After I finished reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits, I began to go through some of the other resources on his website and came across the idea of Integrity Reports. At the end of each year, he reflects on the year that passed and plans for the year to come by asking three questions:

1. What are the core values that drive my life and work?
2. How am I living and working with integrity right now?
3. How can I set a higher standard in the future?

I think the whole exercise in useful, but for today I’ll focus on the Core Values part.

Below are the examples of Core Values that he lists on his site:

Core Values List

• Authenticity
• Achievement
• Adventure
• Authority
• Autonomy
• Balance
• Beauty
• Boldness
• Compassion
• Challenge
• Citizenship
• Community
• Competency
• Contribution
• Creativity
• Curiosity
• Determination
• Fairness
• Faith
• Fame
• Friendships
• Fun
• Growth
• Happiness
• Honesty
• Humor
• Influence
• Inner Harmony
• Justice
• Kindness
• Knowledge
• Leadership
• Learning
• Love
• Loyalty
• Meaningful Work
• Openness
• Optimism
• Peace
• Pleasure
• Poise
• Popularity
• Recognition
• Religion
• Reputation
• Respect
• Responsibility
• Security
• Self-Respect
• Service
• Spirituality
• Stability
• Success
• Status
• Trustworthiness
• Wealth
• Wisdom

Around July or August of last year, I put together a little exercise where I went through the list and tried to pick five on which to focus and reflect. I started by making three columns indicating which ones were important, neutral, or not important in my life. Then I focused on whether I wanted to make them more, equally, or less important in my life (their first derivative if you will), by placing a green up arrow, nothing, or a red down arrow next to each, respectively. In the end, I settled on three that I felt were a high priority already and two that I wanted to increase in priority. My final five were:

• Adventure
• Curiosity
• Knowledge
• Recognition
• Self-Respect

Over the next two months, I journaled about each of these and formed a sort of personal framework of living that I have been trying to integrate. Over the next few days, I’ll go over some of the steps that I took, but unfortunately my journals with the notes are back in Montpellier, so I may need to do a revised version later. In the meantime, if you try this exercise or make your own Integrity Report, I’d love to know what you came up with.