unless prompted, have to specifically articulate what their values are– but doing so can be a very useful exercise. For those of you with teaching experience, it’s a little like the understanding of a scientific topic you gain when you’re required to explain it to someone else, where putting words and specificity to something can bring clarity, or highlight areas that need to be clarified.

Write a Mission Statement
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Identifying and articulating your values is a process, but one can use that process to create a helpful beacon: the mission statement. We usually encounter mission statements in the context of organizations– for example, here’s the Adler’s:

> [*The mission of the Adler Planetarium is to inspire exploration and understanding of our Universe.*]{}

And here is that of the Library of Congress:

> [*The Library of Congress’s mission is to support Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties, and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people.*]{}

Since we are used to hearing about mission statements in the context of institutions, it might sound weird for you to have one, just for you– but it’s really nothing more than taking a close look at 