Building Introvert Internal Compass. Core Values. Part 1
A practical guide on how to stop living on borrowed values and find the true ones that are fundamental to trusting your internal validation.
This post explains what core values actually are, and outlines a practical method to help you build an internal compass for your midlife realignment.
‘I thought all I was doing was changing how I make money, but it turns out, I'm starting over in terms of how I arrange my time and actually care for myself in ways that make sense for me. After decades of doing it the way I was told, trying to hear my voice and sort out what works is definitely tricky!’
I recently received this comment from one of my Substack colleagues, Jill Holly.
By the way, if you have never encountered her publication and are looking for a space for women carving their own path on the unseen side of womanhood, solo-living, childfree, and unapologetically whole, Spinster-esque might be for you.
Isn’t this a brilliant reflection? Read that quote again, but replace ‘I make money’ with whatever you have recently changed or are currently changing in your life, and you will see that the quote still fits perfectly.
A structural change that truly transforms your life is never just about swapping out one puzzle piece, like a job, a place to live, or a relationship.
It encompasses absolutely everything. It forces you to answer the ultimate question: What is actually important to me, and where do I want to invest my time?
Welcome to Life Realignment for Introverts.
If you have spent years being good at a life that does not quite fit, you are in the right place. No passion chasing. No reckless leaps. No advice designed for extroverts. Just a structured path to realign your internal world with your external one.
Introvert Life Realignment
If you have been reading my work for a while, you know that this entire publication is dedicated to the many aspects of an introvert’s life realignment.
It is about the change we can go through to align our internal world with our external one. It is about being honestly ourselves, embracing all of our introverted awkwardness and otherness, and consciously choosing when and why we put on a mask, without losing ourselves in it. (Because yes, everyone wears a mask sometimes).
The way I understand introvert life realignment, it is not a sudden, explosive change that requires burning everything down to the ground or making a great, reckless leap.
I also do not believe that searching for passion is the answer here.
This is an internal process. It starts the moment you realize that all the resources you actually need are already inside of you.
No, you are not perfect.
But what you have, your true self, is a magnificent resource. And from that perspective, you are whole, with all the resources you need to thrive.
Internal Compass
When this shift happens, the way you validate yourself changes, too. You move from external validation to internal validation. We all have different names for this. Jill called it “hearing my voice.” I usually call it an internal compass. Others might call it intuition.
Paradoxically, the more we rely on this internal validation, the more we feel a sense of inner certainty, strength, and peace.
Your introverted ‘otherness’ stops being an obstacle, and you simply start living it. You break the exhausting loop of constantly seeking escape, which was just an old coping mechanism for dealing with an extroverted world (a new job, a new place to live, etc.).
Instead, all of your best awkward traits just become like old, good friends. You genuinely like them, even though you know they aren’t perfect.
But here is the massive question: What exactly is this internal compass?
How do you find it?
How do you trust it enough to shift your validation from the outside to the inside?
How do you start filtering the world through its guidelines?
After years of masking and performing, to the point where some of us have lost ourselves in our second, extroverted identity, how do you even hear your own voice?
Where does your true introverted self end, and the extroverted mask begin?
How do you unlearn all those ‘useful’ behaviors and reactions that kept you safe for so many years?
How do you let go of meticulously planning every aspect of your life, and finally admit that it is not ‘deep thinking’ or ‘preparedness’, but just overthinking and overcontrolling designed to make you feel artificially safe?
Send this to one person in your life who is currently burning out trying to meet everyone else’s expectations. They might need the reminder that it is finally time to find their own true north.
3 Pillars
I do not have a magical, woo-woo answer for this. I am practical and pragmatic by nature. To properly orient your compass and find your true north, you simply need to understand four things:
If you are just starting your life realignment, or even just thinking about it, you know that you are about to enter a process of small experiments: trying, testing, questioning, and changing things. You need a solid framework to guide you. You need a compass.
In this article, I want to tackle values. In the next ones, we will cover the remaining pillars.
What are values? (And what not to confuse them with)
For many of us, the word ‘values’ sounds like a massive, intimidating philosophical concept. It feels too big and lofty to apply to everyday life, so we simply avoid the topic. But values are not empty slogans from motivational posters. They are your deepest, internal operating system.
Before we start looking for them, we need to clearly separate values from other mechanisms we often confuse them with. This is a crucial step in the process:
Values: The things that are absolutely most important to you; the fundamental principles that give direction to your life.
Beliefs: What you hold to be true about the world and yourself (e.g., “the world is dangerous” or “hard work always pays off”). Beliefs can change based on your experiences; values are much more stable.
Habits: Your autopilot. The things you do routinely, often without thinking, to make daily functioning easier.
Conditioning: The rules imprinted on you during a certain period, for example, childhood. These are the societal expectations and rules about how a “good girl” or an “ideal employee” should behave. This conditioning is exactly what forces us to constantly put on a mask.
There is probably nothing simpler, yet simultaneously more unbearably difficult, than defining your own values.
Why is that? Because we spend our early lives and careers adopting the values of our parents, our mentors, or our colleagues. We enter adulthood wearing other people’s filters.
By mid-career, we often cannot tell the difference between the values we borrowed and the ones we actually own.
We start confusing what society tells us we should value (like agreeableness, constant availability, or prestige) with what actually defines our true selves.
To make matters worse, what we valued at 15 is usually drastically different from what drives us in midlife. The issue is that we are still trying to use our old values (the borrowed ones, the ones imprinted) for an entirely new phase of life. No wonder we feel a massive disconnect and exhaustion.
Values as filters for daily decisions
I really love Brené Brown’s pragmatic approach to this topic. She believes that values are, in reality, just filters through which you process your daily decisions, both the massive ones and the tiny ones.
A great test to verify if something is truly your core value comes down to three questions she proposed:
Does this define me?
Is this who I am at my best?
Is this a filter that I use to make hard decisions?
If you want to discover your values, start by looking at a comprehensive list. You can find a wonderful, free list prepared by Brené Brown here.
Read through the whole thing and simply write down the ones you feel any connection to. Do not worry about how many you select at first.
Then, look at your list again. Think deeply about the true meaning of each word. For example: openness and curiosity might sound similar, but they carry a completely different weight. Openness is more reactive. It assumes that when something comes your way, you will receive it with an open mind. Curiosity, on the other hand, is proactive. It means you are actively searching, questioning, and exploring. Understanding these nuances will help you discard the words that are not 100% yours.
Brené suggests narrowing it down to just two core values. That was too hard for me, so I focused on three.
The Trap
When you are narrowing your list down to those top 2 or 3 words, you might run into a practical problem.
Let’s say curiosity is one of your values, but you also see joy on your list. Yes, you absolutely love pure joy. You cherish those small, precious moments. But is it your compass value? Do you use it to make difficult career decisions?
If you get stuck here, it is worth pausing the values search for a moment to do another highly practical exercise that works beautifully in any process of change. It is called More of / Less of.
Take a blank sheet of paper and divide it in half lengthwise.
Name the first column: What I want more of in my life.
Name the second column: What I want less of in my life.
This is not a question about fundamental values; it is a question about the qualities you want to introduce or limit in your daily life. To quote Jill: to care for yourself in ways that make sense for you.
If it helps, you can ask yourself: What do I want to do, hear, or see more of (or less of)?
Things like joy or peace can easily go into the “More of” column if you do not feel they are your core values. They still can help you shape your everyday life, but they are not the filters to make life decisions.
The Final Definition of Your Values
Once you have your narrowed-down list of values, you can put them to the test and explore them even deeper. Brené Brown also shares a fantastic, free exercise to help validate your values. You can find it here.
Once you finally name your 2 or 3 core values, keep them somewhere where you can see them on a daily basis.
Stick them to your monitor, write them in your notebook, or set them as your phone wallpaper. Let them serve as your daily test and reminder.
They are the true north of your internal compass.
In the next article, we will focus on risk levels, boundaries, and strengths.
I am wondering: do you already know your values, or did you realize that this is something you need to rethink?
If you enjoyed this, check out some of my other Life Realignment for Introverts articles:
Introverted Women:
Introvert Life Realignment:
Ania, thank you so much again for sharing my publication and creating this series about building an internal compass. This is SO much what I need right now and I will be doing this work in real time. I'm excited to see where I come to at the end. I have so much gratitude for connecting with you and this publication here. This is why I love Substack!
Thank you for writing this- it resonated.. and practical too. For those of us that are extroverts- for me- I’m finding myself finding the more introvert side of me inside- and I think you are right- it’s not simply about finding our passion - but that which lays deep within. So much of our values has been shaped- faith, community, family… finding our inner values is difficult through the noise…