Table of Contents
Are Your Values and Your Job Misaligned? A Guide to Making Better Career and Life Decisions.
Struggling with difficult career choices? Learn how to uncover your core values and use your internal compass to guide your decisions. Find authentic alignment in your work, relationships, and community to build a more purposeful life. Stop letting a misaligned compass guide your biggest life decisions. Continue reading to discover the practical steps for defining your core values and unlocking your true personal and professional potential.
Genres
Motivation, Inspiration, Personal Development
Build a life guided by your own internal moral compass.
The Compass Within (2025) follows Jamie Hynes, a fictional manager on a journey to uncover his core values. His search reveals how deeply values shape decisions in three essential aspects of life – relationships, career, and community – and how misalignment across these areas can jeopardize lasting success and happiness. Through Jamie’s story, we’re invited to reflect on our own values and use them as a compass for building a purposeful and fulfilling life.
We all aspire to live as our most authentic selves – in our work, our relationships, and our communities. Yet, so often, we feel a tension, a subtle but persistent disconnect between who we truly are and the person the world seems to expect us to be. You may recognize it as that nagging discomfort when a superior asks you to do something that doesn’t sit right, even if you can’t articulate why. That feeling is your internal compass at work, a signal that certain actions are out of sync with your deepest values.
My name is Robert Glazer, and I wanted to share this summary of my book The Compass Within with you personally. Because after years of trial and error, I believe I’ve created a definitive system for solving this problem of compass misalignment. It works by uncovering the hidden drives and motivations at our core, the very forces that lead us to our deepest fulfillment or, at times, our greatest pain.
Whether we realize it or not, each of us has an internal compass that quietly guides our behavior and shapes the decisions we make – from where we choose to live, to how we build our careers, to the people we share our lives with. Learning to clarify the messages of this inner compass is one of the most powerful ways I know to find answers to life’s biggest questions.
I even divide my own life into “before” and “after” discovering the importance of identifying this compass. Early in my career, I achieved a modest degree of success. But only later did I uncover a truly transformational leadership style – one that felt authentic, uniquely mine, and allowed me to clearly communicate what mattered most to me and why. With that clarity, I was able to make better decisions for myself, my family, and my career. By finally learning to read my own internal compass, I unlocked my personal and professional potential for the very first time.
This summary is about learning to do the same. To explore how, we’ll step into the world of Jamie Hynes, a talented and ambitious young manager at a top communications firm. By all outward measures, Jamie is thriving: he’s climbed the ladder quickly and earned a six-figure salary ahead of schedule. But beneath the surface, frustration is mounting and his compass is spinning out of control. Let’s meet Jamie.
The disconnect
The frustration building inside Jamie Hynes finally boiled over on a dreary January day. He’d just walked out of his six-month performance review with his boss, Matt Embers. The conversation replayed over and over in his mind, leaving him in a sour mood. The problem hadn’t been his performance numbers – those were good, and his bonus was secure. What unsettled him, he was beginning to realize, was that Matt didn’t want him to simply improve his work; he wanted Jamie to change who he was at his very core.
The meeting had been a series of clashes over his judgment, but one exchange in particular left him feeling like he was about to explode. Matt had brought up Jessica Sherman, a top-performing manager on Jamie’s team. Months earlier, Jessica had trusted Jamie enough to tell him she’d been accepted to business school – and that she planned to attend in the fall. She asked if she could stay through June, giving the team months of notice. Jamie had kept her on, appreciating her honesty.
But Matt saw this as a massive mistake.
“We really don’t want people on our team who aren’t 100 percent on board with us,” Matt explained coolly. “You should have let her go immediately. In my experience, people almost always start to lose focus when they’ve got one foot out the door.”
Jamie couldn’t hold back his frustration. “I don’t understand what that accomplishes, Matt” he protested. “Jessica is going back to school, not to a competitor. She really stuck her neck out being honest about her plans, and for that, I should show her the door?”
But Matt didn’t budge. “If she doesn’t want to be here, she shouldn’t be here. You made the wrong call keeping her on. It sends the wrong message to the team.”
The conversation was now over – thank God – but Jamie was left reeling. It seemed that from then on, he was being forced to punish trust, and penalize transparency.
Later, as he frustratedly walked through the firm’s lobby, he glanced up at the wall he’d passed countless times. There it was, painted in large, ornate red letters – the Jones Core Values. “Integrity, Win as a Team, Clients First.” He scoffed audibly. Integrity? After he’d just been told to betray an employee’s trust? It was laughable. And “Win as a Team?” How could he do so when required to discard valuable team members, just for being honest?
It all reeked of hypocrisy, to say the least. But, at this moment, something also clicked with Jamie. He realized that he couldn’t continue down a path that required him to ignore his own compass. So, it was on this same frustrating day that he began searching for a new way to live and work – one that was authentically his own.
Taking the first step
That evening, Jamie got in touch with his colleague Chloe. She’d recently gone through a core values exercise at her company that helped her articulate what mattered most. Desperate for clarity about his own internal compass, Jamie texted her: “Hey Chloe, can you chat? Did not go well today.”
After they spoke, Chloe did something Jamie didn’t expect – she connected him with her CEO, Jack Reardon. He’d developed the values process at his company, Compass Media.
That very weekend, Jamie found himself at Victoria’s Diner in Arlington. As he entered, Jack stood to shake his hand. “How can I help?” Jack asked as their coffees arrived.
Jamie was silent for a moment. “Over the past year, I’ve had a few experiences in my life and work where I’ve felt out of place. Things that have just felt misaligned. I haven’t been able to totally put my finger on why or how.”
Jack remained attentive and did not interrupt. His facial expressions seemed to say, “Go on.” Then he leaned forward. “Jamie, how would you define a core value?”
“Something you believe in strongly?”
“Close, yes. But I think there is an important distinction. A core value is not just something you believe. A belief can be aspirational without being true. A core value is deeper than a belief. It’s something that captures who you are at your core and what you do. It’s a constant for you, not really a conscious choice.”
Jack studied Jamie’s face carefully. “Can you remember the last time you were asked to do something that would damage someone’s trust?”
Jamie’s mind flew instantly to his recent performance review with Matt Embers. His hands clenched slightly.
“Work situation?” Jack observed.
“Yes,” Jamie confessed, and proceeded to explain what had happened.
“I get it,” said Jack. “That is certainly not the way I would want my employees to handle that situation.” Then he slid a piece of Compass Media stationery across the table with questions handwritten swiftly but neatly. “Here’s what I would like you to do. When you have a few hours of quiet time, take out five pieces of paper, and write down responses to these questions. Don’t worry about the form of your answers; they can be sentences, bulleted lists, words, anything. Just get as much as you can put onto each piece of paper. Don’t censor yourself. It’s important that you be as honest and raw as possible.”
The other side of the coin
Later that day, Jamie sat down at his desk and pulled out a few pieces of paper as Jack had instructed – and began to write out his answers.
For the first question, about nonwork environments where he had been highly engaged, his answer was clear: he loves mentoring youth from less privileged backgrounds and particularly enjoys it when they trust him enough to open up and share their full stories.
To the second question, on professional roles where he’d done his best work, he wrote that it was when he is trusted to manage and cultivate client relationships.
For the third question, on what help or qualities people regularly come to him for, he noted that friends come to him when they are in a new relationship and that he helps colleagues at Jones build rapport and trust with client contacts.
And for number four, asking when he was disengaged, he wrote that it was when Matt Embers questions his judgment and meddles in his client relationships, and when he is told to do something he doesn’t believe in.
Finally, question five: “what qualities in other people do you especially struggle with?” His answer? That he struggles with people who are inconsistent and unreliable – and can’t stand people who are deceitful or opportunistic.
Jack had also given him one more extra credit question to ponder: “Think back to when you were a kid. Was there something in your life, a specific moment, when you were entrusted to take responsibility for something or someone that was important, and you failed in your responsibility?”
This brought him to a recurring nightmare that he had been having for years. It was always the same – a flashback to when Jamie was thirteen. His dad had taken him and his eight-year-old sister, Rachel, to the county fair. He’d then been told to not let his sister out of his sight.
But Jamie became distracted by a nearby game. And then, with horror, he realized his sister suddenly wasn’t there. Even replaying the moment in a dream more than a decade and a half later, he always felt the exact same surge of panic that had hit him the moment he realized Rachel wasn’t standing next to him anymore. What stayed with Jamie – and reappeared vividly in his nightmares – was the look of fear and disappointment that Jamie had never seen before or since on his dad’s face.
So, as he looked again at Jack’s bonus question, which he’d written down and circled for emphasis, Jamie suddenly felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He knew instinctively that this nightmare was the answer to the question.
Connecting the dots
The next time Jamie met with Jack, it was in his office at Compass Media. After Jamie shared the story of the nightmare, Jack connected the dots. “Jamie,” Jack began, “I could tell from our first conversation that trust is incredibly important to you. It comes up in a lot of your stories and seems to strongly inform how you interact with the world. Such a strong principle often ties back to a resonant childhood event or experience.”
He went on to explain how that single moment had shaped Jamie’s entire life. “I think that when you let your sister out of sight at the carnival, you felt strongly that you had betrayed your dad’s trust, which was extremely painful for you,” Jack explained. “That pain has stayed with you, and it’s become a driving force in who you’ve become as an adult.”
Listening to these words, Jamie felt as though he were in the middle of a therapy session. For a moment, he was back at the fair, looking into his dad’s disappointed face – and knowing he had let him down. The recollection was so strong, he felt a lump starting to well up in his eye.
Jack put a hand gently on his shoulder. “I once had an executive coach tell me that our greatest gifts lie next to our deepest wounds,” he said. “I’ll give you an example. A good friend of mine – a child of a single parent who worked long hours at two jobs to sustain the family – spent a lot of time alone as a kid. As you might expect, that loneliness made for some very difficult childhood experiences.”
He explained that his friend, far from being resentful, was extremely grateful for her parent’s sacrifices, but that didn’t change the fact that she was lonely. “She went on to start an award-winning after-school program that operates in hundreds of schools today,” Jack finished, “essentially providing for others what she needed most as a child. This is an example of someone achieving powerful alignment with their core purpose and using a formative childhood experience to fuel a fulfilling career aligned with their values.”
It was then that Jamie finally understood that his commitment to trust was in fact a gift – one that had grown from his most painful childhood memory.
The Core Validator
Identifying a theme like “trust” is the breakthrough moment. But a raw theme isn’t enough. Core values aren’t just aspirational traits, nor are they marketing slogans aimed at presenting you in the best possible light. When identified correctly, they describe who you are – and likely who you have always been. Therefore, articulating them is a process of discovery. And to be useful, a value must be specific enough to serve as a powerful decision-making tool.
To help Jamie forge his themes into such tools, Jack introduced him to a final concept called the Core Validator. He explained that this was the most important step in making sure the values were unique and accessible. “Essentially,” Jack said, “the Core Validator asks four questions of each proposed value.
First: Can you use the core value to make a decision?
Second: Does the opposite of the core value cause discomfort if you think about it?
Third: Is the core value a phrase rather than a single word?
And fourth: Can you objectively rate yourself against the core value?”
Before using the validator, Jack first instructed Jamie to copy his homework answers onto a large whiteboard. Once everything was copied, Jack stood up and joined him. He then explained the next step: to review the lists and group together the keywords that came up repeatedly into themes. This, Jack said, would help them identify some of the themes of his core values.
With the themes now on the board, Jamie dove into the work, using the validator to test them. He looked at the word “integrity” on the whiteboard. When Jack asked him what that word specifically meant to him, Jamie realized his answer was all about trust. “Integrity, for me at least, is that other people can count on me,” Jamie said. “They know that I’m not going to be self-interested. I’m always out to prove that people can trust me.”
Jack explained that words like “integrity” often fail this test because they have too many interpretations. To guide your actions, values need to be very specific. With an X, Jamie crossed integrity off the list, knowing “trust” was the more foundational theme. After hours of refining, he had his final, definitive list of four core values, ranked in order of importance: relationships built on trust, self-reliance, including all perspectives, and long-term orientation.
At Jack’s recommendation, Jamie assigned an icon to each value, printed them out on a laminated piece of paper, and placed the list on the desk of his home office for easy reference. And just like that, he now had a concrete compass he could use every single day.
How to live an aligned life
So, why does this work? What’s the ultimate goal? Well, by having clarity on your values, you’re prepared to face life’s most significant crossroads with confidence and integrity. These are the decisions I refer to as the ‘big three’. The first is your partner: whom you choose as a spouse or life partner. The second is your vocation: your chosen career or place of work. And the third is, of course, your community: where you choose to live and the people with whom you surround yourself. In my experience, if these big three decisions are not aligned with your core values, they turn out poorly.
Jamie’s story shows you exactly how this works. Once he had his values clearly defined, he was able to bring alignment to all three areas. First, his vocation. In a final meeting with his boss, Matt, he was again asked to make a decision that was not in the best interest of the client. This time, armed with his values, Jamie was able to say with complete conviction, “What you are asking me to do is wrong. I am done making decisions that go against my values. If that’s your final decision, you can tell the client yourself, because I resign, effective today.”
The process also transformed his personal life, starting with his partner. That night, he and his fiancée, Beth, had the deepest conversation of their lives. When he finished explaining his decision to resign, she told him the words that meant everything: “I trust you, and you are right. We will figure it out. We always do.”
Finally, they addressed their community. They both decided that Westville, for all its perks, was not where they wanted to raise a family. Shortly after they were married, they purchased a house in Arlington, and as they settled in, they knew immediately that they’d made the right choice.
Now, I would be remiss if I did not warn you that living in alignment with your values is not always easy or painless. Sometimes it requires making difficult decisions that come with a real financial or emotional price tag in the short term. This short-term pain, however, is almost always a smaller price to pay than continuing down the wrong path. We all start life without an instruction manual or a compass, but this does not mean we have to continue navigating without one. The process you’ve just learned is your guide. What comes next is entirely up to you.
Conclusion
In this summary to my book, The Compass Within, you’ve learned that your core values are your most important nonnegotiable principles. When you feel that nagging sense in your gut that something isn’t right, it’s often a signal that you’re acting against one of those deeply held values.
Jamie discovered this truth while working with Jack and answering behavior-based questions designed to uncover recurring themes across both his personal and professional life. Again and again, the theme of trust appeared. He traced it back to a childhood incident when he briefly lost sight of his sister at a fair – a moment that left a lasting imprint. From then on, Jamie recognized trust as his most important value, a principle that defined him at his core. He resolved never again to make decisions that violated this or any of his other values.
Along the way, he also came to understand that without alignment across partner, vocation, and community, real success and lasting happiness are nearly impossible. Yes, making a big life change is often painful, but it’s almost always a smaller price to pay than continuing down the wrong path.