I have a complicated relationship with alarm clocks.
Back in 1990, I had my first 9-to-5 job…a conference coordinator at UBC.
I loved it.
Great coworkers, a gorgeous campus, a ten-minute drive along the beach through a tree-lined neighbourhood.
But every single morning, when the alarm went off at the same ungodly hour, something in me said hell no.
I didn’t have the language for it back then. But that daily resistance was telling me something real — something about what I actually needed, and what I wasn’t willing to accept forever.
That’s often how we start to identify our personal values.
Not just from a list of aspirational words. But from the moments our body keeps quietly fighting back.
Your values aren’t always where you think they are
We tend to look for our values in the big, obvious places: a meaningful career, an important relationship, a life that looks right from the outside.
But in my experience as a life transitions coach for women, values show up most clearly in friction. In the low-grade resistance. In the thing you’ve learned to accept but never actually wanted.
Fast forward fifteen years from that first job.
I was a single mom with a long commute downtown.
More alarms. More mornings waking up before my body was ready. It became a low, painful hum underneath everything.
(Because you have to set an alarm. That’s just what responsible adults do, right?)
The alarm wasn’t the problem, of course. It was the symbol.
It represented a way of living that didn’t fit who I was, and what I valued most.
What your resistance is actually telling you
In 2017, I left the 9-to-5 world to start my own business.
Slowly, quietly, I stopped setting an alarm.
It didn’t happen overnight. I had to retrain my brain. Unlearn the habit.
Give myself real permission to let my body wake up when it was ready. And trust that starting my day slowly wasn’t lazy or irresponsible.
It was just...me.
Almost ten years later, I wake up whenever I wake up. Some mornings I linger. Some mornings I’m up and ready.
My body decides.
And it feels like I’m finally living in line with something that was always true about me.
(My 1990 self thanks me every single day!)
Here’s the thing about that story: the alarm clock was never really about the alarm clock.
It was about freedom and ease.
Those are two of my top values. And my body knew it long before I had the words.
That’s how this tends to work.
Your values live in the moments you keep bumping up against. In the things you’ve quietly accepted but never stopped resisting.
How to start to identify your personal values
You don’t need to overhaul your life to figure out what matters to you. You just need to pay attention to a few specific things.
Here’s where to start:
Notice what you keep resisting.
What’s the thing your body says no to, even while your brain says “this is just how it is”? That resistance is information. Not a character flaw, not ingratitude. It’s your internal compass doing its job.
Ask what’s missing when you feel flat.
When you say yes to something and immediately feel nothing, or you make a decision that looks right and still feel unsettled → something isn’t being honoured. And that something is usually a value.
Look at what you quietly protect.
When no one’s watching, when there’s nothing to justify to anyone — what do you make space for anyway? That’s almost always a value speaking.
These questions work because they bypass the aspirational layer — the values you think you should have — and get to the ones that are genuinely, honestly yours.
Why identifying your values actually changes things
Knowing how to identify your personal values isn’t just a nice self-awareness exercise. It’s practical.
When you’re living in line with what matters to you, life feels right. Even when it’s hard.
When you’re not, something feels off. Not dramatically. Just a low-grade flatness that’s been there for a while.
That feeling isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a signal to follow.
The women I work with as a life transitions coach often arrive feeling disconnected from themselves — not sure what they want, not sure who they are underneath all their roles and responsibilities.
Getting clear on their values is often one of the first things we do.
Not because it fixes everything, but because it gives them something to navigate by.
You can’t make good decisions without knowing what matters to you. And you can’t trust yourself without knowing what you actually think.
A place to start right now
Sometimes it takes decades to give yourself permission to live by your own values.
And sometimes, it just takes an afternoon and the right kind of questions.
If you’re ready to start, I created a free guide called What Do I Actually Want?
It walks you through three reflection questions, a values list, and a simple process for narrowing it all down to what’s genuinely yours.
Not what looks right on paper, not what you think you should want. But what’s actually yours.
Download the free guide here →
Your 1990 self is rooting for you.
Kerry xo