Within this technique, I use values to describe what is operating in someone’s life: the priorities being expressed and reinforced through their choices, their responses and the emotional experiences they repeatedly organise themselves around. That includes priorities they may never consciously have chosen.

This is a particular use of the word, and it matters that we understand it before going further. If I ask someone what they value, they might tell me adventure, intimacy or self-respect. Those words tell us something about how they see themselves, or how they would like to live. I then want to explore where those values have a presence in their actual experience.

These questions open a conversation about the relationship between what we name and what we live.

Someone may discover that certainty has considerably more influence over their decisions than adventure does. Another person may sincerely desire intimacy while arranging their relationships around keeping difficult feelings private. There is nothing useful about shaming either person for that discovery. We have begun to see what the inquiry needs to include.

A desired experience is something we want to move towards. A lived value has evidence in how we relate to ourselves and participate in our lives.

The distinction can be confronting because most of us would prefer to describe ourselves through our intentions.

We cannot look at someone’s circumstances and assume we know what they value. Someone experiencing illness may be profoundly committed to their health. Someone living in a house they dislike may be there because of a separation or a flood, while doing everything available to establish a different home.

There can be a considerable lag between a change in how we relate to ourselves and a change in our circumstances. A person may begin expressing self-respect while their partner continues to dismiss them. We would need to understand their response to that dismissal, the options available to them and the support they need. The partner’s behaviour alone cannot tell us what the person values.

This is why the technique involves a conversation rather than a quick interpretation. We explore what has happened alongside what the person is doing with what has happened. We consider capacity and willingness separately, because someone may want change intensely while having very little capacity available at that moment.

We also become curious about resourcefulness.

Those questions require care. Another person’s success does not establish what should be possible for this person under different conditions. Equally, accepting every account of impossibility without exploring it can leave someone trapped inside a belief they have never had the opportunity to examine.

I use the VIA character strengths survey early in the process as a starting point for conversation. It can help someone recognise qualities they have overlooked, taken for granted or never considered particularly meaningful. Their response to the results is often as useful as the results themselves.

We might explore where they recognise a strength in their life, where they struggle to express it, or why a particular description feels unfamiliar. The survey gives us material to work with and a way of bringing aspects of their experience into conscious awareness.

Strengths and values have different roles in this inquiry. Recognising a capacity for curiosity, for example, does not automatically tell us what takes priority when curiosity brings the person close to something uncomfortable. We still need to explore how they live, and what influences them when there is something at stake.

The process can take around four hours because these distinctions need room. We are separating what the person believes they should value from what they desire, and exploring both alongside what is already operating.

Some answers become clearer only after the person has had time to hear themselves.

Consider a hypothetical person who repeatedly sets aside their needs to preserve a relationship. They say they want to feel important to their partner, yet whenever expressing a need creates tension, they withdraw the request and attend to the other person’s comfort.

Within the language of this technique, self-abandonment is being given priority over self-advocacy. That can be painful to recognise. It does not mean they enjoy being dismissed or have consciously decided that their needs are irrelevant. We need to understand what advocating for themselves seems likely to cost.

Perhaps disagreement threatens their sense of connection. Perhaps they learned early that having needs made them difficult to love. Keeping the relationship undisturbed may feel necessary enough that they repeatedly sacrifice their own experience to preserve it.

As their relationship with themselves changes, we would expect to see self-advocacy begin to have a presence. They may acknowledge discomfort they previously explained away, seek support, or become clearer about what they are willing to participate in. The external outcome might take time.

There is a further distinction worth exploring here. An enormous amount of effort can go into trying to persuade another person to let us matter. From the inside, that effort can feel like standing up for ourselves. Yet we may still be making our worth dependent on receiving their agreement.

The answer may emerge slowly. It can bring grief as well as clarity, particularly when someone begins to recognise that the relationship they have been trying to secure cannot offer what they need.

Towards the end of this inquiry, we can return to the question of what the person wants. We now have a fuller understanding of what has been influencing their choices and what their earlier goals may have been doing for them.

Some goals remain meaningful. Others change considerably. Someone may still want to build a successful business, while recognising that the income figure they borrowed from the coaching community has little to do with the life they want. Another person may discover that their desire for a relationship has been organised around finally proving they are lovable, and begin to consider what mutual care would actually require.

The goal emerges with this understanding included. There is room to consider whether it expresses something they are coming to live, or whether it asks an external achievement to resolve a relationship with themselves that still needs attention.

We continue to pay attention to lived evidence. How is the person responding when their needs arise? What happens when the old protection is activated? Their experience gives us information about where the inner work has taken hold and where more care is needed.

The question I want someone to leave with is one they can keep returning to:

A meaningful goal becomes easier to form when we have allowed ourselves to explore the answer.