It might feel like your values broadly align with everyone around you, particularly your close friends. But your specific combination of values is really quite unique. For each of those close friends, you can probably come up with something that you deeply value but they don’t, or vice versa. That’s not just okay; that’s actually fantastic! If you keep trying to act in better alignment with your values, over time, you will become the best person in the world at embodying your unique set of values.

Your self-worth shouldn’t be based on your usefulness. But if it is, even just a little bit, it can help to imagine “you in 10 years” being the one person in the world most closely aligned with your specific combination of values.