If your values vanish on a bad day, they were just preferences with good branding.

Anything is easy to hold while holding it costs nothing. The test arrives on the day when telling the truth is expensive or being fair means losing something, and that is the only moment where a value can be told apart from a preference. Branding is what you say about yourself; conduct under pressure is the evidence.

Think about the last time being decent actually cost you, and what you did with that. Decide now, in specific terms, what you will not trade. A decision made in a calm hour is the one that holds up in a bad one.