The Simplicity of Self-Discovery: What would you walk across the I-beam for?

I've been told that sharing a personal story should never really be about you or for you, so much as it should serve as a blessing to someone who may benefit from reading it. It is in that spirit that I share an impressionable event in my life. As a young 20-year-old I was just na?ve enough to think I knew a fair amount about business, life and personal values. I was blessed to meet a man who would change my life in ways that I didn't then fully appreciate. 

Hyrum Smith walked across the great I-beam in the sky (indulge me on the metaphor for a moment) for the final time in 2019 after a painful battle with pancreatic cancer. But his enduring message increased in value throughout my life. I was at the Las Vegas Hilton for a management convention in the summer of 1990. Hyrum, the founder and CEO of Franklin Quest (which you may recognize as Franklin-Covey post-merger), took the stage to talk to us about building our "governing values." A notecard had been left at our seats, and Hyrum asked us to jot down 5 life goals. He told us that this list would form the basis for each of us to build our personal constitution. <queue the eye roll from the only 20-year old in the room> It seemed like just another of those fancy management techniques from yet another self-help guru. It was anything but.

As I wrote my own goals through the lens of my "vast 20 years" of life experience, I settled on things like a beautiful oceanside home with a grand deck overlooking the beach, becoming independently wealthy, marrying my dream girl, there must of been some mention of a yacht and a Lamborghini in there somewhere. "Ok maybe this exercise isn't so bad," I thought. Hyrum walked off stage and began looking at the notecards, and stopped to talk to a man who was probably in his early forties. He asked the man if he would mind to share what he had written on his notecard. While the list was a bit more tempered by life's cruel realities than mine, most of us seemed to have the same sort of goals in mind. I had not thought to add health or education to mine. His was surely a much smarter list, and I was quickly relieved that I had not been singled out. 

Hyrum invited the man to join him on stage. He began by describing an "I-beam"--you know the steel beams used in construction. He offered the man $20 to walk across the imaginary I-beam on stage. There was no real risk here, so the man enthusiastically accepted the "challenge." When Hyrum actually slipped a real $20 bill in the man's pocket, this 20-year old wished that I had volunteered after all. The crowed looked to the stage intently. We were riveted by Hyram's hypothetical exercise as we tried to understand just what point he was trying to make. He then asked us to imagine that he placed two saw horses on the stage just about 3 feet in the air. As the man read his list, Hyrum offered to hypothetically fulfill it if he would walk across the I-beam first at just the 3-foot level. With the crowd buzzing in agreement, the man said that he'd be willing to walk across that I-beam to fulfill anything on that list. Hyrum's tone became more serious as the challenge became more difficult. He moved the I-beam to the top of the Las Vegas Hilton, at which point earning the items on our lists was becoming less appealing.

Hyrum moved the hypothetical I-beam to New York City where it would stretch across the Twin Towers which he said were a couple hundred feet apart. He asked the man if he'd be willing to take that walk. Before he could get a "hell no" out, Hyrum upped the ante saying, its beginning to mist and the winds have really picked up. The odds of successfully walking across that beam became ridiculously unlikely. "I'll give you everything on that list of yours if you'd be willing to walk across," Hyrum pleaded. Checking my own list--Lamborghini? No. Oceanfront home? No. In fact, there's no amount of money, no material possession in the world that would make me do something so crazy as to put my life in jeopardy with an almost certain fall from over 1,300 feet in the air. That would be the ultimate act of courage (or insanity). As a side bar--the great irony is that none of us could have known then that 11 years later, this would be the site of so many ultimate acts of courage. It was a place where an act intended to shatter our collective spirit only brought us closer and instead shattered all perceptions on the limits of human kindness and perseverance.

Hyrum asked the man if he had children. He said, "Yes I have a son who is 11 and a daughter who is 9." "Dad," Hyrum said somberly, "Your kids are in danger, and they are at the other end of that I-beam. The silence in the room was palpable. The man stood staring at Hyrum, and seconds later a tear leaked down his face. "That's not even a question. My children are my world, and I'm not walking across--I'm RUNNING across." We were beginning to understand the point of the story. Then Hyrum stated the obvious, "My friend, I think you need to go re-write that list." On that summer day in 1990, I learned the concept that discovering your personal governing values is best understood through the simplicity of asking yourself, "What would I walk across the I-beam for?"

As a 20-year-old, while I understood it, I can't say that I fully appreciated it then. Nonetheless, the poignant moment was as indelibly etched in my memory as I'm certain it was for every other person in that room--even the few with dry eyes. Fast forward into adulthood, I've had the privilege of having children. First came Brandt, Sadie and Tucker--triplets who stole my heart and fast became my whole world. While not their biological father, I can promise you that this trivial detail would not stop me from running across my own hypothetical I-beam at any height, under any weather conditions. I finally understood it in a way that I hadn't before. Years later, I found myself stepping in to help parent three boys--Christopher, Alek and Jared (Age 9, 11 and 12) who came to live with me "for a week." Almost a decade later I would end up seeing two of them off to college (Christopher is now a Senior in High School). They too are my whole world. I recalled Hyrum's message, which took on such a deeper meaning for me. As young adults, these six incredible people mean more to me than life itself. If I had to make my list for Hyrum today, I couldn't limit it to five things I'd walk across the I-beam for, I'd need at least six.

Parenting caused me to dive back into Hyrum's writings. The process doesn't stop with articulating your governing values--those really rare things in your life that you'd personally walk across the hypothetical I-beam for. The key is to go from values to planned specific actions that nurture those values. For instance, my mother Barbara raised my four sisters and I as a single mom. I'm in awe of how she managed to work 2-3 jobs at a time and put herself through community college as a single parent so that she could go from being a waitress working late into the night, to eventually working an office job so that she could be home with us at night. She had virtually no help, and let's just say our family had some character-building struggles to make ends meet, but giving up was never an option.

Mom never owned a home; but she always managed to keep us safe, warm, fed, and pursuing our education. I realized later in life that her happiness, health and safety unquestionably met the I-beam test for me. I developed an action plan for how I would nurture that governing value.  I planned specific times and events as to how I would surprise her, writing in my Franklin planner future dates on which I would visit or send flowers and drop her a note of encouragement and thanks--just because. (Lest I let the urgencies of the day displace my good intentions with regret). I occasionally was blessed to be able to slip a few c-notes in her bible when visiting back home, knowing that she'd discover them long after I had landed back in Texas, and feel the love. Six years ago, I was able to realize my dream of buying her the first and only home she would ever own. She passed away this February, and I'm forever grateful that I had learned the soul-searching process of discovering my personal governing values and taking specific actions to nurture them. With each of the six children I was blessed to co-parent, I became (and remain) very intentional about detailing the specific actions I would plan with them individually so as to nurture that which I self-discovered I would cross the I-beam for.

Those who are parents understand, the beauty and sometimes frustration is that your children's need for you never really ends. The funny thing about governing values is that when you are very intentional in planning specific actions that nurture them, you gain an inner peace that no Lamborghini, no oceanfront home, no yacht on the South Pacific could ever give you. Conversely, if you focus on what seems urgent in the moment, time has a way of robbing you of the opportunity to nurture those few I-beam worthy things in life that give you inner peace. The key is to prioritize those specific actions above even that which may at the time seem more urgent. I promise you there isn't a single task or goal outside of your governing values that will seem anywhere close to as urgent in hindsight as it does today.

What would you walk across the I-beam for? How will you articulate your personal governing values? What specific actions will you plan so that rather than simply being "words to live by" these governing values are operationalized and given the priority they deserve? Will your future self lament lost opportunities, forever stolen by time or will you smile with inner peace looking back at the I-beam you've crossed and say, "well done?"