This is Part IV of a five-part series on personal values. In Part I, we explored what values are and why they matter. In Part II, you worked through exercises to surface your authentic values. In Part III, you built a hierarchy by ranking them against each other. Here, we ask the next uncomfortable question: are the values you’ve identified actually any good for you?

You’ve done the hard part. You’ve named your values. Maybe you’ve even ranked them.

But naming something doesn’t make it good for you. A person can be deeply committed to “always being right,” to “never showing weakness,” or to “earning more than everyone else.” Those are values. They’re just not particularly healthy ones.

So once you know what you value, a harder question follows: are these values actually working for you? Not just as ideals on paper — but as a lived system that shapes how you feel, how you treat people, and who you’re becoming.

We can all agree that honesty beats deception and compassion wins over cruelty. But the line between a value that fuels growth and one that quietly keeps you stuck isn’t always obvious. Here’s the essential test: a value is only “good” if it supports your psychological well-being.

Values and Happiness

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle made a distinction between two kinds of happiness:

• Hedonia – The happiness that feels good. Pleasure, comfort, a cold drink on a hot day. It’s real, but fleeting—rooted in dopamine hits and short-term rewards that vanish as quickly as they arrive.
• Eudaimonia – The happiness that is good. Meaning, purpose, fulfilment and the quiet pride that comes after doing the hard thing. It’s the peace of living with integrity, even when it costs you something.

Modern psychology backs this up: long-term well-being depends far more on meaning than on momentary pleasure. Eudaimonia often means sacrificing a lower value in service of a higher one: choosing integrity over comfort, or long-term growth over instant gratification.

This doesn’t mean you should abandon pleasure. It means you get to decide the balance.

Ask yourself: What does my ideal blend of pleasure and meaning look like? What’s one short-term pleasure I could trade today for deeper satisfaction tomorrow?

That distinction — between what feels good and what actually is good — gives us a useful lens. But it’s still abstract. So let’s get more specific about what “well-being” actually looks like in practice.

The 6 Markers of a Healthy Value

Psychologist Carol Ryff identified 6 core dimensions of healthy, sustainable well-being. If a value helps you grow in these areas, it’s serving you. If it doesn’t, it may be quietly holding you back.

1. Autonomy – Do your values help you think for yourself, or just keep you chasing approval?
2. Environmental Mastery – Do they help you take charge of your circumstances, or leave you stuck and overwhelmed?
3. Personal Growth – Do they challenge you to evolve, or keep you comfortable and stagnant?
4. Positive Relationships – Do they make you better at real, mutual connection, or do they isolate and harden you?
5. Purpose in Life – Do they give you direction, or are you just floating through your days?
6. Self-Acceptance – Do they help you own who you are, or make you feel like you’re never enough?

A healthy value doesn’t just feel good temporarily. It makes you more grounded, resilient, and effective. A poor value can sound virtuous—like “perfectionism” or “always being strong”—but if it stops you from having hard conversations, taking risks, or accepting your limitations, it’s working against you.

Try this: Write down these six markers. Beside each, rank your current satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. Be honest. This gives you a clear reading of where your lived values might be falling short.

Once you can see which dimensions are thriving and which are suffering, the next step is understanding why — and that usually comes down to which level of values is actually running your life.

The Quality of Your Values

You already have a value hierarchy—an internal ranking of what matters most. But it doesn’t tell you whether those values are actually worth valuing. Not all values are created equal.

Lower values tend to be externally dependent and emotionally reactive: always being right, never failing, looking good, avoiding discomfort, or chasing arbitrary success metrics. They depend on external factors you can’t fully control. They also tend to center primarily on the self. Things like personal health, freedom, or comfort matter deeply, but they become limiting when pursued in isolation.

Higher values are reality-based, socially constructive, and immediately within your control: responsibility, integrity, honesty, resilience. They’re timeless principles you can pursue in any context, not temporary achievements that fade. They serve a purpose beyond self-interest and connect you to something larger: easing the suffering of others, building community, or contributing to a cause that will outlast you.

Here’s the catch: we naturally default to lower values because they’re easier and more immediately rewarding. Choosing higher values requires conscious effort. In many ways, living well is the ongoing practice of sacrificing a lower value for a higher one.

The work isn’t about being perfect. It’s about closing the gap between the values you hold and the life you actually live.

So here’s where this journey has taken you so far. you know what values are. You’ve surfaced your own. You’ve ranked them. And now you have a framework for asking whether they’re actually serving you — or quietly working against you.

That last question is the one most people never ask. They assume that because something feels like a value, it must be worth living by. But perfectionism feels principled. Avoidance feels like patience. Always being the strong one feels like loyalty. The feeling isn’t the test. The test is what the value produces over time: in your relationships, your resilience, your sense of who you are.

So the question to sit with: Is there one value you’re currently living by that, if you’re honest, isn’t passing Ryff’s test? What would it look like to quietly let it go — or replace it with something truer?

This article was adapted from “Your Values Guide” by Mark Manson.