The Self That Never Changes
Throughout your life, you have changed in countless ways. You’ve learned new skills, adopted new beliefs, moved through different life stages, and adapted to new circumstances. Your personality has evolved. Your behaviors have shifted. Your preferences have transformed.
Yet beneath all this change, something has remained constant. There is an essential you—a core nature that was present in childhood and remains present today. Abraham Maslow called this the “unchanging real self,” and the Core Values Index is the only assessment designed specifically to characterize and measure it.
Maslow’s Revolutionary Insight
Abraham Maslow, the pioneering psychologist who developed the hierarchy of needs and the concept of self-actualization, made a profound observation about human nature. He proposed that each person possesses an inner self that contains their natural tendencies—their preferred ways of perceiving, feeling, reasoning, deciding, and participating in society.
Most importantly, Maslow asserted that this inner nature is unchanging from childhood until death. While our personalities adapt, our skills develop, and our behaviors modify based on experience and environment, this core self remains stable throughout our entire lives.
Maslow’s key insight was that it is this unique self, this real you, that determines where in the world you fit best. Your unchanging inner nature determines where you can make your highest and best contribution—not the personality you’ve developed, not the skills you’ve acquired, but the essential you that has been present since birth.
The Distinction Between Who You Are and What You Are
The combination of who you are (the unchanging inner self) and what you are (your personality, skills, and talents) determines where you will find work that is fully engaging and fulfilling. Understanding this distinction is essential for finding your place in the world.
What you are can change. You can learn new skills. You can develop new abilities. You can modify your behavior patterns. You can even shift aspects of your personality through conscious effort and experience.
Who you are at the core values level does not change. Your inner preference for power or love, wisdom or knowledge—the fundamental way you are wired to engage with and contribute to the world—remains stable throughout your life. This is your Real Core Values Nature.
The Evidence of Stability
At Taylor Protocols, extensive research has shown that this inner nature is indeed unchanging. Multiple test/retest studies have been performed, typically achieving 94% or greater repeat reliability. The current figure stands at 97.7%—the highest repeat reliability of any assessment.
This high level of consistency can only be achieved in two circumstances: first, if the assessment is accurate; and second, if it is measuring something that is itself very stable. If the CVI were measuring personality, behavior, or mood—all of which fluctuate—the repeat reliability would be much lower, similar to other assessments that achieve 70-75% reliability at best.
The fact that the same person, taking the Core Values Index years apart, receives virtually identical results provides powerful evidence for Maslow’s proposition. There is indeed an unchanging core within each of us, and the CVI successfully measures it.
The Adapted Personality vs. The Real Self
If our core nature is unchanging, why do we sometimes feel so different from who we were as children? The answer lies in the distinction between our Real Core Values Self and our adapted personality.
Throughout our lives, we develop patterns of behavior that represent only a warped version of our Real Core Values Nature. We learn to suppress certain aspects of ourselves that weren’t welcomed. We amplify others that were rewarded. We develop strategies for fitting in, avoiding pain, and getting what we want.
These adaptations are not our true nature—they are modifications layered on top of it. Under stress, when our defenses are down, or in moments of deep authenticity, the Real Core Values Self emerges. This is why people often say things like “I felt like myself for the first time” after making a major life change that aligns with their core nature.
Finding Work That Engages Your Core
When your work aligns with your unchanging inner nature, something remarkable happens. You experience work that puts you in the flow as you perform the tasks required to make your contributions. You work with a sense of purpose. You are fully engaged.
This aligned work puts into service your greatest learning and uses your most important personal talents and skills. In doing this work, you continue to learn important lessons about who you are. Work becomes not just productive but developmental—a vehicle for becoming more fully yourself.
Conversely, when your work conflicts with your core nature, even success feels hollow. You may achieve results, but the effort drains you rather than energizes you. You may develop skills, but they feel like armor rather than expression. This is the experience of many people who have followed career paths based on skills and opportunities rather than core values alignment.
The Four Core Values Within Each Person
The Core Values Index measures four fundamental core values: Builder (Power), Merchant (Love), Innovator (Wisdom), and Banker (Knowledge). Each person possesses all four values in different proportions—this unique combination constitutes your Real Core Values Nature.
Some individuals have almost perfectly equal preference for all four core values. Some individuals show strong capacity for three core values. Others show preference strongly for only one profoundly dominant core value. Your particular combination creates a unique profile that has been stable since birth.
Understanding your profile is not about putting yourself in a box. It’s about recognizing the specific combination of capacities and preferences that make you uniquely equipped to contribute in certain ways. It’s about understanding the lens through which you naturally see the world.
The Spiritual Dimension of Core Values
This information is not about your adapted personality. It is about your basic spiritual nature, your innate identity and deepest tendencies—how and why you choose to experience life, how you are motivated by your very nature to BE in the room, at work, and with the people who participate in your social life.
Each individual is gifted with a unique charge of energy for the purpose of expressing that energy through work, play, music, relationships, and just plain being alive. This is your presence—the specific quality of being that you bring into every situation. The Core Values Index provides one of the clearest windows into understanding this presence.
When we talk about the unchanging inner self, we are talking about something more fundamental than psychology. We are talking about the essential nature of who you are—the particular way you are wired to contribute, connect, and create meaning in the world.
Un-Warping Toward Your Real Self
The goal of working with the Core Values Index is not to change who we are relative to our core values—these appear to be a fixed part of our innate identity. It is not our goal to overcome who we are, but to learn how to be all that we innately are.
Our collective challenge is to un-warp away from our adapted personalities and learn to consciously make choices based upon our Core Values Nature. This means recognizing where our adaptations have taken us away from our authentic expression and gradually returning to alignment with our real self.
Learning to see the gap between our adapted personality and our Real Core Values Nature, and learning how to make more conscious choices about our reactions and behaviors, provides a whole new world of possibilities. This is the personal development purpose and contribution of the Core Values Index.
Accessing Your Unchanging Core
What does it feel like to operate from your Real Core Values Self rather than your adapted personality? People describe it as feeling authentic, energized, and aligned. Decisions feel clear rather than conflicted. Actions flow naturally rather than requiring constant effort. Contributions feel meaningful rather than obligatory.
The path to this experience begins with self-knowledge. What you don’t know about yourself controls your life. If you don’t know who you are at the deepest level, you cannot fully understand how you operate, what motivates you, what work engages you, or what your highest contribution should be.
The Core Values Index provides this self-knowledge—not about your current state or your adapted behaviors, but about the unchanging real self that Maslow identified. With this knowledge, you can begin the journey of aligning your life with who you truly are.
Discover Your Unchanging Core Nature
Ready to understand your unchanging inner self? Take the Core Values Index and receive your comprehensive 17-page report that reveals the Real Core Values Nature you were born with—the stable foundation upon which your most authentic and fulfilling life can be built.