You can have the title, the team, the money and people you actually like. Yet one crushed value can make it all feel unlivable.

And when that happens, most of us go one of two ways.

Either you tell yourself you're being ungrateful. Look at everything you have. What is wrong with you?

Or you throw the baby out with the bathwater. The whole thing is wrong, the job, the company, all of it, and you start looking for the exit.

But usually it isn't the whole thing. It's one value, in one place, not getting honored. And once you can see that clearly, you have options you didn't have before.

Every value you have is sitting in one of 4 states right now:

Fed.
Fed wrong.
Stepped on.
Or waiting.

The first time I ran this on myself, I rated how fully I was honoring each of my values on a scale of 1 to 10. My number one value is having an impact. It drives everything I do.

I gave it a 3.

Not because anything was wrong, but because I could finally see how much more of it was available to me and I wasn't going after it… I had just started coaching.

That 3 is a big part of why I do what I do now.

All you're looking for is which value it is and which state it's in. That's one place to work on. It beats rewriting your whole life around it.

Sometimes you feed it outside work. Sometimes you get it met inside the same company.

Sometimes the seat you're in is too small for it.

And, you can't keep climbing on other people's priorities.