It’s not uncommon in this crazy hectic world to get so caught up in the “busy-ness” of life that, before you know it, time has passed; and when you look back you might feel as if a piece of your life has gone missing.
You usually come to this kind of realization when something major happens, such as watching a child leave home, having a heart attack, going through a divorce, having problems with a struggling business, watching the economy go off a cliff, dealing with a rebellious child, or witnessing something that you’ve always believed, trusted, or known fail in some way. Time feels as if it comes to a standstill, and you pause for self-reflection.
When you find yourself in one of these situations you can become painfully aware of a gap between what you value most and what you are actually doing—the Values Gap. Where are you actually spending your time, energy, and resources compared to where you want to be spending them? The Values Gap is the gap between doing “any old thing” and doing the things that matter most.
You might look back and wonder how things could possibly get so far off the rails without you having noticed, or whether you could have made a more significant difference. What if there was a way to get caught off guard by life less often? What if there was a way to prepare proactively rather than regret retroactively? What if you could decide for yourself rather than having life decide for you?
The key to getting to a place of purposeful living lies in understanding the Values Gap. Understand this fact: everyone has a set of what I call governing values. These values answer the question of which priorities should be the highest for you, and they ultimately govern every aspect of your life.
Governing values are simply a description of one’s highest priorities.
Your governing values should be important enough to you that you will invest your time, resources, and energy in making them a fundamental part of your life.
Remember, whenever there is a gap between what you value and what you are doing, you are in pain. For example, if you value being physically fit, and you weigh three hundred pounds, there is a gap between what you value and what you are actually doing, and you are in pain. If you value being financially stable, and you are half a million dollars in debt, you are in pain.
If you want inner peace on either of these values, you have to close the Values Gap.
The “busy-ness” of life distracts us from the realization of these values and gets us off the track we want to be on—usually without us being fully aware that it’s happening. We invest time, resources, and energy in things that are not really of value to us. Then when something major happens, we step back a moment and realize the mistakes we’ve made. We can then feel deeply betrayed.
Closing the Values Gap—between what you value most and what you are actually doing—will enable you to make a powerful difference in the world around you.
There are three simple but necessary steps that must be followed to close the Values Gap:
Step 1: Identify Your Governing Values. To start, let me share a simple exercise that I have used for nearly four decades to help people discover their true governing values; I call it the I-Beam Experience. It’s merely a starting point; its purpose is not to answer the entire question of what your values are, but it will help you begin the journey of discovery.
I’ve shared this concept with hundreds of audiences all around the world, and I’ll tell you before we start that the reaction is universally the same. When I am teaching this in a public seminar, I always ask someone in the audience who has a child under the age of two to help me, and with this person I walk through the following scenario. Put yourself in the place of this audience member; for our purposes, we will call him George.
“George, what is the name of your two-year-old?” I ask.
“Madison,” George responds.
“Okay, I’m going to ask you a few questions, and by your answers, we are going to discover one of your governing values.
“I have lying out here in front of the building an I-beam that is three hundred feet long. This is an unusually long I-beam. In case you don’t know what an I-beam is, it’s a piece of structural steel used in framing large buildings such as skyscrapers. If you look at it from one end you will see that it looks like a capital letter I. If you turn it on its side, it becomes an H-beam. I’m going to put you at one end of the I-beam, and I’ll be at the other end.”
I now take a hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket, and I say, “George, if you’ll come across this I-beam without stepping off either side and get here in two minutes, I’ll give you a hundred dollars. Would you come?”
George hesitates a minute.
“It’s on the ground, George,” I remind him.
“Oh yeah, of course I would come.”
“All right, now we’re going to change the scenario a little bit. We’re going to put the I-beam on the back of a long, flatbed truck and drive it over to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. There is a place there three hundred feet across, and it is 1,160 feet straight down. We’re going to bolt the I-beam in to each wall of the canyon. It is perfectly safe, it will hold tons of weight. It is, however, a little bowed because of the expanse. And it’s raining—not very hard, just sort of a thick mist. There is also a wind blowing at about forty miles per hour.
“George, you are on one side of the chasm, and I am on the other. I shout through the wind and the rain, ‘If you’ll come across this I-beam without stepping off either side, and get here in two minutes, I’ll give you a hundred dollars. Would you come now?’”
“No!”
“Okay, I now have ten thousand dollars. Unmarked bills. The money is yours the minute you get to my end. Would you come for ten thousand dollars?”
“No.”
“How about fifty thousand dollars? There won’t be any taxes taken out of it. All you have to do is walk the same three hundred feet you walked back there on the sidewalk. Would you risk that for fifty thousand dollars?”
There is a pause before George says, “No, I don’t think I would.”
“All right, let’s change the scenario again. I have one million dollars. The rain has picked up, and the wind is blowing at about sixty miles per hour, but this is a million dollars. Would you risk it for a million dollars?”
Now George is thinking about it. “Are there any safety devices?” he asks.
“No.”
“How wide is the I-beam again?”
“Six inches.”
“It’s windy and rainy?”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t think I’d do it,” George says.
I say, “Okay, we’ll change the scenario one more time. I’m not a nice guy anymore, George. I’m holding your two-year-old, Madison, by the hair and dangling her over the edge of the canyon. If you don’t get across that I-beam right now, I’m going to drop Madison. Would you come now?”
He immediately responds, “Yes, I would.”
There is a lot of emotion now. We just discovered one of George’s governing values: “I love my child.” Safety has value, money has value, but of a much higher value is the love of the child. George would probably risk the I-beam, the danger of the chasm, the wind and the rain, for his daughter. And this is what governing values are really all about.
I once performed the I-Beam Experience with a woman who had a teenager. She wouldn’t come across for the teenager.
When you sit down to identify your governing values, the highest, deepest, most valued priorities in your life, you must ask yourself this question:
What value, idea, principle, or person has such great value to you that you would risk, maybe even dedicate your life to that value? Dedication is a whole lot tougher than risking, because it takes time.
Twenty years ago, I ran through the I-Beam Experience with a group in Hong Kong. I picked a man out of the audience who had a child under the age of two. This man turned out to be from India. I set the situation up, describing the I-beam on the ground, and asked, “Would you come across for a hundred dollars?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “It’s on the ground, why wouldn’t you come for a hundred dollars?”
“I don’t do that kind of stuff for money,” he said.
“Well, I’ve got the wrong guy.”
The man sitting next to him had a two-year-old daughter, so I asked him if he would come across the I-beam on the ground for a hundred dollars. He said he would, and so I walked him through the rest of the scenario.
When I got to the part about coming across the I-beam or losing his two-year-old, the man from India was on the edge of his seat. After the other man acknowledged that he would definitely come across for his child, I looked over at the man from India.
I asked, “How about you? Would you come across the I-beam now?”
“Damn right I would,” he said. “And I would kill you when I got to the other side.”
The audience laughed.
The I-Beam Experience will get you emotionally involved in the discovery process. You must now ask yourself a question: What would I cross the I-beam for? What is that important to me? That is where you start.
Step 2: Write a Clarifying Statement Describing Exactly What Your Governing Values Mean to You. After you have identified and written down your governing values—your highest priorities—write a clarifying statement for each value, describing exactly what it means to you.
An example of what this might look like was sent to me by a seminar participant. One of her governing values was health, and she wrote this clarifying statement:
I work out three times a week.
I limit fast food to no more than once a week.
I improve the quality of time spent on weekends.
I laugh or smile more often.
I identify and mitigate stress sources.
Another participant wrote her clarifying statement in an entirely different way:
I listen with an open mind to what people have to say and take in from their comments what I think will enhance my world. I read things related to all aspects of my life (job, kids, the world in general) and seek to internalize worthwhile things. I seek opportunities for formal education that will help me learn and grow. I learn everything I can about my department and company that will enhance my ability to do a better job.
As you can see, there is no “right” way to write a clarifying statement, as long as it states in some way what each governing value means to you.
Step 3: Prioritize Your Governing Values. Now rank your governing values in order of their importance to you. I can’t stress enough the importance of taking the time to prioritize this list; it is the most important list you will ever work with. The reason will become clear through the following story.
Herman Krannert was living in Indianapolis in 1925. He was an executive for the Sefton Container Company. On one occasion, he was summoned to Chicago to have lunch with the president of the company; he was very excited because he had never been invited to do so before.
During lunch the president said, “Herman, I’m going to make an announcement in the company this afternoon that greatly impacts your life. We’re going to promote you to senior executive vice president, and you’re to be the newest member of the board of directors.”
Krannert was blown away. He said, “Sir, I had no idea I was even being considered for this. I want you to know I’ll be the most loyal employee this company has ever had. I’m going to dedicate my life to making this the finest corporation in America.”
The president was gratified by this and said, “You know, Herman, I’m glad you mentioned that because there’s one thing I’d like you to remember. As a member of the board of directors you will vote exactly the way I tell you to.”
That took some wind out of Krannert’s sails, and he said he wasn’t sure he could do that.
“Come on, Herman, that’s the way it is in the business world. I’m putting you on the board of directors. You’ll do what I tell you, right?”
The more Krannert thought about that, the angrier he became. At the end of lunch he stood up and said, “I need you to understand I cannot accept this promotion. I will not be a puppet on the board of directors for anybody.” Then he added, “Not only that, I don’t think I want to work for a company where such demands are made. I quit.”
He returned to Indianapolis that night, approached his wife, and said, “You’ll be excited to know that today I was promoted to senior executive vice president, made a member of the board of directors, and I quit.”
She said, “You quit? Have you lost your mind?” Upon hearing the explanation, she understood and supported his decision. “Well, I guess we’ll have to find something else.”
Four nights later a knock came at his door. Six senior executives from his company burst through the door, all excited. “Herman, we heard what happened the other day. We think that’s the greatest thing we’ve ever heard. In fact, we quit too.”
“What do you mean, you quit too?” he asked.
“Yeah, we quit too, and here’s the good news. We’re going to go to work for you!”
“How are you going to work for me? I don’t even have a job.”
“Oh, we figure you’ll find something, and when you do, we’re going to work for you.”
That night those seven people sat down at Herman Krannert’s dining room table and created the Inland Container Corporation. It became a multibillion-dollar empire because, in 1925, a guy not only knew what his governing values were, but prioritized them. One of them was loyalty; another was integrity, but he had prioritized integrity above loyalty. How different would his life have been had he prioritized them in the other order?
Now you can see why prioritizing your governing values list is one of the most important steps you can take in closing the Values Gap. What do you suppose the U.S. Constitution is to the people of the United States? It represents our set of values as a people—complete with clarifying statements. No law in the United States is ever ratified until it is measured against the Constitution and deemed to be consistent with the founding fathers’ intentions.
After you go through these three steps—identify, clarify, prioritize—what will you have done? You will have written your own personal constitution. What kinds of things might you include in your list of governing values?
First, let’s be clear on one thing: I would never presume to tell you what your values ought to be; that’s none of my business. I can, however, tell you that you have values already in place. Having taught this lesson for the last forty years, I have discovered that there are probably five or six values that are regularly expressed as high priorities by the thousands of people I’ve worked with.
Some of these values include:
• family and relationships
• physical wellness
• financial wellness
• education
• integrity
• making a difference
Just about everyone would agree that at least some of these are part of his or her governing values. If one of these values is also one of yours, start there and begin the process.
With your values identified, clarified, and prioritized, consider the gap between what you value most and what you actually do in life. In what ways are you living your values? In what ways are you missing the mark? Starting today, what changes could you make that would start closing some gaps in specific areas of your life?
The I-Beam Experience is intended to start the process of identifying what is truly most important to you; quite frankly, it can seem a bit heavy. When I am totally honest with myself, I realize that, although they are important to me, not all of my values are so important that I would risk my life for them. But I would for some of them—especially any that deal with my family.
In the appendix you will find my personal constitution comprising sixteen governing values. This is included only as an example; your personal constitution will probably look very different from mine.
Notice that I state my values and their explanations as affirmations. I am not perfect, and I certainly don’t live up to all of my stated values—yet. But I find it helpful to imagine myself as I want to be, so I write my value statements as if I have already achieved harmony between what I value and what I actually do.
The state of harmony between what you value and what you do will lead to inner peace. This can only be achieved when you reach down deep into your core and discover what matters most. If you don’t do that, you will be living in the reactive and not the proactive world. And people who live in the reactive world lead out-of-control lives.
If you really want to close the Values Gap, ask yourself,
What would I cross the I-beam for? What matters most to me?
Take the time to identify, clarify, and prioritize your values. Make a firm commitment to write your own personal constitution.
And if you want to go a step further, get your spouse or significant other to write one, and write a personal constitution with your entire family. Then step back and discover the inner peace that you will all experience together.
I met Linda Clemons at a professional women’s conference in Dallas in the summer of 2013. We became dear friends after just a few conversations, and since then we have worked together as professional speakers on a number of occasions.
Linda, an African American, refers to me as “her brother from a different mother.” I agree; we have a great deal in common, including many shared beliefs, a deep and abiding desire to make a difference in the world, and powerful experiences in closing the Values Gap.
On June 4, 1996, Linda finished her shift as a morning show personality on WTLC radio in Indianapolis. Later that morning she had a simple surgical procedure. Because of a problem during the surgery, she did not regain consciousness for more than a month. When she woke from the coma, Linda looked at her world through a fundamentally changed Belief Window. She began to have regular and thoughtful conversations around certain questions: What am I doing with my life? What should I be doing with my life? What are my priorities? Am I living my life in line with those priorities?
When thinking about her values before the coma, Linda cannot recall if she felt she had a gap in her life then; she had not given it a lot of thought. But coming face-to-face with her mortality lead her to thoughtfully and prayerfully consider her priorities.
Linda has shared with me the outcome of that exploration—how she wants to live her life in the future—and says, “The values that became important to me as I really pondered my life’s priorities going forward were faith, family, compassion, honor, integrity, love, benevolence, commitment, and the courage to stay the course.”
Although the real probing experience with her values began when she awoke from her coma, those values were actually molding who Linda was and what she would do with her life at a much earlier age.
Here, in her own words, are Linda’s comments about what she has learned.
Think about Indiana Jones again. For the Values Gap, the cave across the chasm represents your governing values, the highest priorities in your life. The ledge where you stand represents what you actually do. When what you do closes in on what you value most, you experience inner peace.
When your daily activities are in concert with your highest priorities, you have a credible claim to inner peace.