Identity crisis? You need to identify your values and beliefs

Clients often say to me, “I don’t know who I am anymore, I feel lost.” This is often when transitioning careers, especially people who are coming back to work after having children, or when you have lost confidence after a dysfunctional relationship ended. You may have lost someone or something that supported your identity, or you have been promoted and are trying to identify, "Who am I trying to be in this new role"? 

Sound familiar?

So, how can coaching help if you feel the same? Firstly, we identify your core or strongest values. 

What are values, and why are they important to your identity? 

Our values often define who we are and what we do, and can be described as personal rules we choose to live by. Your family, environment, social status, ethnicity, religion, spiritual beliefs, social norms and attitudes at school are examples of factors that all helped shape these rules. Values are defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “principles, qualities or entities that are intrinsically valuable or desirable.”

According to Massey, (1979), your values and associated beliefs have developed throughout your life and are embedded in your psyche, whether completely conscious or not, by your early adulthood at around 21 years. You initially imprint from your immediate family age 0-7, then you model these values from age 8-14, then the values are socialised throughout your teens to around age 21. 

The trouble is, most people are only consciously aware of some of them, and may only realise what they are when people do not place the same value they do on their own values, which creates tension. 

Ask yourself, what makes you angry? People being late, not being polite? Usually, these are a sign that someone has overstepped one of your core values and life rules. 

Secondly, we ask, how are you living these values? 

Asking how you live and show up with examples for each of these values, is the key to identifying how much you are living the version of yourself that you truly believe is right. Often in the process, you realise that your original value may not be what you still believe.

OK, you say. I know I really value trust, for example. You may have recently experienced a lack of trust from someone, or been let down and think “Is there no one I can trust”? If you can recognise how you trust others or can learn to regain the ability to trust and identify who is trustworthy in your life, with the help of a coach, this can re-establish this part of your identity. 

The role of beliefs in identity

As mentioned previously, along with values, you also learn beliefs about these values as you develop. You know what a belief is, of course, but do you know why you believe them?

”Beliefs define the relationship between values and their causes, indicators, and consequences. A typical belief statement links a particular value to some other part of our experience.” Dilts, (2017)

For example, you may believe that success only comes from working hard, and you value success, but if you keep working hard and are still not successful by your own definition, you may then believe there is something wrong with you. Your identity does not match the value of success, as you define it. 

Where do beliefs come from? 

Stop and ask yourself if some of your most common beliefs are yours or someone else’s? 

Beliefs come from your experiences, but also from the experiences of other people, and the environment you come from also strongly influences beliefs. These are often handed down to you and presented as “hard facts” For example, from your parents, “You are not as good as your brother”, or your schoolteacher, “You will never amount to anything.”  

Beliefs are your perception of hard facts, based on the experience you had, linked to that value. They will continue to be believed, usually, until proven otherwise. Although some persist, of course, but ultimately it is all about perception. 

Unravelling the golden thread

In coaching, we aim to unravel beliefs that are helpful and those that are not helpful from your core values and identity. Often asking, what is helping you and what is hindering you? 

By getting to the core of what your “golden thread” or “authentic self” is, clients usually find they have a stronger sense of self-identity and self-perception; they know why and how they do things and what beliefs are worthwhile keeping, and those that are no longer serving them. 

How do you work out your core values? 

Coaches will ask you to complete a values elicitation exercise through a variety of different formats, you would then discuss these with the coach after you had identified your top 5-10 values from a list. In each example, you would need to reflect on examples of how you “show up” with that value in real life, and you list them in order of importance. 

It is also useful to revisit them periodically, after this exercise, especially when you have been in a period of transition or change. 

Knowing what put you together in the first place, with all those complex experiences, beliefs, values, and the emotions associated with them, is the first step to identifying the real you. 

Coaching can support you to break this information down and identify your “golden thread of identity” with objectivity and a new perspective. 

References: 

• Massey, M. (1979) The People Puzzle.  Virginia. Reston Publishing Company.
• Dilts, R. (2017)  Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change. CA. Dilts Publishing Group.
• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/values- accessed 28.05.25