The Everyday Ways My Values Keep Me Steady

Quite early on, I wrote about sitting down and choosing my core values. They aren't fancy or dramatic—they're just me, and they matter to me. But it turns out it’s one thing to write them down on a list, and another thing entirely to remember them when life starts wobbling.

It is wonderfully easy to feel enlightened when you’re sitting on the sofa with a quiet cup of tea, typing neat little bullet points into your tablet. It’s considerably harder when you’re exhausted, overwhelmed, or stuck in a supermarket queue moving at the speed of a Victorian canal boat. In those moments, that neat little document feels about a million miles away.

Lately, I’ve stopped looking for some grand, cinematic expression of these words and just tried noticing the tiny ways they actually show up. Not the polished, inspirational versions fit for an Instagram quote, but the lived-in ones. The messy, quiet, imperfect habits I’m trying to practice, just to keep myself from spiralling before lunchtime.

There are plenty on my list, but depending on the kind of week I'm having, different ones can come to the surface. Given the particular wobbles I’ve been dealing with lately, these are the three I have found myself quietly reaching for (however imperfectly 🥴):

Take compassion, for instance. If you’re anything like me, that word usually conjures up something we give to other people. But the bit I’m trying to work on is the version for myself—not in some grand gesture, just in very tiny, subtle ways.

Like the times when the day doesn’t go to plan and things start to unravel. Normally when I hit that wall, up go the arms and I immediately assume, “Well, it's me. I've done something wrong again.” (Sound familiar? 🤨)

But I’m trying to change that automatic reaction. To see a rough patch as just a blip—a bit of “hey, life happens”—instead of taking it as a personal failure and being so hard on myself.

It’s letting a messy afternoon just be a messy afternoon, without turning it into a lecture in my own head. It's simply trying to soften that inner voice when things aren't going to plan.

Another one on my list is gratefulness. It’s one of those words that gets thrown around a lot, and yes, I know it can certainly sound a bit preachy. And while I do keep a little journal where I scribble things down, that's not quite what I am talking about here. It isn't that five minutes at bedtime when I get out my pen and notebook. No, this is for those tiny reminders that can actually pull me through when things start to go sideways.

And they tend to catch me in much smaller, easily missed ways. A little sigh of relief when I finally get to sit down. An unexpected WhatsApp message that makes me smile. A sudden burst of silly laughter—usually at something daft I’ve just managed to get completely backwards—that cuts right through the noise in my head. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s even that sudden patch of sun breaking through the window on a grey, cloudy day.

And then there's being brave. I don't mean some heroic final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. No, I am talking about those uncomfortable corners of everyday life.

It’s resisting the urge to frantically distract myself when an old worry suddenly pops into my head, but just sitting with it for a couple of minutes instead of trying to outrun it.

It’s clicking send on a message I’d much rather put off. Or telling someone how I’m actually doing, instead of offering that automatic, polite “I’m fine.”

It’s just that quiet moment of thinking: “This feels horribly awkward, but I’m going to see it through anyway.”

I don’t manage any of this perfectly. Most days I completely forget, or only remember about three hours after I’ve already had a minor meltdown. But I am slowly learning that these values don’t need to be big, life-altering things to actually help.

They aren't going to fix everything. But on the days when the wheels feel like they’re coming off, they’re just enough to keep me upright.

And honestly? Right now, that feels like plenty.

It reminds me a bit of sitting in a busy café at that one table where every time you rest your wrist, the whole thing tilts and threatens to slosh coffee straight over the rim of your mug. You don’t need someone to rebuild the furniture or level the floor to sort it out; you just grab an empty sugar sachet or fold a brown napkin into quarters and jam it firmly under the short leg.

It isn’t glamorous. Nobody is ever going to feature it on an interior design board. But suddenly, the table stops rocking, your flat white stays safely in its cup, and you can just sit back and enjoy your coffee. That's all these values really are to me—just little folded napkins wedged under the wobbly bits of the day.

Here are two more posts that are here if you want them: 

The Softness of Progress

The Quiet Checklist in Your Head

Thanks for reading and virtual hugs to you all.