"I can't keep doing this," Sarah told me in our first session. Successful professional, mother of two, by all external measures thriving. "I value my career. I worked hard to build it. But I also value being present for my kids. Every choice feels like betraying one or the other. I'm paralyzed."

I see this pattern constantly: intelligent people torn apart not by confusion about their values but by clarity. They know exactly what matters to them. The problem? Multiple things matter, and those things compete for limited time, energy, and attention.

The standard therapeutic "clarify your values and live by them" fails here. Sarah's values were crystal clear.

In my previous post introducing the COLA framework (Conjecture, Opinion, Logic, Abstraction), I described how different levels of knowledge operate differently. Values sit at the Opinion level: emotionally held beliefs about what's important, shaped by experience, upbringing, culture, and personal history.

Values are inherently subjective and legitimately plural. Different people hold different values without anyone being wrong. More importantly, the same person holds multiple values that sometimes pull in opposite directions:

Security vs. Freedom, Career vs. Family, Honesty vs. Kindness, Achievement vs. Rest, Individual needs vs. Relationship harmony.

This isn't a bug: It's a feature. Values emerge from different aspects of experience and respond to different genuine goods. You're not confused when they conflict. You're accurately recognizing that life presents real tensions.

The suffering comes from thinking you need to choose one........

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