By Brandy DeOrnellas
I want to tell you about a client I worked with who had a great job — on paper.
Good salary. Respected company. A title she had worked hard to earn. But she felt depleted, deflated. Some days she felt miserable. She told herself she just needed better sleep. That everyone feels this way sometimes. That she had nothing to complain about.
Sound familiar?
When we got underneath what was actually happening, the answer wasn’t about the company, or her boss, or even the workload. It was about values. Her work was pulling her toward a life that didn’t fit who she was. And until she could name that, she couldn’t change it.
This is where core values come in. Career clarity doesn’t start with the job description. It starts with knowing what you actually value — and most people skip that step entirely.
What Core Values Are
Core values are the fundamental beliefs and principles that guide our behavior and decisions. They’re the reason some opportunities feel right before you can explain why — and others feel wrong before you can explain that either.
Think about a time you made a choice that felt right, even when it wasn’t the easy one. Or a time something felt deeply wrong even though it looked fine from the outside. That feeling usually has a value underneath it.
For me, when I was practicing law, I kept gravitating toward the moments when I got to sit with someone and actually think through a hard thing with them. Not draft a contract. Not build a case. Just be a thought partner for someone who needed support.
That experience revealed my values — helping, connection, purpose. And their pull kept showing up until I abided.
Why Your Values Matter for Career Decisions
When I work with clients navigating a career transition, clarifying their values is always where we begin. Not because it’s the easiest place to start — it isn’t. But because everything downstream of this work gets cleaner once it’s done. Here’s why.
No. 1 So you stop mistaking goals for direction.
Goals are things you want to achieve. Values are the guiding principles behind why you choose those goals.
Someone might have a goal of earning a promotion. But their values might center on autonomy and creative ownership. If the promotion means more oversight and fewer decisions of their own, they’ll have met their goal and still feel dissatisfied.
That’s not a failure of ambition. That’s a values mismatch.
I see this often. People set career goals based on what looks impressive or what others have told them to want. They hit the goal. They still feel empty. What they needed wasn’t a different goal — they needed to understand what actually matters to them before choosing their next destination. Values are where that understanding starts.
No. 2 So you stop naming strategies as values.
When I ask people to name their values, many of them list things that are actually strategies.
Security, for example. Is security really a value? Or is it a strategy to protect something you care about more — like peace, or stability, or the freedom to make choices without fear?
This matters because if you believe security is your core value, you might choose a path that feels safe but ends up feeling confining. But if you can name what security is protecting, you might discover you can get there a different way — one that actually fits.
Getting beneath the surface words to the actual drivers underneath takes honest examination. It’s some of the most clarifying work I do with clients in career transition — and it can’t be rushed.
No. 3 So your career decisions have a real standard.
Here’s what happens when you try to make a career decision without a clear sense of your values: you spin.
You make a pros and cons list. You ask everyone you know what they think. You spend a Sunday afternoon in online forums trying to figure out whether to take the new job. You still don’t know.
That’s not a lack of information. That’s a missing coordinate.
Once you know your values, decisions become simpler. You have something real to measure your options against. Something internal and specific to you — not borrowed from someone else’s idea of a meaningful career. You stop outsourcing your career decisions to others and start measuring against your own standard.
No. 4 So your patterns start making sense.
Let me share a few ways I’ve seen this play out.
One client kept gravitating toward smaller organizations. Every time she considered a large corporate role, something pulled her back. When we explored her values, connection kept surfacing. She needed to know the people she worked with. She needed to see the impact of her work clearly — not feel like a small piece of a giant machine. That insight told us a great deal about the kinds of environments worth pursuing, and which ones to let go.
Another client felt restless in stable, well-regarded jobs. Always looking for what was next. When we worked through his values, growth and learning emerged as central. He didn’t thrive in places where everything had already been figured out — he came alive where things were still taking shape. Once he understood that, he stopped treating his restlessness as a character flaw and started seeing it as useful data that could guide his career growth.
Values don’t tell you exactly what job to take. But they explain the pull you’ve always felt — and give you the language to act on them.
Your values are not a personality quiz result. They are a decision-making tool — one you’ll use for the rest of your career.
You now know something most people skip. You know that the discomfort you’ve been feeling has a name, that the pull you’ve been following has a reason, and that the career decisions that have felt hard weren’t hard because you were doing something wrong — they were hard because you were navigating without coordinates. Values are the first one.
Career Compass is where you’ll find the rest of your coordinates. You can start at bdeornellas.com/career-compass.
Brandy DeOrnellas is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and former attorney based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with individuals navigating career transitions, career growth, and life design through 1:1 coaching, team coaching, and online courses.
© Life By Design Coaching LLC · bdeornellas.com
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