What are your Core Values? Do you Live them?

I was asked yesterday to name some of my core values.  Interestingly enough when the question was proposed I had to pause.  While I have looked into core values in the past and even set some as my own, I hadn’t revisited these values in a long time.  I’ve heard and talked about core values many times since creating what I would consider to be my core values, but for some reason I had not taken a deeper look into who I was becoming.  So, yesterday I took time to revisit my core values, and here are some of my takeaways.

We often hear the term core values thrown around for teams and organizations as the cornerstones to how they operate, but less often do we look at these core values on an individual level.  Like teams and organizations we need to have at least an understanding of who we are and what drives us.  When I think about core values I think about guiding principles to who I am.  What actions do I want to have and be known for.  Do they strengthen the foundation of who I am?

So, as I looked over an insanely long list of words that were designed to help determine my core values I found myself questioning what importance each word had in my life.  It’s an interesting process that I encourage everyone to do, and I would say that I should redo this more frequently.  After navigating the list there were several words that really stood out to me as cornerstones to my life.  What I also found was that I gravitated toward words with similar meaning.  It was now time to decide which words I would choose that could potentially encompass the other words, while being the guiding principles in my life.

Here’s where I ended up: service, love, joy, and curiosity.

Service:  This was my first cornerstone and the one word that most encapsulates who I try to be everyday in every aspect of my life.  Everything I do is an attempt to serve.  This has been a core value of mine for as long as I can remember and something that has guided my decisions over the course of my life and career.  As a player I always tried to help others by either driving them to practice, staying after to take extra reps, spotting them in the weight-room, give them feedback when I was on the bench, or just be a sounding board for them.

After my baseball career ended I became a trainer, gym owner, coach, podcaster, writer, and speaker.  All of these are service professions in my opinion.  I was a trainer to act as a service provider to help others achieve their fitness goals.  As a gym owner I could expand my service reach and help more people.  The coaching, podcasting, and speaking are other ways to serve people.  As many know if you’re not coaching professional or D1 football, you’re probably not coaching for the money.  Coaches coach to serve others and develop their athletes into great adults.  I’ve used my podcasting, writing, and speaking as an extension of my coaching.  The idea behind each knew venture I begin to pursue I ask who will this help increase my ability to serve.  

Love:  This one is my second cornerstone because I believe that we must learn to love not only those we hold dear, but those we disagree with.  By viewing everyone through a lens of love we find ourselves more capable of forgiveness and open-mindedness when presented with views we may not align or agree with.  This cornerstone has been challenged in recent years with the changing climate of our countries relationship with each other, but that’s why I think it’s even more important to lean into love.

When I think about love I think about family.  When I was coaching I would always tell my players they are family, now and forever.  No matter where they go or how far they travel, they will always be welcomed back home when they return and I will always love them.  And like families, we will fight, we will disagree, we will argue and butt heads, but no matter how bad the situation may be, we will always love each other.  Families don’t always like each other, but they should always love each other.

I hope that while I may not always like what someone is doing, agree with what someone is saying, or whatever the situation may be, that I can look at it through a lens of love and find peace.

Joy:  If you’ve spent any amount of time with me you know this is who I am in every moment of my day.  We are provided one life and I choose to see the joy in every area of it.  I get to go to work every morning for myself, I get to work hard, I get to write, read, love, hurt, coach, lead, play, and live everyday with joy.  I smile through hard moments in order to know that I’m getting the full experience of life.  Life isn’t always easy, but without enduring and living all of life’s experiences we don’t get to appreciate how special our time here is.  

Joy is a choice to see the good in every moment and to appreciate the special moments in the good and bad.  I try to make life more fun and joyful for others.  Another part of this is to avoid aspects that challenge your joy.  If it’s something you “have” to do, odds are it’s important to an aspect of your life that brings you joy.  If this isn’t the case, it might be time to change course.

Curiosity:  The final cornerstone is curiosity.  Curiosity is crucial for being able to view the world through the lens of a beginner.  Someone who is always looking to absorb knowledge and grow through experiences and learning.  Curiosity provides me with a desire to consistently become more.  More intelligent, more open, more wise.  I want to explore different perspectives and thoughts to discover a better way to explain things so that people see we’re more alike than different in most cases.  I’m curious about how things work.  I’m curious about leadership, culture, greatness, business, people, and so much more.

This curiosity has led me to want to have incredible conversations with different people from around the world.  It has led me to read books, watch documentaries, explore new parts of the world, try new things, and be open to change.  Change can be scary until you find a way to view it through a lens of curiosity, then it becomes exciting to discover what might happen next.

As you look through my core values and what makes up the cornerstones of my life, I encourage you to explore what characteristics make up your core values.  While you do this you’ll find that there are similar words that might feel the same, but dig deeper.  There’s a reason I chose service instead of leadership, love instead of family, joy instead of happiness, or curiosity instead of knowledge.  For me the words I chose are the roots for the tree that include the words I passed on.  Leadership, family, happiness, and knowledge are important to me, but they are branches to the tree of my core values.  You may see this differently, but this is why it is so important to take time to evaluate these words and how you’re currently living your life.  

Once you have decided which values best describe your life and how you want to live it, make sure you lean into those values.  Another important thing that came to my attention during this process is to make sure you take time to re-evaluate your core values.  Some may have read that and thought core values don’t change, but I would beg to differ.  I believe we can have shifts in our core values as we have different experiences.  Having a kid might change your core values, losing a loved one might change a core value, getting fired from a job, going through a divorce, filing for bankruptcy, or having an accident or medical diagnosis.  All of these incredibly powerful life events may cause what you felt was a core value to seem less or more important.  Cornerstones may change over time, but if you don’t know which ones matter to you, your houses foundation will weaken.

Discover your core values and then do your best to live your life to those values.  Make decisions based on alignment with these values.  Don’t be afraid to pass on something that isn’t in alignment with these values.  In the moment it may seem like a poor decision, but I promise you the things you do that are most in alignment with your core values are going to make you feel more fulfilled in your life.  Living my life to these values makes everyday special and valuable.  I get to do some incredible things because I’ve chosen to live my life to these standards.