Put those values back, you don’t know where they came from!

My life is blessed in many ways, but one of the greatest is that I get to work with young athletes. When it isn’t enjoyable, it’s educational. They keep me honest. One of my big pushes this season was introducing them to the mental side of sport.

Anything you build requires a foundation — something strong, sturdy, unmoving. The foundation of a house looks nothing like the finished house, but beyond just holding the building up and forming the structure which everything is built upon, it defines the general shape of the building. Growing up, there was a goofy shaped house in my neighborhood that the owner torched in hope of collecting insurance money. He successfully burned it to the ground, but arson is easy to prove and he got nothing but perhaps some quality jail time. The property eventually sold and the new owners decided that rather than taking on the expense of removing the existing foundation, they would build upon it. While they did make a somewhat more aesthetically pleasing house, it had the same goofy shape as the old, pre-burn of course. Such is the power and quiet strength of a foundation.

Your values are your foundation

In anything we do, our values provide that foundation. Values can come from many places — parents or grandparents, church and religion, forced on you by a spouse, maybe memories of an old coach. But are your values really YOUR values, or did you just pick them up along the way like a child who sees a piece of candy on the dirty ground? That’s what I thought. That sticky stuff on the bottom of your shoe might not be gum, but rather someone else’s values that you stepped in years or even decades ago, that have been clinging on ever since.

When was the last time you sat down and started with a clean sheet of paper? Just to be clear, I don’t mean writing down buzzword values like “family” or “career.” Family is important to most everyone. What does that word mean to you? Chances are it has a different meaning to you than it might to your spouse.

Personally speaking, I have never in my life have sat down with a blank sheet of paper, written down words or guiding principles that describe the person I want to be, and crafted them into the values that I want to guide my life. Since I recently went through this exercise with a room full of fifth to eighth grade athletes but have not done this for myself, I can say for certain and without hesitation that I am not smarter than a fifth grader.

Talking with a small sample of friends, I found that values are viewed as just being there (I have them but don’t actively think of them), or are only reflected upon in times of crisis or personal transition such as prior/post divorce, career change (whether planned or forced), or some kind of midlife/existential crisis. No relationship, whether romantic or business, can survive when the partners’ values don’t mesh. At the same time, examining and questioning your values individually and collectively is a scary proposition because of the looming “what if they don’t align”.

Make your own values map

So many people right now feel like they took a wrong turn or that their life went off the rails. Perhaps they just need to take the time to reexamine their foundation. So try this: start with a clean sheet of paper and write down the words that mean something to you. Write down as many words in 15 minutes as you can. Then take a few minutes to group similar words, or more specifically words that have similar meaning to you. Now look at the groupings you have left and pick the three or four that resonate with the person you want to be — this is where you separate you from the values of others that no longer serve you.

Take your three or four remaining words and write a couple sentences explaining what they mean to you and why they are important to you. Try them on and see if they fit. If they don’t, give them a chance and perhaps repeat the exercise.