If you are dissatisfied at work, getting reacquainted with what really matters to you, may take some effort.

“Your values, personality traits, attitudes, and abilities are like the ingredients of a recipe,” says Julie Jansen author of I don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This: A Step-By-Step Guide to Finding Gratifying Work. “Without knowing what they are, you will find it difficult to use these ingredients to help you create nourishing work.”

She suggests several steps:

1) Find a list of common values on the internet by typing “list of values” into a search engine.

2) Narrow the list to your own top ten by asking yourself which ones “you absolutely cannot live without.”

3) Think about your current worklife and decide if these are being expressed in any way.

More on Friday…