Check action against stated values — the alignment review
Once a week, compare your stated values to your actual choices and name the gap honestly.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Once a week, compare your stated values to your actual choices and name the gap honestly.
- Why it works: Most people have a gap between espoused values and enacted values — what they say matters and what their behavior reveals matters. The alignment review closes neither gap by magic but makes it visible, which is the necessary first step. Cognitive dissonance between stated and acted values is a motivational force, but only if the discrepancy is acknowledged rather than explained away.
- Evidence: Established clinical or therapeutic practice.
- Avoid: Choosing abstract values that are too diffuse to evaluate ("I value love") rather than actionable ones ("I value honest communication with the people I care about").
Why it works
Most people have a gap between espoused values and enacted values — what they say matters and what their behavior reveals matters. The alignment review closes neither gap by magic but makes it visible, which is the necessary first step. Cognitive dissonance between stated and acted values is a motivational force, but only if the discrepancy is acknowledged rather than explained away.
How to do it
- 1Once a week, write three values you say you hold most central.
- 2Review the past week’s behavior: give each value a letter grade based on what your actions actually showed.
- 3For any value graded C or below, identify the single moment this week that most clearly showed the gap.
- 4Ask: was this a momentary failure or a systematic pattern? Name which.
What the evidence says
Clinical practiceValues clarification exercises in ACT and narrative therapy improve goal coherence and psychological flexibility; research on the value-action gap (Ariely, behavioral economics) shows that making the gap visible is the first condition of closing it.
Honest caveat: Clinical support is for values clarification generally; the specific letter-grading alignment review format is a practical design, not a tested protocol.
Common mistake
Choosing abstract values that are too diffuse to evaluate ("I value love") rather than actionable ones ("I value honest communication with the people I care about").
IX Coach holds your stated values as a reference across sessions and surfaces the alignment question when your choices begin to diverge from them — before the drift compounds.
Practice this with IX Coach →