“Don’t you dare touch that button”! Those were the words I yelled out to my friend as we rode in his 2 seater cherry red Jeep Wrangler. With his hands retracting and mine extending in a coordinated motion that would have made an amateur synchronized swimming coach proud, I reached for the circular knob on the right side of the dashboard as I turned up the radio volume with reckless abandonment. Instantly, I was transported back in time. The year was 1997. IBM’s Deep Blue chess-playing computer had defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov, the very first book in the Harry Potter series had been published in the UK, and my dad had just brought home a ‘Collection of Great Hits’ Compact Disc(CD). I knew I had arrived at the apex of sonical ecstasy when I encountered Track 3 – Ace of Base’s 1992 smash hit ‘The Sign’. Over the next few days I would wear out the repeat button on that track, each time committing just a little bit more of the song to memory. Here in my friend’s car with the soothing breeze caressing my face and the clear blue skies above us, I was a sing-along Don at the peak of his powers! I reached for the circular knob one more time as I felt the the current volume still wasn’t doing the song justice. A little bit more to the right…right there… I was dialed in. All was now right with the world.
There are many things I remember about that open road exploration with my friend, but I always come back to that moment. As always, I try to find life lessons in the most rudimentary aspects of my daily interactions. This is no different. When I think about that moment, I think about Values and Action. Let me explain…. Values are the things that we have told ourselves are important to us. They could be a set of beliefs or principles, or people or things that we attach a high degree of worth to. Actions, to state it concisely, are the things that we do everyday. Here’s what intrigues me: sometimes our actions don’t always align with the things we say we value. A student may claim to value getting good grades on a test, but then can’t bring himself to study because there’s a football game going on presently. That student my claim to value getting good grades, but an honest introspective analysis will show that what they really value in that moment is enjoying a football game. A man may claim to value his significant other, but then switches up his tone when he’s on the phone with her around his friends. This man also has a hard time performing little gestures such as ironing her clothes for the next day, with the aim of alleviating some of her stress…and if he does, nobody better hear about it! What that man really values more, is not looking ‘soft’ in front of his boys. I am no saint when it comes to this either. Lately I’ve been trying to be more of a morning person. Part of the strategy to achieve that goal has been establishing a routine that gets me in bed at a certain time at night, so that I feel energized enough to wake up early. Upon waking up, I’m supposed to head to the gym. The other night I was faced with a choice of going to bed at my new ‘normal’ time or staying up late to watch a movie. I knew I had no business watching that movie if I wanted to be up early to head to the gym, but that was the choice I made. In that moment, no matter how much I may have professed to myself on the surface level that I valued waking up early and the increased productivity that was a by-product of that, a heightened sense of self-awareness will show that what I really valued was scrolling through Netflix to be entertained.
Champions do not necessarily always have more skill. If you dig deeper, the common denominator you will find across champions of any sport is this: there is an incredible degree of alignment between the things they say they value (winning in this case) and the actions they take. Kobe Bryant is a prime example. Kobe wanted to be great at basketball. While his friends partied on Friday night, he put in time at the gym to perfect his craft. He also knew he had to be up early the next day for practice. Is there anything wrong with partying? Not at all. But there was something he Valued more that demanded a different set of actions from him. He was dialed in to the point where his actions were incredibly aligned with his values. This is one of the challenge for me as I continue to try to improve myself everyday. Just as I turned that knob in the jeep wrangler till the volume was just right for my sing-along, I want to continue to dial-in my self awareness to the point where there is a high level of alignment between the things I claim to value and the actions I take. I will keep working. I encourage you to do the same.