly, the “how” (the daily choices about what to do and what to let slide) becomes not just bearable but obvious.

Successful people aren’t “balanced”, they consciously prioritise some domains over others. The entrepreneur grinding on their startup isn’t balanced. The athlete training for the Olympics isn’t balanced. The executive climbing the corporate ladder isn’t balanced. They’ve achieved what the Stoics called “appropriate action” and are choosing what’s right for their particular role and life stage, not some universal ideal of balance.

What Economists and Behavioural Scientists Know (That Self-Help Ignores)

The field of behavioural economics has spent decades studying how people actually make decisions versus how we think we make them. The single most important insight in my opinion is that revealed preferences tell the truth; stated preferences often lie. When economists want to know what people value, they don’t ask them; they watch what they choose when forced to trade off one thing for another.

This is the methodological foundation of the Triage Personal Values & Life Priorities Assessment. Traditional values exercises ask you to rate things in isolation: “How important is health to you?” “How important is career?” These produce useless data because there’s no constraint forcing honesty. But when you must choose between going to the gym or working on your business, that choice reveals your actual priority. Do this across different real-world scenarios, and a clear pattern emerges; what you genuinely prioritise when you can’t have both.

Herbert Simon won the Nobel Prize partly for his concept of “satisficing”, which is accepting “good enough” rather than trying to optimise everything. He demonstrated that in complex environments with limited information and resources, satisficing outperforms optimisation-seeking. The people trying to maximise all twelve life domains simultaneously are guaranteed to underperform compared to those who satisfice in nine domains while excelling in three. So, while you may not believe me, this isn’t settling, it’s strategic resource allocation.

Research on the paradox of choice also showed that more options don’t make us happier. Often, they make us anxious and less satisfied with our choices. His studies distinguished between “maximisers” who try to optimise every decision and “satisficers” who accept good enough and move on. Maximisers spend more time deciding, feel less satisfied with their decisions, and experience more regret. When it comes to values, being a maximiser (trying to perfectly balance all priorities) makes you miserable. Satisficers with three clear priorities consistently report higher life satisfaction than maximisers juggling twelve.

Work on nudge theory and choice architecture reveals that most of our “choices” are actually defaults we never questioned. Your current priority hierarchy is likely the default option served by your culture, family, and education. You never actively chose it. This is why the Triage Personal Values & Life Priorities Assessment is so effective. It forces you to choose consciously rather than accepting defaults. The question isn’t whether you have priorities. You do. The question is whether you chose them or they chose you.

This can be quite painful. Loss aversion (feeling losses roughly twice as intensely as equivalent gains) explains why these trade-offs feel so painful. You’re not “losing” leisure time by prioritising your career. You’re gaining career advancement. The feeling of loss is your brain’s bias, not objective reality. You can actually reframe your decisions, and have them be less painful, once you are actually aware of your values and acting in accordance with them. For example, you could reframe from “I’m neglecting health” to “I’m investing in building my business right now.” Same behaviour, different frame, completely different emotional experience.

Every choice has an opportunity cost. There is always an alternative you’re giving up. Economists understand that money is just one cost. Time, energy, attention, and alternatives foregone are the real costs. When you say “I can’t afford to prioritise health,” you usually mean “The opportunity cost of lost career advancement or lost family time is too high.” That’s just honest economic calculation, and if it aligns with your values, you should own it instead of pretending it’s about willpower or finding the right productivity hack. If it doesn’t align with your values, then you need to change your behaviours.

The Aristotelian Question: What Is Your Purpose?

Now, to really dig into this, we do have to get a bit philosophical. You see, Aristotle asked a question that cuts through all the modern confusion about priorities: What is a thing’s ergon; its function or purpose? A knife’s purpose is cutting, which is why a sharp knife is excellent and a dull one is defective. What, then, is a human’s purpose?

Aristotle’s answer was rational activity in accordance with virtue; the life of reason and excellence. But what he understood that modern self-help completely forgets is that not everyone’s ergon is the same. The contemplative philosopher’s flourishing looks completely different from the warrior’s. The artist’s eudaimonia differs fundamentally from the businessman’s. They’re pursuing fundamentally different forms of human excellence.

Your value hierarchy helps to reveal your ergon. Are you someone whose purpose expresses itself through career achievement, autonomy, and creating things in the world? Are you someone who flourishes through family, relationships, and caring for others? Are you someone whose purpose centres on growth, spirituality, and understanding? Are you someone who needs contribution, legacy, and making art or ideas?

If you want peace, you need to stop trying to live like someone with a different ergon. A fish that tries to climb a tree will spend its life thinking it’s stupid. You’re not defective because you don’t value what others value. You might be a completely different kind of organism. We each have different purposes. Different excellent expressions of human life.

Aristotle also taught the doctrine of the mean; virtue as the right amount of the right thing at the right time. Courage isn’t fearlessness; it’s appropriate fear and appropriate action given the circumstances. Health isn’t a 7/7 for everyone in all life stages. For you, right now, maybe health at a 4/7 is the virtuous mean; enough to sustain your body while you focus energy on your actual purpose. The bodybuilder and the entrepreneur shouldn’t have the same health priority. They have different functions.

You’re not trying to achieve some universal ideal of balance. You’re trying to discover and live your particular ergon; your unique function and purpose. Once you know whether you’re a fish or a monkey, you can stop trying to climb trees or swim laps and just do the thing you’re built for.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Let me talk about why this matters beyond just feeling better about yourself. There are real, concrete benefits to getting clear on your values that ripple through every domain of your life.

Decision-making becomes dramatically simpler. Every decision involves trade-offs between values. Without a clear hierarchy, every choice is agonising. You get a job offer with more money but less time with family. How do you decide? You stand there paralysed, weighing and re-weighing, second-guessing, asking everyone’s opinion, feeling stressed about it for weeks. But a clear value hierarchy makes decisions not necessarily easy, but clearer. It reduces decision fatigue and regret. Example: “I know career is my #1 priority right now, so I’m taking the demanding job, and I’m ok with that.” Done. You made a choice aligned with your actual values, not your aspirational ones.

The guilt cycle ends. Modern culture insists you can “have it all.” Any domain you neglect feels like personal failure. You experience constant guilt about what you’re not doing. You compare yourself to people who seem to balance everything perfectly. Spoiler, they don’t; they’re just showing you their highlight reel. You have permission to have an intentionally unbalanced life. Your bottom three priorities don’t need your attention right now. Trade-offs are features, not bugs, of a well-lived life.

Example: “I’m not going to the gym right now because I’m prioritising career growth, and that’s okay.” The guilt evaporates when you realise you’re not failing at something that matters to you. You’re choosing to ignore something that doesn’t matter to you right now.

You can live authentically instead of performatively. Many of our “values” are actually social expectations. We pursue goals because we should, not because we want to. Instagram culture amplifies this exponentially, as everyone appears to value everything, to be doing everything, and to have it all figured out. You see someone’s gym selfie, their kid’s birthday party, and their work promotion. You don’t see the sixteen-hour days, the missed school plays, or the hired help. You’re comparing your real life to their performance. The result is living someone else’s life.

This tool reveals your actual values through behaviour, not aspiration. Discovering your bottom priorities is as valuable as confirming your top ones. It gives you permission to opt out of cultural expectations. “I don’t actually care about contribution or legacy right now, and that’s fine.” This might be the most radical part of this work. We live in a culture that insists you should care about everything. This assessment tells you what you actually care about, and the freedom in that is wonderful. You can stop performing values you don’t hold and start living the ones you do.

Relationships improve through explicit communication. Relationship conflict often stems from misaligned values that neither person has articulated. Partners assume shared priorities that don’t exist. Resentment builds when expectations aren’t met. Classic example: one partner prioritises financial security, and saves everything, avoids risk, and wants a house fund. The other prioritises experiences, and spends on travel, values memories over things, and thinks “you can’t take it with you.” Both think they’re “right.” Neither understands the other’s actual value system. They fight about money constantly, but they’re really fighting about values.

Have an explicit values conversation using this framework. Understand your partner’s actual priorities, not what they say, but what they consistently choose in trade-offs. Negotiate conflicts consciously instead of fighting about symptoms. This reduces resentment by making priorities explicit. You’re not lazy for not wanting to go out every weekend, you just want to prioritise rest and recharge. They’re not shallow for caring about their appearance, they just prioritise health and confidence. Neither is wrong. You’re just different, and now you know it.

Mental health improves measurably. Those value-behaviour gaps create cognitive dissonance, and cognitive dissonance leads to anxiety, guilt, and shame. Trying to honour all values equally leads to burnout. Research consistently shows that values clarification improves mental health outcomes. When your actions align with your actual priorities, internal conflict decreases. Stress decreases. Satisfaction increases. Self-awareness reduces cognitive dissonance. Either change your behaviour or change your stated values, both options reduce psychological distress. Acceptance of trade-offs leads to self-compassion.

I’ve seen people go from anxious and scattered to focused and calm simply by accepting what they actually value and living accordingly. The relief of no longer fighting yourself, no longer pretending to be someone you’re not, no longer forcing priorities that aren’t yours, it’s truly transformative.

How To Actually Use The Triage Personal Values & Life Priorities Assessment

Let me get practical about how to take this assessment and use it to change your life.

Take it honestly. No one else sees your results. This only works if you’re truthful with yourself. If you choose career over family in the trade-offs, own it. That’s data, not judgment. Don’t overthink the questions—go with your gut reactions. Your first instinct is usually more honest than your carefully considered answer. Remember, this is descriptive, not prescriptive. The assessment isn’t telling you what you should value. It’s revealing what you actually value right now. And your current priorities may change, as this isn’t permanent. You at twenty-five will have different values than you at forty-five. Life stages matter.

Focus on patterns when interpreting results, not individual questions. One trade-off choice doesn’t mean much. Consistently choosing career over health across multiple scenarios? That’s a pattern. Pay special attention to stated versus revealed preference gaps, that’s where the gold is. That’s where you say one thing and do another. Your bottom priorities are as informative as your top ones. Maybe more so. Accepting what you don’t care about is incredibly freeing. And no result is “bad”, only misalignment is problematic. If your behaviour matches your stated values, you’re golden, even if your values aren’t what society says they should be.

If you find alignment: Congratulations. You’re living according to your actual values. Now use your value hierarchy for decision-making. Every choice becomes easier when you know your priorities. Structure your time according to your top three. Your calendar should reflect your values. And stop apologising for your bottom priorities. You don’t need to explain why you’re not doing something that doesn’t matter to you.

If you find misalignment, you have two options, and both are valid. Option A: Change behaviour to match stated values. If you genuinely value health but aren’t acting on it, create systems. Schedule workouts like appointments. Remove barriers (e.g. lay out gym clothes the night before). Create accountability by hiring a coach or working out with a friend. Make it easier to work out than not to. The problem usually isn’t discipline; it’s friction. Reduce friction, increase consistency.

Option B: Accept revealed preferences as your true values. Sometimes the “misalignment” reveals that you don’t actually value what you think you value. If this is the case, update your self-concept. Stop calling yourself “someone who values health” if you don’t actually prioritise it. Stop pursuing “should” goals that don’t align with your behaviour. Communicate this new understanding to others, and let them know you’re not trying to be healthy right now, you’re focused on other things. Give yourself permission to let it go.

Example: You keep saying you want to learn Spanish, but you never do it. Maybe you don’t actually want to learn Spanish. Maybe you like the idea of being someone who speaks Spanish. Let it go. Stop adding it to your New Year’s resolutions. Accept that it’s not actually a priority for you, and free up that mental space.

If you’re confused: The confusion itself is valuable data. It might indicate you’re in a life transition period where values are shifting. It might mean you’re being heavily influenced by external pressure and haven’t sorted out what’s yours yet. Consider retaking the assessment in three to six months. Discuss results with a therapist or coach who can help you work through the confusion. Journal about the conflicting feelings. Confusion usually means you’re between stories about yourself, and that’s actually a generative place to be if you sit with it.

Use it in relationships. Take it individually first, so you don’t influence each other’s answers. Then share results with your partner or close friends. Be vulnerable about what you discovered. Discuss where values align and where they conflict. This isn’t about right or wrong; it’s about understanding. Negotiate trade-offs explicitly where your values diverge. How will you handle it when his top priority conflicts with their top priority?

Example discussion prompts: “I discovered career is actually my #1 right now. How do you feel about that?” “What surprised you about your results?” “Where do our top three values overlap?” “How can we support each other’s priorities even when they’re different from our own?”

Use it for major decisions. Run big choices through your value hierarchy. Job offers: which option honours your top three values? If career is #1 and family is #8, take the demanding job. If it’s reversed, don’t. Relationship decisions: are your core values aligned with your partner’s? You don’t need identical values, but massive gaps in the top three create constant friction. Time management: does your calendar reflect your priorities? If health is #2 but you never schedule workouts, there’s your problem. Financial decisions: your spending should match your value hierarchy. If experiences matter more than security, spend on travel without guilt. If security matters more, save aggressively and stop feeling bad about not travelling.

What This Tool Can’t Do (And When Values Change)

The Triage Personal Values & Life Priorities Assessment doesn’t tell you what you should value, that’s up to you. There’s no “correct” hierarchy. It doesn’t account for external constraints. If you’re in poverty, prioritising financial security isn’t a choice, it’s survival. If you’re caregiving for a sick parent, family priorities are imposed, not chosen. This tool works best when you have some agency over your life. It also doesn’t predict future values. You’ll change. Your priorities at twenty-five won’t be the same as at forty-five, and that’s normal and healthy. And this isn’t a diagnostic tool. It’s not therapy. It’s not clinical. If you’re struggling with serious mental health issues, see a professional.

Different life stages demand different priorities. The twenty-five-year-old focused on career growth. The thirty-five-year-old focused on young children. The forty-five-year-old focused on meaning and contribution. The fifty-five-year-old focused on health and relationships. This isn’t a linear progression everyone must follow, it’s just common patterns. Major life events shift values dramatically: parenthood, illness, loss, divorce, career changes, moves, and financial shocks. They can all drastically change what you value and how you spend your time.

I generally recommend that people retake this assessment annually as a check-in. You can also take it after major life transitions. Or take it when you feel stuck or confused about what matters. Take it before making major decisions. This isn’t a one-time event, it’s an ongoing practice of self-awareness.

As I have quite a diverse international audience, I should also note that the assessment would generally be considered to be Western-centric in its domain selection. I am afterall, a product of my own cognitive limitations and cultural biases. It emphasises individual autonomy and choice, which are not universal values. Some values are more emphasised in certain cultures. Individualist cultures prioritise autonomy and personal achievement. Collectivist cultures prioritise family and community obligations. So, you may need to adapt as needed for your cultural context. The framework still works, just be aware of the cultural assumptions baked in.

Ultimately, values clarity isn’t about perfect optimisation of your life. Life isn’t entirely within your control. Circumstances matter. Luck matters. Other people’s needs matter. You need to allow for spontaneity and flexibility. So, don’t use your value hierarchy as a weapon to justify ignoring everything outside your top three. You should aim to balance intentionality but with openness to change. Think of your values as a compass, not a GPS route. They point you in a direction, but you’ll still need to navigate obstacles, take detours, and adjust course as terrain changes.

The Courage to Be Finite

This work can be quite challenging. You must have the courage to accept your finitude. You have one life. Limited time. Limited energy. Limited attention. Every choice eliminates alternatives. Choose career, and you eliminate certain family experiences. Choose family, and you eliminate certain career paths. Choose health, and you eliminate some leisure. There is no both/and at the same moment. Only either/or.

This is tragic, in the Greek sense. Not tragic as in sad, tragic as in you’re forced to choose between different goods, not between good and evil. Either choice costs you something real and valuable. You are often choosing between two genuine goods, and losing one to gain the other. That’s the human condition. That’s what it means to be finite.

Nietzsche taught the concept of amor fati (love of fate). Not just acceptance of what you’ve chosen, but actual love for it, including its costs. Don’t just accept your trade-offs; love them fiercely. If you’ve chosen career over family time, love that choice. Own it completely. Pour yourself into it. Resentment poisons chosen priorities. Half-hearted commitment leaves you living neither path fully. His concept of eternal recurrence is extremely helpful here, and can help you to get very clear on where you would actually like to change things.

Ultimately, having interacted with hundreds of people through my coaching, I can confidently say that the people who accept their finitude are the ones who actually live. They’re not agonising over every decision. They’re not paralysed by guilt. They’re not comparing themselves to impossible standards. They know what matters to them, they’ve made peace with what doesn’t, and they’re living accordingly. That’s not settling. That’s wisdom.

The Triage Personal Values & Life Priorities Assessment isn’t about giving you more freedom. You already have infinite options, and that’s precisely the problem. It’s giving you clarity about which freedoms to use. The ancient Stoics and modern existentialists converged on the same insight from different directions. The Stoics said that you can’t control circumstances, only your choices within constraints. Focus exclusively on what’s in your control, which in this context is your chosen priorities. Fighting this reality creates suffering. The existentialists said that you’re radically free to choose your values, but this freedom is terrifying. Most people escape it through conformity, adopting others’ values to avoid the responsibility of choice.

So, you’re free to choose your priorities, but you can’t prioritise everything. This is what makes choice meaningful. If you could have everything, nothing would matter. The fact that choosing one thing means not choosing another is what makes your choices significant. Your priority hierarchy is your answer to Nietzsche’s question: What do you value enough to sacrifice for?

Stop asking “What should I value?” Start asking, “What hierarchy actually produces the life I want to live?” That’s your truth. Test it pragmatically. If it produces satisfaction, alignment, and the ability to make decisions without agonising, it’s working. If it doesn’t, adjust it. This isn’t about finding some cosmic correct answer. It’s about discovering what works for you, in your life, with your particular ergon.

The good life isn’t about having it all. It’s about knowing what matters most to you, and having the courage to pursue that, even when it means letting other things go. That’s what I’ve learned coaching hundreds of people. The ones who succeed aren’t the ones with the most discipline or the most time or the best genetics. They’re the ones who get clear on what actually matters to them, and then build their lives around that, consciously accepting what falls away.

Stop trying to be everything. Start being intentional about what you are. Choose your priorities. Mourn what you’re not prioritising, that grief is real and valid. But then go live the life that’s actually yours. Not the life that looks good on Instagram. Not the life your parents wanted. Not the life that checks every societal box. Your life, with your trade-offs, chosen consciously and lived fully.

Take the assessment. Tell the truth to yourself. Then go live like you mean it.

Triage Personal Values & Life Priorities Assessment Conclusion

You do not need another aspiration. You need a hierarchy you are willing to live with. That is what this assessment gives you. Not a prettier vision board, not a motivational surge that dies on Wednesday, but a map of how you actually choose when life applies pressure. Once you have that map, the work is simple, not easy. You stop pretending you can do everything, you stop resenting the costs of your choices, and you start making those choices on purpose.

Clarity will not remove sacrifice. It will make sacrifice meaningful. When you decide what comes first, you also decide what can come later or not at all. That is the courage to be finite. Name your top values, protect them with structure, and let the rest be background without guilt. If the data shows a gap, resolve it one of two ways. Change your behavior to match the values you claim, or tell the truth and update the values you claim to match the life you actually live. Either path ends the constant friction that has been draining you.

Use this tool as a practice, not a one-off. Revisit it when seasons change, when roles shift, or when life interrupts your plans. Share your hierarchy with the people who share your life. Negotiate openly. Refuse the myth of balance. Aim for alignment. Alignment is not tidy or symmetrical. It is honest. Honest is what works.

So take the assessment. Tell the truth. Accept the trade-offs you are choosing anyway. Then build your days to reflect what matters most. That is how you get your peace back, your decisiveness back, and your energy pointed in one direction long enough to make a real dent in your life.

If you need help creating a plan of action, with regards to your values and your health and fitness, we can help you do this. You can reach out to us and get online coaching, or alternatively, you can interact with our free content. 

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