Dr John Demartini Values Determination Worksheet

Most people do this exercise wrong and wonder why it doesn't change anything

The Dr John Demartini Values Determination Worksheet isn't magic. It's a structured self-reflection tool that forces you to confront which values actually drive your behavior versus the ones you claim to hold. I've watched people go through this process in workshops and coaching sessions, and the results are usually either brutally honest or completely useless depending on how seriously they take it. The mechanic is simple enough on the surface but trips people up in practice. The core technique behind the worksheet comes from Demartini's values clarification framework. You list your top values, then identify the specific life areas where each value shows up positively and negatively. The worksheet structure has you fill in two columns for each value—one showing how it serves you and another showing where it creates problems. This forces you to see that every value has a shadow side, which is the part most people skip over because it feels uncomfortable. The worksheet itself typically contains a table with columns for the value, the positive expression, the negative expression, and the life area. You start by ranking maybe ten values by priority. Then for each one, you write down real examples from your actual life, not aspirational ones. People mess this up constantly by writing what they wish were true rather than what actually happens. I had someone once put down "integrity" as a top value and then list three examples that were clearly fictional. When I asked them to date-stamp each example, they couldn't.

After filling in the columns, the next step is identifying the correlation between what you value and how you behave. The worksheet asks you to look at the pattern across all entries. Do the negative expressions cluster around certain people, situations, or time periods? That clustering tells you more about your actual operating values than the ranked list ever would. The worksheet then guides you to assign a numerical priority to each value and calculate a weighted score across life areas. This number is supposed to reveal your true hierarchy of motivation, which often contradicts what you told me you valued at the start. I ran into a specific problem recently with a client who had been doing personality assessments for years but kept making the same relationship choices. The values worksheet revealed her top three values were "loyalty," "harmony," and "security." When we filled in the negative expression column, every single one of those values showed up as chronic people-pleasing and inability to set boundaries. The numerical priority score confirmed it: her stated values perfectly predicted her self-sabotaging behavior. She could have seen this in thirty seconds if she'd done the worksheet honestly instead of spending four years in therapy circles that never asked her to write anything down. The download link situation is messy. Demartini sells this as part of his programs, and there are various PDF versions floating around from different sources. Some are the actual worksheet, some are adaptations. The one most people need is the standard values determination template with the priority ranking section. If you search for it, you'll find it under Demartini Foundation resources or from certified coaches. I've used several versions over the years and the core structure hasn't changed—just the formatting around it.

Here's something beginners consistently miss. The priority ranking step at the end is where the whole thing either becomes useful or turns into a waste of paper. Most people rank values the way they think they should rank them. Put "family" first because that's what good people say. Put "health" near the top because it sounds responsible. The worksheet's priority scoring is designed to catch this self-deception. When you multiply the value's importance rating by how consistently you express it across life areas, the math doesn't lie. I've never seen someone's calculated priority ranking match their intuitive ranking on the first try. That gap between the two numbers is the actual insight the exercise provides. Another thing nobody mentions about this worksheet is that it works best when you already know roughly what you're looking for. If you walk in completely blind, you'll produce vague entries like "love" or "success" with zero specific examples. The worksheet needs concrete behavioral data to produce useful results. Before you even open the template, spend ten minutes writing down the last five decisions you made that involved real trade-offs. Which value won each one? That inventory gives you the raw material the worksheet needs to function properly. I also encountered an edge case that took me a while to figure out. A client who struggled with emotional articulation couldn't fill out any of the columns. He sat there for twenty minutes unable to name a single value, let alone provide examples. Standard worksheet instructions assume people can introspect and label their motivations, which is not a universal skill. The workaround I used was to flip the exercise: instead of asking him to identify his own values, I had him describe three people he respected and list what he admired about each one. He filled out five pages in eight minutes. Then we mapped those admired traits back onto his own life by asking where he'd expressed similar qualities, even in small ways. Same worksheet structure, just entered through a different doorway. The numerical output was identical to what you'd get from direct introspection, but he actually got results instead of staring at a blank page.

The worksheet has limitations that the marketing materials never address. It assumes a level of self-awareness and honesty that most people don't possess without coaching guidance. It also doesn't account for values that are suppressed or unconscious—things you genuinely don't know you value because you've never examined them. For those cases, the worksheet will just surface whatever you're comfortable admitting to yourself, which is often a filtered version of reality. A values clarification session with a trained professional using this same framework can sometimes get deeper, but the tool itself isn't designed for clinical work. If you're going to use the Dr John Demartini Values Determination Worksheet, don't treat it as a one-time exercise. Fill it out, wait three weeks, then fill it out again. Your entries will shift, sometimes dramatically. The difference between version one and version two is where the actual growth happens. I've seen people complete this in about forty-five minutes with decent focus, though rushing through it defeats the purpose. The worksheet takes less time than most people expect but requires enough honesty to make the time worth it.