Why values only hold when they arise from who you are
Most years begin the same way.
A new calendar. A quiet resolve that this year will be different. Goals are set with good intentions and genuine hope. And then, gradually, something familiar unfolds. Life interrupts. Energy dips. Circumstances change. The goals that once felt motivating begin to feel heavy, or quietly slip away, often not with a bang, but instead with a sense of disappointment that is hard to name.
One of the great gifts of working from an intentionally integrated approach to mental health and personal growth is that it can help us understand why this happens.
When psychology, lived experience, and the Christian vision of the human person are held together, values are not an optional extra or a motivational technique. They sit at the very centre of the work. They are connected to our telos as human beings. They are connected to who we are created to become. To the truth that our lives are oriented toward love, communion, and freedom in God.
Many secular approaches to values work are genuinely incredibly helpful. They assist people to clarify what matters and to live with greater intention. But they can sometimes feel like one tool among many. Something we plug in alongside habits, goals, and strategies. Useful, but not always integrated.
Within a Christian understanding of the person, values are not something we construct. They are something we uncover. They flow from identity. From being made in the image and likeness of God, and from the call to live in a way that allows that image to take flesh in daily life.
Across years of clinical work with individuals and families, alongside work in conflict resolution, restorative practices, executive coaching, and organisational development, I kept noticing the same pattern emerge in very different settings.
Most people were building their lives and goals on an upside down structure.
They began with outcomes. Fix the relationship. Improve performance. Get healthier. Be more disciplined. Then they hoped those outcomes would create a sense of meaning. And finally, they hoped that meaning would somehow line up with who they wanted to be.
It looked responsible. Often it was encouraged. But it was actually quite fragile.
When stress increased, when relationships became strained, when grief or conflict entered the picture, motivation collapsed. People did not fail because they lacked willpower. They struggled because goals were being asked to do the work of identity.
Over time, I began working with a different way of ordering the process. One that felt more faithful to human experience, and more faithful to the Christian understanding of the person.
Identity gives rise to values.
Values shape meaning.
Meaning gives birth to goals.
Goals guide daily action.
When this order is respected, life tends to hold together. When it is reversed, everything becomes effortful and without flow.
At the heart of the Christian life is not achievement, but identity. Before Jesus teaches, heals, or sacrifices himself, he hears the words, “You are my beloved Son.” (Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, and Luke 3:22). Everything flows from there. Our lives are meant to be lived from belovedness, not toward it.
Values are simply the shape that belovedness takes in ordinary life. They are the qualities we choose to embody in the way we speak, decide, lead, repair, and remain present. Honesty. Faithfulness. Courage. Mercy. Growth. They are not abstract ideals. They only become real when they shape behaviour.
Integrity looks like following through when it costs.
Connection looks like staying present when it would be easier to withdraw.
Faith looks like choosing trust when clarity is not yet available.
When people begin to live this way, something subtle but profound shifts. Meaning stops being something they chase and becomes something they experience. Meaning emerges when life is coherent. When behaviour aligns with values. When what we do reflects who we believe ourselves to be.
This is something the Christian tradition has always understood. The saints did not pursue meaning as a feeling. They ordered their lives toward love, and meaning followed. Modern psychology is slowly rediscovering this truth. Human flourishing comes from inner coherence and integration.
Only then do goals find their proper place.
Viewed in this way, goals are no longer tests of worth or evidence that we are finally getting life right. They become practical expressions of the values we are already choosing to live by. They support identity rather than compete with it.
Connection might take the form of protected time with the people we love.
Health might express a desire to steward the body entrusted to us.
Growth might reflect a call to keep becoming, even when it feels stretching.
Notice how the weight shifts. Goals are no longer carrying the burden of creating meaning. They simply give structure to a meaning that already exists.
As you look toward 2026, the invitation is not to try harder, but to go deeper (duc in altum – Luke 5:4).
Begin by naming a small number of values that genuinely matter to you. Not what sounds admirable, but what feels true. Sit with each one and ask how it wants to take shape in your actual life, with its limits, responsibilities, and relationships.
Pay attention to what it feels like when you live that value well. Where does your body settle? What becomes quieter? What opens? This is the meaning, not as an idea, but as an experience.
Only then consider what kinds of goals would support this way of living. Keep them modest. Keep them humane. Let them be expressions of faithfulness rather than demands for perfection.
And finally, imagine yourself in December 2026. Not asking whether you achieved everything you planned, but whether you lived in a way that felt aligned. More present. More grounded. More coherent. More at home in yourself and in God.
When values lead, life stops feeling like a performance to manage and begins to feel like a response to grace.
That is a far sturdier foundation for the year ahead.