Unlock your true self with Life OS! Dive into the core of life management—defining your values. Discover the power of values in decision-making, purpose, relationships, and endurance. Learn how to set it up in Obsidian for a purpose-driven life.

Introduction

Welcome to the first part of the Life OS Series. In this article I'm going to describe the highest level of managing your life, discovering and defining your values.

Let's start with a high level overview of the system:

In this article I will explain the top level in detail. Goals & Milestones, as well as Projects & Tasks will each follow in a separate article.
I'm going to give you some theory first and then explain step-by-step how to set it up in Obsidian as part of the Life OS.

Values

Everything starts with your values, with your Why. Your values define who you are and who you want to be. Everything you do in life must be consistent with your values, otherwise you are not true to yourself. Your values guide every decision you make, every goal you pursue, every action you take. They are the reason to get up in the morning, they are your compass for navigating your world.

Why Values Matter

1. Guiding your Decisions: Your values help you to make choices that are aligned with your true self, they make sure that you stay authentic and consistent in your decision making.
2. Purpose: When you live a life that aligns with your values, you will be happy and give a purpose to your actions.
3. Stronger Relationships: If you have the same values as another person, the relationship will be deeper and stronger as you share a common purpose.
4. Endurance: Having values helps you to get through challenges and persist in difficult times as they always remind you why you are doing it.

How to Discover Your Values

Below are some methods/questions that you can use to discover what your values are.

• Asking Others: Ask close friends or family members what they see as your values.
• Meaningful Moments: Think about your most important moments in your life, what were you doing and why was it so important to you?
• Painful Moments: In which moments did you feel the most pain? This can reveal values that you can follow to avoid such moments in the future.
• Achievements: Which achievements of your past are you most proud of? Why did you choose this achievements over any other achievements?
• Dream Life: What would your perfect life look like? What would a person that lives that dream do and value?

Values give a meaning to your life.

Obsidian Setup

Prerequisites

First we need to do some preparations in Obsidian.

1. Create the following folder structure:

• 5 Life
  • Values
• 999 Templates

2. Install Minimal Theme (optional)

3. Enable Community Plugins

4. Install following Community Plugins

• Buttons
• Dataview
• QuickAdd
• Templater
• Banners

Values - Dashboard

First we create the dashboard that gives an overview of all our values and a button to add a new value.

Create a file named Values in the folder 5 Life/Values and add the following content:

---
cssClass: cards
banner_icon: 💎
---
###### [[Home]]
###### tags:: #atlas/view👓
# Values Dashboard

```button
name + New Value
type command
action QuickAdd: Add Value
```
```dataview
TABLE WITHOUT ID
	banner,
	file.link,
	why AS "Why"
FROM #life/value AND !"999 Templates"
``` 

Values - Template

Next we create a template to be used for any value we add to the system.

Each value will then contain a description - a Why - for this value and all goals that are linked to this value (covered in the next blog post).

Create a file named Value Template in the folder 999 Templates and add the following content:

---
banner: "![[goals-banner.jpg]]"
banner_icon: 💎
---
###### [[Values]]
###### tags:: #life/value
# {{title}}

Why:: 

## 🎯 Related Goals
```dataview
TABLE WITHOUT ID
	file.link as "🎯 Goal",
	choice(completeddate = "In Progress", "🏗️", "✅") AS "✅ Completed",
	dateformat(deadline,"d MMMM, yyyy") AS "📅 Deadline"
FROM #life/goal AND "5 Life"
WHERE value = [[<% tp.file.title %>]]
SORT complete DESC, deadline ASC
```

Values - Quick Add Button

Next we configure a function with the QuickAdd plugin. This function will be called from the button in the dashboard and will use the template defined above to create a new value.

Now you can click on the button in the values dashboard, add a name for the value and a new note will be created in the values folder based on the template we created.

Stay Tuned

Coming Next is the article about my goals/milestones system.